Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis (Allen Lane History)
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A characteristic technique that Hitler had of couching his arguments was invariably to pose stark alternatives, one of which he promptly dismissed out of hand or ridiculed. The fait accompli, resting on force deriving from underlying strength, was the only bargaining position he recognized. Concession, compromise, retreat were to his mind inconceivable. If the way back was ruled out, only the bold forward move remained. It was how he had acted since his ultimatum demanding the Party leadership in 1921, and his foolhardy launching of the putsch in 1923. By 1940, given the ways in which in particular the army and the Foreign Ministry, over the course of the previous years and especially since early 1938, had allowed themselves to be manoeuvred into near total dependency on Hitler, this way of thinking had drawn inexorably into its slipstream all the agencies of a complex, modern state system. Aided by a good deal of enthusiastic backing and the ineffectiveness of limited, often weak-kneed, resistance, Hitler had brought his own subjective philosophy – that the only way out was through the bold strike, and without delay since time was working against Germany – into near alignment with objective circumstances.
But these circumstances, the conditions in which the crucial decisions of 1940–41 would be taken, had not been shaped by Hitler alone. He had placed the Reich in a quandary. The war could not be ended. That was now a decision out of Germany’s control, unless Britain could be forced to the conference table or militarily defeated. But neither militarily, as the chiefs of the armed forces made plain, nor economically, as every indicator demonstrated, was Germany equipped at this stage to fight the long war with which, it was known, the British were already reckoning.2 The Wehrmacht had entered into hostilities in autumn 1939 with no well-laid plans for a major war, and no strategy at all for an offensive in the West. Nothing at all had been clearly thought through.3 The Luftwaffe was the best equipped of the three branches of the armed forces. But even here, the armaments programme had been targeted at 1942, not 1939.4 The navy’s operational planning was based upon a fleet that could not be ready before 1943.5 In fact, the 1939 Z-Plan – halted at the start of the war – would leave Germany with severe limitations at sea until 1946. And within the confines of that plan, the building of U-boats necessary for an economic blockade of Britain was deliberately neglected by Hitler in favour of the interests of the army. However, the army itself lacked even sufficient munitions following the brief Polish campaign (in which some 50 per cent of the tanks and motorized units deployed were no longer serviceable) to contemplate an immediate continuation of the war in the West.6
The war could have been over had the French government been bold enough to send at least the forty divisions it had promised the Poles into action against the far smaller German forces left guarding the western front in September 1939.7 At the outbreak of war the Germans could spare only thirty-two divisions for the western front. The French had at the time ninety-one divisions, though it was reckoned that it would take ten days to mobilize fifty of these divisions.8 By the end of the Polish campaign it was in any case too late. As it was, the breathing-space that the German army gained during the repeated postponements of the western offensive, much to Hitler’s chagrin, in the winter of 1939–40 was crucial in allowing the time and opportunity to put the army in a state of readiness to attack France.9
Hitler had to gamble everything on the defeat of France. If Britain could be kept from gaining a foothold on the Continent until this were achieved, Hitler was certain that the British would have to sue for peace. Getting Britain out of the war through isolation after a German defeat of France was Hitler’s only overall war-strategy as the abnormally icy winter of 1940 gradually gave way to spring.10 Ranged against Germany at some point, Hitler was aware, would be the might of the USA. Currently dominated by isolationism, and likely to be preoccupied by the forthcoming presidential elections in the autumn, its early involvement in a European conflict could be discounted. But as long as Britain stayed in the war, the participation – at the very least by benevolent neutrality – of the USA, with its immense economic power, could not be ruled out. And that was a factor that was out of Germany’s reach. It was all the more reason, objectively as well as simply in Hitler’s manic obsession with time, to eliminate Britain from the war without delay.11
The East was at this point at the back of Hitler’s mind – though not out of it. Mussolini had written to Hitler at the beginning of January, exhorting him not to relinquish his long-standing principles of anti-Bolshevism (and antisemitism) for tactical purposes.12 In his reply, sent over two months later, Hitler claimed, somewhat disingenuously, that Stalin had transformed Bolshevism into ‘a Russian-national state ideology and economic idea’, which Germany had no interest in combating.13 Privately, he was saying something different. Bolshevism, he commented over lunch on 12 January, was the form of ‘state organization’ that matched the Slavs. He likened Stalin to a modern Ivan the Terrible, who had done away with the traditional ruling class and replaced it with Slavs. That was good for Germany. ‘Rather a weak partner as neighbour than an alliance treaty, however good,’ he cynically added.14 In his memorandum the previous October he had already remarked that Soviet neutrality could be reckoned with at present, but that no treaty or agreement could guarantee it in the future. ‘In eight months, a year, let alone a few years this could all be different,’ he had said.15 ‘If all treaties concluded were held to,’ he told Goebbels, ‘mankind would no longer exist today.’16 Hitler presumed that the Russians would break the non-aggression pact when it suited them to do so. For the time being they were militarily weak – a condition enhanced by Stalin’s inexplicable purges; they were preoccupied with their own affairs in the Baltic, especially the troublesome Finnish war; and they posed, therefore, no danger from the East. They could be dealt with at a later stage. Their current disposition provided still further evidence for Hitler that his attack on the West, and the elimination of Britain from the war, could not wait.
