Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis (Allen Lane History)

by Ian Kershaw

  Economic, military, strategic, and ideological motives were not separable in Hitler’s thinking on the Soviet Union. They blended together, and were used by him with different strength at different times in persuading those in his company of the correctness and inevitability of his course of action. The cement holding them in place was, as it had been for nearly two decades, doubtless the imperative to destroy once and for all ‘Jewish Bolshevism’ – an aim which would at the same time provide the necessary security in ‘living-space’ and give Germany political and military dominance over the continent of Europe. But it was not until March 1941 that Hitler began to emphasize the overriding ideological objective of ‘Operation Barbarossa’. For Heydrich and Himmler, the chance to push for such an objective had already been recognized by that time.5

  In the event, Hitler’s attempt to avoid being pinioned in a strait-jacket through retaining the strategic initiative – the gamble of ‘Operation Barbarossa’ – would lead, by the end of 1941, as the German war effort met with setback and crisis, the war in the East dragged on into the infinite future, and the Americans finally entered the arena, to precisely the vice setting around Germany that Hitler had wanted to avoid. A way out would now be difficult, if not impossible. The chips were down. And, by that time, the death camps were commencing operations. Victory or total destruction were emerging as the only options left. Hitler’s ‘all-or-nothing’ mentality had enveloped the German state and shaped the alternatives for its future. But by the end of 1941, though military fortune would fluctuate in a war that still had long to run, the odds would already be stacked in favour of destruction, not victory.

  I

  Between January and March 1941 the operational plans for ‘Barbarossa’ were put in place and approved by Hitler. Despite his show of confidence, he was inwardly less certain. On the very day that the directive for the attack on the Soviet Union was issued to the commanders-in-chief of the Wehrmacht, 18 December 1940, Major Engel had told Brauchitsch (who was still unclear whether Hitler was bluffing about invading the USSR) that the Führer was unsure how things would go. He was distrustful of his own military leaders, uncertain about the strength of the Russians, and disappointed in the intransigence of the British.6 Hitler’s lack of confidence in the operational planning of the army leadership was not fully assuaged in the first months of 1941. His intervention in the planning stage brought early friction with Halder, and led by mid-March to amendments of some significance in the detailed directives for the invasion.7

  Already by the beginning of February, Hitler had been made aware of doubts – at any rate a mood less than enthusiastic – among some of the army leaders about the prospects of success in the coming campaign. General Thomas had presented to the Army High Command a devastating overview of deficiencies in supplies.8 Halder had noted in his diary on 28 January the gist of his discussion with Brauchitsch early that afternoon about ‘Barbarossa’: ‘The “purpose” (‘Sinn’) is not clear. We do not hit the English that way. Our economic potential will not be substantially improved. Risk in the west must not be underestimated. It is possible that Italy might collapse after the loss of her colonies, and we get a southern front in Spain, Italy, and Greece. If we are then tied up in Russia, a bad situation will be made worse.’9 Misgivings were voiced by the three army group commanders, Field-Marshals von Leeb, von Bock, and von Rundstedt, when they lunched with Brauchitsch and Halder on 31 January.10 Brauchitsch, as usual, was reluctant to voice any concern to Hitler. Bock, however, tentatively did so on 1 February. He thought the German army ‘would defeat the Russians if they stood and fought’. But he doubted whether it would be possible to force them to accept peace-terms. Hitler was dismissive. The loss of Leningrad, Moscow, and the Ukraine would compel the Russians to give up the fight. If not, the Germans would press on beyond Moscow to Ekaterinburg. War production, Hitler went on, was equal to any demands. There was an abundance of material. The economy was thriving. The armed forces had more manpower than was available at the start of the war. Bock did not feel it even worth suggesting that it was still possible to back away from the conflict. ‘I will fight,’ Hitler stated. ‘I am convinced that our attack will sweep over them like a hailstorm.’11

