10
In the end Emperor and Führer found themselves confronted by coalitions whose strength was far greater than their own. Nevertheless, they prolonged the conflict until the very last, and there were moments when its outcome was far from certain. In 1813, faced by Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden on one front, by the British in Spain on the other, Napoleon had a fair chance of defeating the first and containing the second; even his opponents feared he might still be too strong, despite the débâcle in Russia. As it was, after his defeat in Germany he could have secured terms which would have left him much of his empire.
He was fighting for his empire, his dream of a European monarchy, although he had united most of Europe against him. Hitler too fought for his empire, his hegemony, posing as the continent’s champion against ‘Bolshevism’. If the Emperor had withdrawn behind France’s ‘natural frontiers’ (the Rhine, the Alps and the Pyrenees) during the first months of 1813, before his enemies had had time to mobilize, they would surely have fallen out, Russia, Prussia and Austria squabbling for spoils in Eastern Europe and in Germany. Despite the Allies’ demand for unconditional surrender in January 1943, if Hitler had withdrawn to the 1941 frontier in Poland, Stalin might well have come to an agreement with him, concentrating on gains in the Middle East. Yet neither Napoleon nor the Führer dared risk such blows to their prestige. Both knew that their subjects were longing for peace, and feared that if they got it they might demand political freedoms. Neither would contemplate any diminution of their overblown territory.
Where Hitler’s situation differed was in its relation to America. Although the United States went to war with Britain in 1812, over interference with its merchant shipping, most North Americans detested the Emperor. However, they were too few, too poor and too far away. It was very different during the 1940s. As Bismarck had foretold, the decisive factor of the twentieth century was that Americans spoke English, even if many were anxious to avoid involvement in what they saw as purely European conflicts. In the event it was not they who declared war on the Führer but he on them. He did so from what may be described as quixotic loyalty to his Japanese ally. It was an infinitely worse miscalculation than his invasion of Russia, and ensured his defeat; otherwise he could undoubtedly have contained Britain and conquered the Soviet Union. Yet he was far from beaten, until a much later stage, even when the Anglo-American forces landed in Festung Europa on D Day 1944. With better luck he might easily have repulsed them all along the beaches, as indeed his troops did at Omaha Beach; only when the Allies broke out of their bridgeheads was disaster inevitable. Like Napoleon, he would never contemplate an ending to the war. Admittedly, from January 1943 the Allies agreed on demanding nothing less than unconditional surrender.
Napoleon always gambled on knocking his enemy out in a swift offensive. Clausewitz concluded: ‘The political goal is the end, and warfare is a means leading to it.’ However, by 1944, if not earlier, the Führer parted company over this with Napoleon, although he remained a gambler. Knowing that the ultimate conflict was lost, yet refusing to yield, Hitler had ceased to be a Clausewitzian, even if he continued to read him for tactical inspiration. He veered towards Clausewitz’s most savage critic, General Erich von Ludendorff, who during 1916-18 had dominated the German Supreme Command. The General had abandoned Clausewitz’s belief in a political aim, convinced that war was an end in itself – the ‘expression of the nation’s will to live’. This became Hitler’s conviction too.
In December 1812 an officer arrived at General Yorck von Wartenberg’s headquarters in East Prussia. He brought a personal letter from the Russian chief of staff, showing that his troops were already moving to cut the Prussians off from the French. On recognizing the officer, the General shouted ‘Keep away!’ It was Major von Clausewitz. However, after he had read the letter – and after some persuasive words from his visitor – Yorck agreed to take his regiments over to the Russians. Prussia was technically still in alliance with the French but this Yorck decided to do ‘even if it costs me my head!’ Three months later the Prussian King and the Tsar met on the frontier, burst into tears and fell on one another’s necks. On 28 March 1813 Frederick William III declared war on France, but instead of burning Berlin ‘at the least insult’ as ordered by his stepfather, Eugène de Beauharnais withdrew his troops behind the Elbe.