There was a certain logic in the presumption that, following a defeat of France and the offer of ‘reasonable’ terms, Britain would bow to the inevitable in its own self-interest. There continued to be strong lobbies in Britain that thought along those lines. There was nothing inexorable about Britain’s decision to ‘go it alone’ in the summer of 1940. But that decision, when it came, would vitiate the one strategy Hitler had. In his assumption that immediate self-interest was the only maxim of war and peace, he crassly underestimated the resilience and idealism that had arisen in Britain following the march into Prague in 1939 and which, in summer 1940, the new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was able to evoke among the British people. The ‘duel’ between Hitler and his arch-enemy Churchill would dominate the summer. Its outcome would in many ways determine the further course of the war.17
Hitler was in 1940–41 at the zenith of his power. But despite his spectacular triumph over France, he could not bring the war in the West to the conclusion he wanted. His inability to do this would shape the rest of the war. The decision to open the war in the East with the war in the West unfinished would take away from Germany what room for manoeuvre remained. And by the winter of 1941 it would become plain just how catastrophic that decision had been.18
I
It became clear in early 1940 that, before the western offensive could be launched, it was imperative to secure control over Scandinavia and the northern sea passages. A key consideration was the safeguarding of supplies of Swedish iron-ore, vital for the German war-economy, which were mainly shipped through the port of Narvik in the north of Norway. Hitler had acknowledged to Raeder as early as 1934 how essential it would be for the navy to guarantee the iron-ore imports in the event of war.19 But he had shown no actual strategic interest in Scandinavia until the first months of 1940. Alongside the need to secure the supplies of ore went, in Hitler’s mind, the aim of keeping Britain off the European continent.20 The navy itself had developed no operational plans for Scandinavia before the outbreak of war. But as the prospect of war with Britain
began to take concrete shape in the later 1930s, naval planners started to weigh up the need for bases on the Norwegian coast.21
Once war had started, the navy leadership, not Hitler, took the initiative in pressing for the occupation of Denmark and Norway. In October, and again in early December 1939, Raeder, elevated the previous April to the rank of Grand-Admiral, stressed to Hitler the importance to the war-economy of occupying Norway. Eventually, after introducing him to Norwegian nationalist leader Vidkun Quisling on 12 December, Raeder persuaded Hitler to agree to an exploratory study by the High Command of the Wehrmacht for the occupation of Norway. Increasingly worried by the possibility of being pre-empted by British occupation (under the pretext of assisting the Finns in the war against the Soviet Union), Raeder continued to lobby Hitler for early action. In January, he instructed the naval leadership to prepare an operational plan. Hitler became seriously alerted to the danger of Allied intervention in Norway after the Altmark, carrying around 300 Allied merchant seamen captured in the south Atlantic, had been raided on 16 February in Norwegian waters by a boarding-party from the British destroyer Cossack, and the prisoners freed.22 Now the matter became urgent for him. Five days later he sent for General von Falkenhorst, known to have experience of Finland from the First World War. This sufficed for Hitler to put him in charge of the preparations for ‘Weser Exercise’. To retain maximum secrecy, Falkenhorst was initially given no