  Halder pulled his punches at a conference with Hitler on 3 February. He brought up supply difficulties, but pointed to methods by which they could be overcome, and played down the risks that he had been emphasizing only days earlier. The army leaders accepted Hitler’s emphasis on giving priority to the capture of Leningrad and the Baltic coast over Moscow. But they neglected to work out in sufficient detail the consequences of such a strategy.12 Hitler was informed of the numerical superiority of the Russian troops and tanks. But he thought little of their quality. Everything depended upon rapid victories in the first days, and the securing of the Baltic and the southern flank as far as Rostov. Moscow, as he had repeatedly stressed, could wait. According to Below, Brauchitsch and Halder ‘accepted Hitler’s directives to wage war against Russia without a single word of objection or opposition’.13

  In the days that followed the meeting, General Thomas produced further bleak prognoses of the economic situation. Fuel for vehicles sufficed for two months, aircraft fuel till autumn, rubber production until the end of March. Thomas asked Keitel to pass on his report to Hitler. Keitel told him that the Führer would not permit himself to be influenced by economic difficulties. Probably, the report never even reached Hitler. In any case, if Thomas was trying through presentation of dire economic realities to deter Hitler, his method was guaranteed to backfire. A further report demonstrated that if quick victories were attained, and the Caucasus oilfields acquired, Germany could gain 75 per cent of the materials feeding the Soviet war industry. Such a prognosis could only serve as encouragement to Hitler and to other Nazi leaders.14

  Hitler remained worried about a number of aspects of the OKH’s planning. He was concerned that the army leadership was underestimating the dangers from Soviet strikes at the German flanks from the Pripet Marsh, and called in February for a detailed study to allow him to draw his own conclusions.15 In mid-March, he contradicted the General Staff’s conclusions, asserting – rightly, as things turned out – that the Pripet Marsh was no hindrance to army movement. He also thought the existing plan would leave the German forces overstretched, and too dependent upon what he regarded as the dubious strength of the Romanian, Hungarian, and Slovak divisions – the last of these dismissed merely on the grounds that they were Slavs – on the southern front. He ordered, therefore, the alteration from a two-pronged advance of Army Group South to a single thrust towards Kiev and down the Dnieper. Finally, he repeated his insistence that the crucial objective had to be to secure Leningrad and the Baltic, not push on to Moscow which, at a meeting with his military leaders on 17 March, he declared was ‘completely immaterial’ (‘Moskau völlig gleichgültig!’).16 At this conference, these alterations to the original operational plan were accepted by Brauchitsch and Halder without demur.17 With that, the military framework for the invasion was in all its essentials finalized.

  II

  While the preparations for the great offensive were taking shape, however, Hitler was preoccupied with the dangerous situation that Mussolini’s ill-conceived invasion of Greece the previous October had produced in the Balkans, and with remedying the consequence of Italian military incompetence in North Africa.

  He did everything possible to avoid discomfiting Mussolini when the Italian dictator, embarrassed by the military setbacks in Albania and North Africa (where greatly outnumbered British troops had early in the month captured the Italian stronghold of Bardia), arrived at a small railway station near Salzburg, on 19 January for two days of talks at the Berghof.

  Hitler and his military leaders were waiting on the platform in the snow.18 The talks began without delay. There was no hint of a mention of Italian military reversals. Discussion focused mainly on the Balkans, and on a renewed attempt, through personal persuasion by the Duce, to bring about Sp
anish intervention in the war and agreement to a German assault on Gibraltar.19 Reporting to Ciano on his private talks, Mussolini said ‘he found a very anti-Russian Hitler, loyal to us, and not too definite on what he intends to do in the future against Great Britain’. A landing was ruled out. The difficulty of such an operation contained an unacceptable risk of failure, after which Britain ‘would know that Germany holds only an empty pistol’.20

  On the afternoon of 20 January, Hitler spoke for about two hours in the presence of military experts on the approaching German intervention in Greece. ‘He dealt with the question primarily from a technical point of view,’ Ciano recorded, ‘relating it to the general political situation. I must admit that he does this with unusual mastery. Our military experts are impressed.’21 Though the ‘very anti-Russian Hitler’ that Mussolini saw pointed to the future dangers from the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death, when the Jews, at present pushed out of the leadership, could take over again, and when Russian air-power could destroy the Romanian oil-fields, he gave not the slightest inkling that at that very time he was preparing to attack in the East.22 As usual, the Italians would be kept in the dark until the last minute.