Napoleon’s defeat in Russia and the destruction of the Grande Armée had dealt a blow as much moral as physical. He could be beaten! Nowhere did this realization dawn more intoxicatingly than among the Germans, who for years had dreamt of ridding themselves of the bloodsucking French, with their billeting, confiscation, conscription and firing-squads. From Russia, General Wittgenstein sent a message addressed to every German, that there would be no more class distinctions in a patriotic war against the invaders. ‘Germans, we are opening up to you the ranks of the Prussian army, where you will find labourers’ sons fighting side by side with princes’ sons – any difference in class is obliterated by the words “King, Liberty, Honour and Country”.’ It was almost the language of the French Revolution in reverse. All over Germany nationalism burst into flame, patriotic songs thundering forth and French soldiers being murdered, while every night guerrilla bands went raiding. French officials began to slip away from Cassel with what loot they could cram into their carriages.
Prussia and Russia started to mobilize in the spring. That underestimated soldier-politician Bernadotte saw that the time had come for destroying his old rival. Sweden, the ‘Baltic Prussia’, still produced excellent soldiers, and he landed 35,000 of them at Stralsund to march through Mecklenburg and join the Allies. Meanwhile Wellington continued his remorseless advance across Spain towards the Pyrenees.
However, the Emperor was far from defeated. Despite his losses in Russia, he assembled a new army far more quickly than his opponents were able to mobilize – half the Russians were still on the other side of the Vistula, while the Prussians had not yet been able to call on their full strength. On paper it looked formidable enough; a field army of 150,000 men and 372 cannon, with another 75,000 men and 85 guns for garrisons. Yet he had cashed what has been described as his ‘blank cheque on manpower’. His troops were no longer veterans and not even adults, most of them being fifteen-year-olds. His cavalry was pitifully inadequate, a mere 8,000 sabres mounted on third-rate hacks, in consequence of the loss of horses in Russia.
Metternich was not so sure that Napoleon was finished, and was predisposed to favour his survival because of the dynastic alliance which made him the Austrian Emperor’s son-in-law. In any case, the Austrian Chancellor was nervous about Prussia’s ambition, the new German nationalism and ‘rabble-rousing’, fearful that Russian intervention in Europe might upset the balance of power. He was even prepared to guarantee the Confederation of the Rhine (including Bonaparte-ruled Westphalia), but France would have to give Warsaw, Lombardy and Illyria to Austria, and withdraw from the Rhein-Bund.
The Emperor was ready by the end of April 1813, having assembled his troops at Mainz. As always, his overall plan was to strike as soon as possible; he would aim for Danzig, crossing the Elbe and seizing control of the bridges over the Lower Vistula, in order to cut communications between Russia and Prussia. He hoped to knock them out before Austria could intervene. He took into account neither the poor quality of his troops nor his deficiency in cavalry, which would deprive him of essential information about enemy troop movements – he could no longer send a huge screen of light horse in front of him, spying out the land and concealing his own manoeuvres, as in former years.
Moving with his habitual speed, he crossed the Saale and marched east into Saxony, where the Allies had occupied King Frederick Augustus’s capital of Dresden. On 1-2 May a third of his grape and canister ‘shells’ proved defective and yet he mauled Wittgenstein and Blücher so severely at Lützen that they retreated over the Elbe. (Major von Clausewitz was wounded behind the ear.) But the enemy had given as good as they got, inflicting no less casualties on the French, and escaping without losing a single prisoner or gun. On 6 May he entered Dresden, reinstating Frederick Augustus. Three weeks later at Bautzen he again defeated the Allies, though he lost 15,000 men compared to the Allies’ 10,000. Had Ney carried out his orders properly the enemy would have been annihilated. The Emperor muttered that his ‘star’ was setting. In particular he had been unpleasantly surprised by the stubborn ferocity with which the Prussians fought, remarking, ‘The animals seem to have learnt something.’ They withdrew from the battle as though from the parade ground. Nevertheless, he had no enemies left west of the Elbe.
The Free City of Hamburg had been so enthusiastic and unwise as to leave the Confederation of the Rhine, proclaiming its hostility to the Emperor. Davout occupied it, appropriating the entire funds of the Bank of Hamburg, demolishing suburban houses to build earthworks. The atrocities committed by the grim Marshal’s troops were so vicious that the Hamburgers were still avenging them in 1870.