documents or maps to help him plan the operation. Instead, he bought himself a Baedecker of Norway, retired to a hotel room, and returned in the afternoon with proposals that Hitler accepted.23 Rumours, passed on by the German embassy in Stockholm, of a major British action in the near future, made plain that there was no time to lose. On 1 March Hitler put out the directive for ‘Weserübung’ (‘Weser Exercise’).24 Two days later, he underlined the urgency of action in Norway. He wanted an acceleration of preparations, and ordered ‘Weser Exercise’ to be carried out a few days before the western offensive.25 As fears of a British occupation mounted throughout March, Raeder finally persuaded Hitler, towards the end of the month, to agree to set a precise date for the operation. When he spoke to his commanders on 1 April, Hitler closely followed Raeder’s lines of argument. The next day, the date for the operation was fixed as 9 April.26 Within forty-eight hours it was learnt that British action was imminent. On 8 April British warships mined the waters around Narvik.27 The race for Norway was on.28
The Allied mine-laying gave Germany the pretext it had been waiting for. Hitler called Goebbels, and explained to him what was afoot while they walked alone in the grounds of the Reich Chancellery in the lovely spring sunshine. Everything was prepared. No worthwhile resistance was to be expected. He was uninterested in America’s reaction. Material assistance from the USA would not be forthcoming for eight months or so, manpower not for about one and a half years. ‘And we must come to victory in this year. Otherwise the material supremacy of the opposing side would be too great. Also, a long war would be psychologically difficult to bear,’ Hitler conceded. He gave Goebbels an insight into his aims for the conquest of the north. ‘First we will keep quiet for a short time once we have both countries’ – Denmark and Norway – ‘and then England will be plastered (bepflasteri). Now we possess a basis for attack.’ He was prepared to leave the kings of Denmark and Norway untouched, as long as they did not create trouble. ‘But we will never again give up both countries.’29
Despite the warnings by the Swedes of a build-up of troops and ships in the Baltic, poised ready to take Scandinavia, the German strike took the British by surprise.30 Landings by air and sea took place in Denmark in the early morning of 9 April. A German warship entered Copenhagen harbour; the Danish navy had not even been put on the alert. The aerodrome at Aalborg in the north of Jutland fell to a parachute landing of German troops. The Danish army briefly opened fire in North Schleswig. But the Danes swiftly decided to offer no resistance. The Norwegian operation went less smoothly. Narvik and Trondheim were taken. But the sinking of the Blücher, by a single shell from an ancient coastal battery that landed in the ammunition hold of the new cruiser as it passed through the narrows near Oscarsborg, forced the accompanying ships to turn back and delayed the occupation of Oslo for the few hours that allowed the Norwegian royal family and government to leave the capital. Despite sturdy resistance by the Norwegians and relatively high naval losses at the hands of the British fleet, air superiority, following the swift capture of the airfields, rapidly helped provide the German forces with sufficient control to compel the evacuation of the British, French, and Polish troops who had landed in central Norway by the beginning of May. The Allies eventually took Narvik later in the month, after a protracted struggle, only to be pulled out again by Churchill in early June on account of the mounting danger to Britain from the German offensive in the West. The last Norwegian forces capitulated on the tenth.