  Mussolini returned from the talks ‘elated’ (as Ciano remarked) ‘as he always is after a meeting with Hitler’.23 It was as well the Duce left when he did. Had he stayed two days longer his growing sense of inferiority towards his senior Axis partner would have been sharpened still further by the disastrous news for his Fascist regime that now Tobruk had fallen to the British.24

  Popular contempt in Germany for the Italian war effort was matched by the growing disdain of the Nazi leaders for their Fascist counterparts.25 ‘Mussolini has lost a great deal of prestige,’ remarked Goebbels towards the end of January 1941, seeing the Duce’s position weakened through the military debacle in North Africa.26 Whatever the doubts, and his own criticisms of the Italians, Hitler had no option but to stick with his Axis partner.27

  In all, during the calamitous month of January the fighting in Libya had seen some 130,000 Italians captured by the British.28 The likelihood of a complete rout for the Italians in North Africa had to be faced. By 6 February, Hitler was briefing the general he had selected to stop the British advance and hold Tripolitania for the Axis.29 This was Erwin Rommel, who, with a combination of tactical brilliance and bluff, would throughout the second half of 1941 and most of 1942 turn the tables on the British and keep them at bay in North Africa.

  Hitler’s hopes of a vital strategic gain in the Mediterranean – notably affecting the situation in North Africa – by the acquisition of Gibraltar were, however, to be dashed again by the obstinacy of General Franco. Already at the end of January, Hitler had been informed by Jodl that ‘Operation Felix’ – the planned assault on Gibraltar – would have to be shelved, since the earliest it could now take place would be in mid-April. The troops and weapons would by then be needed for ‘Barbarossa’, at that time scheduled for a possible start only a month later.30 Hitler still hoped that Mussolini, at his meeting on 12 February with Franco, might persuade the Caudillo to enter the war. The day before the meeting, Hitler sent Franco a personal letter, exhorting him to join forces with the Axis powers and to recognize ‘that in such difficult times not so much wise foresight as a bold heart can rescue the nations’.31 Franco was unimpressed. He repeated Spanish demands on Morocco, as well as Gibraltar. And he put forward in addition, as a price for Spain’s entering the war at some indeterminate date, such extortionate demands for grain supplies – saying the 100,000 tons already promised by the Germans were sufficient for only twenty days – that there was no possibility they would be met.32 Spain, as before, had to be left out of the equation.

  III

  Hitler confirmed the ‘dreadful conditions’ in Spain which Goebbels reported to him the day after his big speech in the Sportpalast on 30 January 1941, to mark the eighth anniversary of his appointment as Chancellor.33 The Propaganda Minister found Hitler in high spirits, confident that Germany held the strategic initiative, convinced of victory, revitalized as always by the wild enthusiasm – like a drug to him – of the vast crowd of raucous admirers packed into the Sportpalast. ‘I’ve seldom seen him like this in recent times,’ Goebbels remarked.34 ‘The Führer always impresses me afresh,’ he added. ‘He is a true Leader, an inexhaustible giver of strength.’35

  In his speech, Hitler had concentrated almost exclusively on attacking Britain. He did not devote a single syllable to Russia; nor did he mention the Soviet Union again in any public speech before 22 June 1941, the day of the invasion.36 When speaking to Goebbels the following day, however, Hitler did refer to a report on Russia compiled on the basis of seven years’ experience of the country by the son of the former prominent KPD member Ernst Torgler. ‘Horrible!’ commented Goebbels (presumably echoing Hitler’s sentiments in recording the gist of their conversation). ‘Everything confirmed what we suspected, believed, and also said.’ Goebbels reinforced such impressions on the basis of a report on the situation in Moscow which he himself had received from a leading figure in his Ministry.37