On 4 June Napoleon signed an armistice at Pläswitz for two months, the worst misjudgment of his entire career. He agreed to it because he was expecting more troops from Italy – above all more cavalry. 65,000 infantry arrived but only 2,000 sabres. Had he pursued Wittgenstein and Blücher into Bohemia he would almost certainly have routed them, destroying the coalition. As it was the Allies were able to mobilize more men of their own and wait for Austria.
In Clausewitz’s view the Emperor was wrong in believing he could bluff Bernadotte and Blücher into staying on the defensive by placing shadow divisions opposite them and playing on their caution. In particular he failed to take into account Prussian hatred of the French.
Metternich stated his price at the Marcolini Palace in Dresden on 26 June, during a meeting which lasted several hours. Almost at once Napoleon, scowling, told him, ‘So you want war. Good. You shall have it!’ He continued that but for the possibility of Austrian intervention it would have been only too easy for him to make peace with Russia and Prussia. The Austrian chancellor reminded him again and again that everyone wanted peace, especially the French army. The Emperor insisted furiously, ‘I will die before I give up a single inch of territory! Sovereigns born on their thrones can let themselves be defeated twenty times, and will always keep their crowns. I can’t do that because I’m self-made.’ A relentless Metternich pointed out to him that the French troops were mere children, that when they were dead there would be no one else left to conscript. The Emperor boasted, ‘Someone like me doesn’t care if he loses a million men’, that if he was beaten, then ‘I’m going to bury the world in my ruin!’ (In reality he might have survived on the French throne had he given up the Grand Empire but he would certainly have lost his absolute power; when forced to grant a Constitution during the Hundred Days he grumbled that he would never have come back had he foreseen such a humiliation.) The Austrian Chancellor told him to open the windows so that everyone might hear him. He retorted that out of 300,000 men who had died in Russia only 30,000 had been French and the rest had been Poles or Germans. At this his guest – a Rhinelander – reminded Napoleon that he was a German too. The discussion was often extremely unpleasant, the Emperor asking Metternich how much Britain had paid him. The latter left, saying, ‘You are doomed!’ Nevertheless Napoleon sent an envoy to Prague to explore the possiblity of peace, even if he had no intention of signing one.
Despite his defiance, he was worried. After Bautzen he had told Marmont, ‘The game is going wrong.’ His uneasiness was shared by his staff. Metternich had noticed their anxiety during the meeting at the Marcolini Palace:
I find it difficult to convey adequately the painfully anxious look on the faces of the courtiers or on those of the gold braided generals assembled in the Emperor’s apartments. The Prince of Neufchâtel [Berthier, Chief of Staff] whispered to me, ‘Don’t forget that Europe needs peace, France especially – that’s all she wants.
Murat was so concerned that he was negotiating secretly with the Austrians to save his Kingdom of Naples. Yet none of the Marshals contemplated a coup d’état. All owed their entire careers and positions to Napoleon.
At Reichenbach on the day after the meeting Austria reached a secret agreement with Russia, Prussia, Sweden and Britain to declare war on France if she refused to make peace. In July the Allies held a council of war at Schloss Trachenberg in Silesia to discuss the strategy and tactics they should adopt when hostilities reopened. Bernadotte and a Swedish general, Count Lowenhjelm, produced an inspired solution for dealing with the Emperor, based on the former’s experience of Napoleon’s methods in the days when he had served under him. It was to advance on the French army in a wide semicircle, attacking his flanks and any exposed corps, but to withdraw from any sector where the Emperor commanded in person. In the days before radio, when tactical response depended on what cavalry scouts could report, this would make it impossible for him to secure the decisive combat with which he had won all his victories.