‘Weser Exercise’ had proved a success. But it had been at a cost. Much of the surface-fleet of the German navy had been put out of action for the rest of 1940. Running the occupied parts of Scandinavia from now on sucked in on a more or less permanent basis around 300,000 men, many of them engaged in holding down a Norwegian population bitterly resentful at a German administration that was aided and abetted by Quisling’s movement.31 And there was a further consequence which would turn out to be to Germany’s disadvantage and have major significance for the British war-effort. Blame for the Allied fiasco in Norway was attributed by the British public not to Churchill, the minister directly responsible, but to the Prime Minister, Chamberlain. Indirectly, the British failure led to the end of the Chamberlain government and brought into power the person who would prove himself Hitler’s most defiant and unrelenting foe: Winston Churchill.32
The eventual success of ‘Weser Exercise’ concealed to all but the armed forces’ leadership Hitler’s serious deficiencies as a military commander. The lack of coordination between the branches of the armed forces; the flawed communications between the OK W and the heads of the navy and, especially, army and Luftwaffe (leading to the need for alterations to directives already signed and issued); Hitler’s own reluctance, in larger briefing meetings, to oppose either Raeder or Göring, though advocating a tough line in private; and his constant interference in the minutiae of operations control: all provided for serious complications in the execution of ‘Weser Exercise’.33 And for all his talk of keeping strong nerves, Hitler betrayed signs of panic and dilettante military judgement when things started to go wrong in Narvik in mid-April. Major-General Walter Warlimont, observing Hitler at close quarters in these days, later recounted ‘the impression of truly terrifying weakness of character on the part of the man who was at the head of the Reich’. Citing Jodl’s diary entries, he pointed to ‘a striking picture of agitation and lack of balance’. He recalled on one occasion having to see Jodl, whom Warlimont credited as largely responsible for the success of the operation, in the Reich Chancellery: ‘and there was Hitler hunched on a chair in a corner, unnoticed and staring in front of him, a picture of brooding gloom. He appeared to be waiting for some new piece of news which would save the situation…’34 On this occasion, the crisis soon passed. Hitler could bask in the glory of another triumph. But when the victories ran out, the flaws in his style of military leadership would prove a lasting weakness.
For now, however, he could turn his full energies to the long-awaited western offensive.
The repeated postponements of ‘Case Yellow’ (as the western offensive had come to be called), probably a reflection of Hitler’s own uncertainty as well as poor weather conditions and concerns about the transport situation, provided not just the opportunity to build up the army after the Polish campaign but also time to rethink operational plans.35 In Poland, Hitler had kept out of involvement in military operations. Now, in the preparation of the western offensive, he intervened directly for the first time.36 It set the pattern for the future. Already in the autumn he was uneasy about the directives coming from the Army High
Command. Some of the top commanders were equally unconvinced.37 The plans seemed too conventional. They were what the enemy would expect. Even after modifications they remained less than satisfactory.38 They envisaged the decisive thrust coming from the north, either side of Liège. Hitler wanted something more daring, something which would retain the crucial element of surprise. His own ideas were still embryonic. They favoured a main line of attack further south – though the Army High Command thought this too risky since it involved attacking across the difficult wooded terrain of the Ardennes, with obvious problems for tank operations. Hitler did not know for some weeks that similar ideas were being more thoroughly worked out by Lieutenant-General von Manstein, chief of staff of Army Group A. Manstein was among those generals concerned at the unimaginative strategy of the Army High Command. Discussions with Guderian, the general with greatest expertise in tank warfare, led him to conclude that the Ardennes posed no insuperable barrier to a Panzer thrust. General von Rundstedt, Manstein’s immediate superior, also supported the bolder plan. However, Manstein was unable to persuade Army High Command to adopt his plan. Brauchitsch was adamantly opposed to any alteration to the established strategy and not even prepared to discuss Manstein’s plan. Halder at least agreed to take all operational proposals into account in a series of war games. These eventually, by February, were to make him more amenable to the Manstein plan. In January, however, Brauchitsch still refused to take Manstein’s operational draft to Hitler, and had the persistent general moved to a new command post in Stettin. Hitler had, even so, been made aware of the basic lines of Manstein’s plan in the second half of December. The postponement until spring of ‘Yellow’ that followed in January then gave him the opportunity to state that he wanted to give the operation a new basis, and above all to ensure absolute secrecy and the element of surprise. His ‘Basic Order’ of 11 January, to be hung up in every military office, was framed in this context.39 Reflecting one of Hitler’s most prevalent instincts, the ‘Basic Order’ stated: ‘No one: no office, no officer may learn of something to be kept secret if they don’t absolutely have to have knowledge of it for official reasons’. They should also learn only as much as was necessary to carry out their tasks, and then no earlier than need be.40