  One other aspect of Hitler’s speech on 30 January was noteworthy. For the first time since the beginning of the war, he reiterated his threat ‘that, if the rest of the world should be plunged into a general war through Jewry, the whole of Jewry will have played out its role in Europe!’ ‘They can still laugh today about it,’ he added, menacingly, ‘just like they used to laugh at my prophecies. The coming months and years will prove that here, too, I’ve seen things correctly.’38 Hitler had made this threat, in similar tones, in his Reichstag speech of 30 January 1939. In repeating it now, he claimed to recall making his ‘prophecy’ in his speech to the Reichstag at the outbreak of war. But, in fact, he had not mentioned the Jews in his Reichstag speech on 1 September, the day of the invasion of Poland. He would make the same mistake in dating on several other occasions in the following two years.39 It was an indication, subconscious or more probably intentional, that he directly associated the war with the destruction of the Jews.

  Why did he repeat the threat at this juncture? There was no obvious contextual need for it. He had referred earlier in the speech to ‘a certain Jewish-international capitalist clique’, but otherwise had not played the antisemitic tune.40 Probably the repeated ‘prophecy’ as intended, as was the original in January 1939, as a threat to what Hitler always regarded as a Jewish-run ‘plutocracy’ in Britain and the USA. It was a repeat of the blackmail ploy that he held the Jews in his power as hostages.

  But within the few weeks immediately prior to his speech, Hitler had had the fate of the Jews on his mind, commissioning Heydrich at this point with the task of developing a new plan, replacing the defunct Madagascar scheme, to deport the Jews from the German sphere of domination.41 His repeated ‘prophecy’ was presumably a veiled hint at such an intention, vague though any plan still was at this stage.

  Perhaps Hitler had harboured his ‘prophecy’ in the recesses of his mind since he had originally made it. Perhaps one of his underlings had reminded him of it. But, most probably, it was the inclusion of the extract from his speech in the propaganda film Der ewige Jude, which had gone on public release in November 1940, that had stirred Hitler’s memory of his earlier comment.42 Whatever had done so, the repeat of the ‘prophecy’ at this point was ominous. Though he was uncertain precisely how the war would bring about the destruction of European Jewry, he was sure that this would be the outcome. And this was only a matter of months before the war against the arch-enemy of ‘Jewish-Bolshevism’ was to be launched. The idea of the war to destroy the Jews once and for all was beginning to take concrete shape in Hitler’s mind.

  According to the account – post-war recollections, resting partly on earlier, lost notes in diary form – of his army adjutant Gerhard Engel, Hitler discussed the ‘Jewish Question’ soon after his speech, on 2 February, with a group of his intimates.43 Keitel, Bormann, Ley, Speer, and Ribbentrop’s right-hand man and liaison officer Wa
lther Hewel were present. Ley brought up the topic of the Jews. This was the trigger for Hitler to expound at length on his thoughts. He envisaged the war accelerating a solution. But it also created additional difficulties. Originally, it had lain within his reach ‘to break the Jewish power at most in Germany’. He had thought at one time, he said, with the assistance of the British of deporting the half a million German Jews to Palestine or Egypt. But that idea had been blocked by diplomatic objections. Now it had to be the aim ‘to exclude Jewish influence in the entire area of power of the Axis’. In some countries, like Poland and Slovakia, the Germans themselves could bring that about. In France, it had become more complicated following the armistice, and was especially important there. He spoke of approaching France and demanding the island of Madagascar to accommodate Jewish resettlement. When an evidently incredulous Bormann – aware, no doubt, that the Madagascar Plan had by now been long since shelved by the Foreign Ministry and, more importantly, by the Reich Security Head Office – asked how this could be done during the war, Hitler replied vaguely that he would like to make the whole ‘Strength through Joy’ fleet available for the task, but feared its exposure to enemy submarines. Then, in somewhat contradictory fashion, he added: ‘He was now thinking about something else, not exactly more friendly.’44