The armistice ended on 10 August, Austria declaring war the following day. (News of the total defeat of the French in Spain and the knowledge that they could no longer switch troops from that front had decided Metternich to risk war.) The Allies’ new strategy and tactics worked up to a point, though according to Clausewitz – who was there, on Blücher’s staff – they were badly positioned and operating on too wide a front. The Emperor caught the Austrians under Schwarzenberg just outside Dresden on 26-28 August, driving back 220,000 men with 120,000 and inflicting nearly 40,000 casualties. A pursuit in the old style would have destroyed the Allies, but on the evening of the 28th Napoleon was stricken by food-poisoning and had to take to his bed in Dresden. Here he was informed that General Vandamme, pursuing too eagerly, had been defeated and taken prisoner at Kulm with 8,000 men, that General Macdonald had been routed by Blücher on the river Katzbach with the loss of 18,000 more. Bad news flooded into the sick man’s room. Oudinot, advancing to stop Bernadette from joining Blücher, was badly beaten by him at Grossbeeren, near Berlin. Ney then tried to block the Swedes, but was defeated at Dennewitz, losing a further 20,000 troops.
When the Emperor rose from his bed at the beginning of September the situation grew still worse. All the Allied armies succeeded in linking up, some 350,000 men. Bavaria changed sides, and its troops under General Wrede – who had been guarding Napoleon’s rear – now threatened his retreat. The dwindling French army was starving and disease-ridden; its young soldiers could not take the pace, even if they could fight bravely enough. The Emperor abandoned Dresden in early October, realizing that he could no longer hold the river Elbe, and withdrawing to Leipzig, which was the key to North Germany. Here with 190,000 hungry men he awaited a vastly superior enemy; not only was he outnumbered but he had fewer cannon. A general engagement (the Germans would later name it ‘The Battle of the Nations’) commenced on 16 October outside Leipzig, on low, flat ground criss-crossed by streams and gardens, which offered no tactical advantage. During the first day the Allies launched six concentric attacks, the opposing armies bludgeoning each other mercilessly, mass colliding with mass. The French could make no impression on the enemy. Whether standing their ground or charging the Prussians fought with unrelenting ferocity; Clausewitz writes proudly, ‘At Leipzig Blücher alone won the victory.’ There was a lull on the second day, one of pouring rain during which Napoleon was uncharacteristically inactive. The French were down to 15,000 rounds (enough for only two hours), while ammunition and reinforcements were reaching the enemy all the time. The battle recommenced on the third day and the fighting was even more ferocious than on the first, beneath a relentless deluge. The Saxons, 3,000 strong, went over to the Allies, turning their 60 guns on the French. The Emperor’s troops suffered such heavy casualties that when evening came he admitted that he had lost, ordering a general retreat. Although many of his men, including the badly wounded Prince Poniatowski, were drowned trying to swim the river Elster (where the single pontoon bridge had been prematurely demolished by panic-stricken sappers), he managed to fight his way back to France with a rabble of 70,000 broken men and boys. The Allies had inflicted 40,000 casualties on the battlefield, while taking another 20,000 Frenchmen prisoner. They had lost more men killed and wounded, but they could afford to replace them. Moreover, this was the first great battle in which Napoleon had received a total defeat.
He was in Paris again by 9 November. The Grand Empire no longer existed. The Confederation of the Rhine, including the Kingdom of Westphalia, had vanished like smoke; all that remained of the French domination were isolated garrisons whose troops were desperately needed in France. Switzerland, Holland and Northern Italy were rising in revolt, while Wellington was threatening France’s southern frontier. The country faced invasion on all sides, although the roads of the period postponed serious campaigning during the winter weather. Nevertheless, as Sir Walter Scott wrote percipiently on 10 December, ‘Bonaparte is that desperate gambler who will not rise while he has a stake left.’
As usual, Clausewitz’s interpretation may be taken to imply that the Emperor had had a good chance of winning. He considers that at Dresden the Allied armies were only saved from the consequences of fighting on several fronts – in their frenzied efforts to envelop Napoleon – by General Vandamme’s defeat on the Katzbach which made the Emperor decide to stay in Dresden. Clausewitz also believes that if the Emperor’s onslaught on the first day at Dresden had succeeded the Allies would have been cut in two – their superiority in numbers was irrelevant. He knew what he was talking about, since he had been present, with Blücher’s staff (as a liaison officer for the Russians). These pages in Vom Kriege would have made comforting reading for the Führer in 1944.
Both he and the Emperor displayed small understanding of their opponents, whether as races or individuals. Metternich was astounded by Napoleon’s extraordinary ideas about the British, and ignorance of their institutions. The Emperor raged against the ‘oligarchy’ who ruled Britain, regarding them as doomed to extinction like the patricians of Venice. The British were ‘a nation of shopkeepers’, the common people ‘crude and rough’. He was infuriated by the insulting articles in the London newspapers which were read out to him by his secretaries. Yet he none the less dreamt wistfully at times of peace with Britain, even though he knew it was impossible. As has been seen, he made half-hearted overtures in Spain in 1812. He sighed how matters might have been very different ‘but for the death of Mr Fox’. He was also aware that a few Whigs had considerable sympathy for him, unable to appreciate that much of this sympathy came from a desire to irritate the Tory government. In 1815 he was to hope – vainly – that the Prince Regent would offer him a refuge. At no time did he show any insight whatever into the British character.
Like the Emperor, Hitler continued to insist to the end that he had no real quarrel with Britain. He also believed that he had friends there. Among these he numbered Sir Oswald Mosley and his Black Shirts – ‘some belonging to the best families’ – and the aged Lloyd-George, ‘a man of tremendous vision’ who had told him that Britain had ‘no alternative but to live on terms of friendship with Germany’. He entertained naïve hopes of the Duke of Windsor. ‘If he had stayed everything would have been different. His abdication was a severe loss to us.’ He was amazed that the British should have toppled ‘so fine a pillar of strength’. (Goebbels lamented to Wilfred von Oven in 1944 that ‘Were Edward Windsor on the throne today, supposing that under his rule it would ever have come to this war, he would long ago have undertaken the decisive move and our two peoples would be fighting side by side against the Bolshevik world enemy instead of tearing one another apart… Edward would not have allowed this ghastly spectacle to become reality.’) The Führer could not grasp the limited political role of the monarchy in Britain and did not understand the Duke.
Just as Napoleon had hated Pitt, Hitler detested Churchill, an ‘undisciplined swine who is drunk eight hours of every twenty-four’, heaping insults on him. He was still more contemptuous of Roosevelt, ‘a sick brain’, sneering at the President’s boast that he had ‘noble Jewish blood’ in his veins.’ (He added, ‘The completely negroid appearance of his wife is also a clear indication that she, too, is a half-caste.’) Nevertheless, by 1943 Roosevelt had quadrupled the American army to nearly seven million men and American factories were producing 50,000 planes and 25,000 tanks a year, figures which were to increase with whirlwind rapidity.
The Emperor, perhaps not unnaturally, came to dislike the Tsar, whom he dismissed as false and untrustworthy. He never appreciated Alexander’s difficulties, the precarious position of a hereditary autocrat. And he despised and feared the Russian people. After his victory at Lützen in May 1813 he was to tell his army (no doubt with his German and Polish troops very much in mind), ‘We are going to throw those Tartars back into their own ghastly country, from which they must never emerge again. They must keep to their frozen steppes, the home of barbarianism and corruption, where man is redueed to the level of an animal.’ On St Helena he expressed his dread that ‘the cossacks will one day rule Europe.’ The Führer had an even lower opinion of Russians. ‘The Slavs are a race of born slaves who feel the need of a master’, he pronounced on many occasions. If other races had not imported the rudiments of organization, ‘the Russians would still be living like rabbits’. On the other hand, he genuinely admired their leader, who was probably the sole world leader whom he did not underestimate. Stalin ‘must command our unconditional respect. In his own way he is a hell of a fellow’, Hitler told his private circle. He also called him ‘a beast but a beast on the grand scale’, and more than once described him as a genius. Speer sometimes suspected that the Führer felt sympathy and even solidarity for Stalin’s régime, regarding him as ‘a kind of colleague’. (A joke current in Berlin during the war went ‘What’s the difference between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia? It’s colder in Soviet Russia.’)
German intelligence had long known that the Allies were planning to invade France but had not been able to discover when or where. With his uncanny intuition, the Führer guessed that the landing would be in Normandy. However, most of his generals were convinced it would be in the Pas de Calais. Despite his better judgment, he compromised, stationing his troops well back from the coast so that they could be moved swiftly to either sector. He had 77 divisions in France, a high proportion armoured, which he estimated should be twice as many men as the forces which the Allies could hope to ship across the Channel; he ignored the fact that these divisions were half-strength, and often composed of poor-quality troops. He chose two of his most trusted commanders to cope with whatever crisis might arise, Field Marshals von Rundstedt and Rommel. Even if the ‘Atlantic Wall’ was inadequate, there seemed to be an excellent chance of panzers speedily driving any Allied invasion back into the sea. Rundstedt wanted to evacuate France south of the Loire and bring all German troops there up to the north-west, so that if necessary he could launch a massive counter-attack. Hitler would not listen to such defeatist talk, since Vichy France was an essential part of his European empire. Nor would he let Rundstedt move a single armoured division without his express permission. As it was, Rundstedt never foresaw the enormous air superiority of the Allies. Like the Führer, Rommel was inclined to expect an attack on Normandy, though he thought it would be limited to an area around the port of Cherbourg to facilitate troop landing; he did not guess at the existence of the newly invented ‘Mulberries’, artificial harbours which could be moored at any point along the coast. He was confident that he could rout any invasion on the very first day.
In the event, when the invasion came on D-Day (6 June 1944) Rundstedt was not informed for many hours, while Rommel was absent visiting Hitler at Berchtesgaden. Most of the panzer divisions were the other side of the Seine. Nevertheless, troops on the spot fought magnificently, if without much co-ordination, and the Allies had great difficulty in pushing a bridgehead sufficiently far inland – a bridgehead strong enough to contain depots with food and ammunition which were out of range of German guns. They succeeded because the defenders had divided their forces to deal with both Normandy and Calais. Within a week they had built a bridgehead sixty miles wide and twelve deep. After another six weeks of savage fighting the German front collapsed, trapping 45,000 troops in the Falaise pocket. By the time Paris fell on 24 August German losses in France stood at 400,000. On 1 July, in response to Field Marshal Keitel’s agonized question, ‘What are we going to do? What are we going to do?’ Rundstedt had replied simply, ‘Make peace, you fools. What else can you do?’ He was removed from his post the following day. Horrified by the casualty reports, Rommel too had warned Hitler – ‘the unequal struggle is drawing to its end!’ Rommel himself was badly wounded in an attack by British aircraft on 17 July, retiring to a convalescence from which he never returned. (He was ordered to commit suicide for his suspected complicity in the July plot.)
Everywhere there was bad news, and it was now obvious to all but the most uninformed that Germany had lost the war. The Russians were advancing inexorably, in Italy Kesselring was steadily giving ground despite a brilliant campaign, and in the Pacific the Americans were moving ever closer to Japan. At last the muttering among certain circles in the Wehrmacht, among the higher nobility and among those with strong religious convictions was to receive concrete expression. Such opposition, which had existed in the army from 1938, had been ignored at first by the Führer because he was confident that he had established complete domination over the generals. Even though the Gestapo had known of potentially serious disaffection since as early as 1943, Hitler had not given it any attention.
The Führer failed to take into account the growing fear of the German people at the retribution in store for them. In his haunting poem of 1943, Abendländische Elegie, Hans Carossa voiced the terror they were beginning to feel. ‘Wird Abend über uns, o Abendland?’ – ‘what strange evening hangs over us, o western land?… people stand around sick at heart amid the turmoil.’ (Spengler’s prophecies of the fate of the Abendland now seemed only too convincing.) Admittedly the poet ended on a note of hope – ‘but from the ruins a day of blessings will emerge in which we shall no longer have to hide from the light’. However, some Germans were not prepared to wait for a day of blessings to emerge from the ruins.
On 20 July Colonel Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, a Catholic nobleman from Württemberg with only one eye, one arm and two fingers, placed a briefcase containing a small time-bomb beneath Hitler’s conference table at Rastenberg in East Prussia. It exploded, but after the case had been moved. Under the impression that the Führer had been killed, Stauffenberg flew to Berlin to direct a coup which would, so it was hoped, install a conservative government under a regency for the Hohenzollerns, and that this would make peace with the Allies (on ridiculously over-optimistic terms). However, the coup was badly organized, and although Hitler suffered burns and a burst eardrum – he never regained his sense of balance – he survived. Despite some initial confusion in the capital, he quickly reasserted his authority.
The devilish nature of a tyrant was soon much in evidence. He had thousands of suspects arrested, especially among the nobility he so detested, and tried before ‘People’s Courts.’ (This hatred and such names were the last vestiges of the Nazis’ original socialism.) Many were condemned to death, to be hanged from meat-hooks with piano-wire. The Führer demanded, ‘I want them strung up like slaughtered meat.’ Their last moments were filmed so that he could watch them. Henceforward he would never again trust any non-Nazi officer, save for Rundstedt and one or two others, while his hatred of the German and Austrian nobility verged on mania. There was no longer any possibility of the Wehrmacht’s generals staging a coup of the type which overthrew Napoleon at Fontainebleau in 1814. Hitler had become in truth ‘the fate of Germany’.
Miraculously, the German front in the West was re-established. Immediately after the attempted coup of 20 July a message of loyalty had reached the Führer from one of his favourite soldiers. This was the 53-year-old Field Marshal Walter Model, the youngest to hold the rank in the Wehrmacht. A man of lower middle class origins and devoutly Nazi convictions, he had made his name on the Russian front as a ruthless master of defence who in a crisis could find troops from nowhere and then work miracles. He took over command in the West from Field Marshal von Kluge (who had committed suicide in despair) on 16 August 1944. Within a very few weeks he turned the German rout into as slow a retreat as was possible, taking advantage of the Allies’ over-extended and often chaotic supply lines, and reducing the Allied offensive to one of attrition.
The Allies reached the German frontier on 12 September. The British tanks roared unexpectedly into Antwerp, whose port soon became a most valuable source of supplies for the Allies. But Model had strengthened German defences all along the front. A British attempt to get behind it, by dropping paratroops on Arnhem in southern Holland, ended in tragic failure at the end of the month. The Allies were further delayed by having to mop up pockets of German troops who fought with grim determination, while a general assault by all the Allied armies in November rapidly ground to a halt. The line of the Rhine remained unbroken, thanks to the efforts of Field Marshal Model.
Meanwhile in the East the situation was going from bad to worse. Contrary to expectations, the Russians had continued campaigning – and advancing – throughout the winter of 1943-4 and into the following spring. By May 1944 they had driven the Germans out of the Soviet Union. Their new summer offensive began a week after D-Day, and they were soon on the Vistula, threatening East Prussia. In August Finland sued for peace. There were coups d’état in Bulgaria and Romania, both going over to the side of the Soviet Union. Poland was invaded and Warsaw rose while Greece and Yugoslavia had to be evacuated. Many good troops were cut off in the Baltic states, no less than 26 desperately needed divisions, where they were to remain until the end of the war. The saviour of the Russian front, another convinced Nazi from the same lower middle class background as Model and a great favourite of Hitler, was Colonel-General Felix Schöner. He worked wonders in stabilizing a front which ran from the Gulf of Finland to East Prussia. He had much the same harsh ruthlessness and brutal drive as Model, sending many soldiers before the firing squad. Not only did he possess abundant energy and determination, but as one of the out-and-out Nazi generals he was a superb tool for the Führer, carrying out his orders to the letter.
Even so, by the end of 1944 Hitler still retained control of not only a large area of the Baltic States but of the entire heartland of Mittel-Europa. Western Poland, the Czech territories, Hungary and northern Yugoslavia all remained under his control.
But like Napoleon the Führer simply did not have enough troops left to defend his territories. The production of munitions was in chaos, although Speer worked miracles. If the Luftwaffe still received excellent new aircraft, there was rarely enough petrol to fly them. German cities were systematically flattened by the British and American air forces. Railways were disrupted, factories and oil plants obliterated – by September 1944 the latter’s production had dropped to 10,000 tons of aviation spirit a month when the Luftwaffe needed 160,000. Meanwhile thousands of civilians died every night beneath an unceasing hail of bombs. Nevertheless, Hitler’s will to win was unshaken, as was that of the German people as a whole – the bombing united them rather than cowed them, as it had the British during the Blitz of 1940. Above all, the Allies’ policy of unconditional surrender made them go on fighting without any hope of victory.
Yet. according to Albert Speer, ‘the more inexorably events moved towards catastrophe, the more inflexible he [Hitler] became, the more rigidly convinced that everything he decided on was right’. Speer also believed that the Führer was the only German leader who had no illusions about the Allies’ insistence on Germany’s unconditional surrender. Jodl stated in May 1945 that it had been obvious to Hitler and to himself that ‘victory could no longer be achieved’ as early as the winter of 1941-2, when the German advance ground to a halt before the gates of Moscow. General Halder told Milton Schulman that in June 1942 he had acquired accurate information about the Russian armaments industry and the enormous pool of manpower on which the country could call. These were infinitely more formidable than the Germans had hitherto appreciated. Halder informed the Führer, no doubt with gloomy satisfaction, ‘When I presented him with the figures of Russian tank production he went off the deep end. He was no longer a rational human being. I don’t know whether he didn’t want to understand or whether he didn’t believe it. In any event, it was quite impossible to discuss such matters with him. He would foam at the mouth, threaten me with his fists and scream at the top of his lungs.’ Admittedly, Hitler is known to have found the sour-faced Halder infuriating at the best of times, calling him ‘a chronic know-all’, and even during the triumphant campaign in France had subjected him to ‘rages and screams’. Nevertheless, one suspects that he understood only too well, that Halder was merely confirming what he had already guessed. But he could not bring himself to deny his preordained role as the Wagnerian warlord who was going to lead his people to victory.
Despite their agreement with the West to accept nothing but unconditional surrender, during late 1943 the Russians had discreetly investigated the possibility of peace with Germany. In September a Russian diplomat approached German circles in Stockholm, and exploratory discussions took place. A possible agreement might have included German withdrawal from Russia to the frontier of June 1943, with such sweeteners as allowing the Russians to overrun Turkey and Persia. Stalin must have been seriously interested, since his agents would never have dared to act without approval and Ribbentrop was enthusiastic. The Führer would not consider it, to judge from a seemingly self-mocking remark to Ribbentrop: ‘If I made an agreement with Russia to day, I would break it tomorrow. I just couldn’t help it.’ Perhaps this was a joke, in tune with Speer’s anecdote about Ribbentrop’s colleagues wished to present him with a jewelled casket containing copies of his treaties; they then realized that these treaties had nearly all been broken – Hitler’s eyes ‘filled with tears of laughter’ when he heard the story. Yet we know that Goebbels was so anxious for peace with the Soviet Union that early in 1944 he presented him with a 40-page memorandum urging him to negotiate with Stalin. Hitler never read it, and refused to listen. He had already rejected Goebbels’s advice in the autumn of 1943 to sound out Churchill, since ‘we simply have to get out of a two-front war’.
The real reason why Napoleon would never even contemplate any form of peace is that he believed that surrendering territory would weaken his authority over his people, diminishing that absolute power which he loved above all else. He was a gambler on a gigantic scale. When he had lost his empire he still hoped to keep his country for himself, either by a single brilliant feat of arms or through some political miracle. The sufferings of his people, let alone those of conquered races, did not enter his mind.
Exactly the same considerations explain the Führer’s behaviour in similar circumstances. He too was an absolutist, whose stakes were all or nothing, tortured by his obscene love of power. And he too lacked any compassion whatever for his fellow-men, to an even more terrible degree.
The bloody solution of the crisis, the effort for the destruction of the enemy’s forces, is the first-born son of war.’
Clausewitz, Vom Kriege
When Etzel [Attila] sent his fiddlers to the Rhine, the news flew from land to land. By means of swift messengers he invited guests to his high tide. There many met their death.
Nibelungenlied