Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis (Allen Lane History)

by Ian Kershaw

  The speech was intended to demonstrate the complete solidarity of people and leader, conveying Germany’s utter determination to carry on, and even intensify, the fight until victory was attained.2 But the solidarity, despite the impression temporarily left by Goebbels’s publicity spectacular, was by this time shrinking fast, the belief in Hitler among the mass of the population seriously undermined. What Goebbels did, in fact, was to solicit from his audience ‘a kind of plebiscitary “Ja” to self-destruction’3 in a war which Germany could by now neither win nor end through a negotiated peace.

  The dwindling hopes of victory had already turned, for those with any sense of realism, into the near certainty of ultimate defeat. Over the next months, the German people, the Nazi regime, and its Leader would become ever more beleaguered. Friends and allies would desert, territorial gains crumble, ever-intensifying air-raids lay waste German cities, the insurmountable Allied superiority of manpower and weaponry manifest itself ever more plainly, and indications at home begin to multiply that, whatever Goebbels’s rhetoric might suggest, loyalties towards the regime, and even towards Hitler personally, had become severely weakened. Nevertheless, the defiance and resolve evoked in Goebbels’s Sportpalast speech, shored up by new levels of draconian repression as support for the regime dwindled, helped to rule out any prospect of collapse on the home front. This in turn would drag out the demise of the regime for a further two years, ensuring that death and devastation were to be maximized during a prolonged backs-to-the-wall struggle against increasingly impossible odds.

  In the spirit he was attempting to evince through his Sportpalast speech, Goebbels was at one with Hitler. Goebbels’s advocacy of the need to instil the fanatical will to victory in the entire people and to mobilize the home front psychologically into accepting the most radical measures in an all-out struggle for the nation’s survival had met with Hitler’s approval on a number of occasions during the previous months. Whether, as he usually did, the Propaganda Minister had shown the text of his speech to Hitler in advance of the Sportpalast meeting is not altogether clear.4 Hitler was visiting his field headquarters in the Ukraine at the time of the speech. Communication with him, Goebbels remarked, was difficult but, he felt, in any case unnecessary since the main propaganda lines had already been established.5 Though he did not listen to the broadcast, Hitler immediately asked for the text to be sent to him and praised it shortly afterwards to Goebbels in glowing terms. There was, indeed, nothing in the speech to which Hitler might have taken exception.6

  However, Goebbels’s hopes that the speech would bring him Hitler’s authorization to concentrate the direction of ‘total war’ in his own hands were swiftly dashed. The Propaganda Minister had long pressed for practical measures to radicalize the war effort. His own approach concentrated, of course, predominantly on psychological mobilization. Others, prominent among them Speer and the Wehrmacht leadership, focused their attention more squarely on the manpower needs of the armed forces and armaments industry, and the problem of how to squeeze out remaining reserves of labour. What they understood by ‘total war’ included the deployment of still unused female labour in industrial production, which they knew their enemies had accomplished. Hitler, shored up by Göring, had, however, resisted imposing increased hardship and material sacrifice on the civilian population. He was conscious as ever of the collapse of morale on the home front during the First World War, certain that this had undermined the military effort and paved the way for revolution.7 His anxiety about the impact on morale of their men-folk at the front, coupled with his traditionalist views about the domestic role of women, had led him to oppose the conscription of female labour to work in the hard-pressed armaments industries.8 Nevertheless, during the Stalingrad crisis he had finally conceded the aim of the complete mobilization of all conceivable labour and resources of the home front, and some initial measures had been introduced.9

  Goebbels had, however, miscalculated. Direction of the ‘total war’ effort largely bypassed him. His ambitions to take control of the home front were ignored. The move to ‘total war’ extended far more widely than psychological mobilization, where he was an unrivalled master. ‘Behind the throne’, at the level below Hitler, the move unleashed new power games as his chieftains – prominent among them (besides Goebbels himself) Göring, Speer, Robert Ley (boss of the German Labour Front), Fritz Sauckel (Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment), and not least Bormann – jockeyed for position to occupy the new spheres of control that were opening up.10 Unable to adjudicate in any rational or systematic fashion in the inevitable conflicts arising from overlapping and sometimes contradictory spheres of competence, but careful as always to protect his own power, Hitler never allowed Goebbels the authority the latter craved on the home front. The ‘total war’ effort juddered on to partial successes in individual areas. But the absence of strong, consistent leadership from the top on the home front produced what Goebbels lamented as ‘a complete lack of direction in German domestic policy’.11 It axiomatically ruled out coherent, well-organized, and clearly coordinated planning – and with that any illusions that the Propaganda Minister might have had that he would be given a free hand in domestic affairs. When, eventually, Hitler did become prepared to appoint Goebbels ‘Plenipotentiary for Total War Deployment’, on 20 July 1944, it was very late in the day and, in any case, even then the powers granted were heavily circumscribed.12

  The results of Goebbels’s big speech, therefore, in terms of his own ambitions to take control of the ‘total war’ effort, were disappointing. For all its bombast, the Sportpalast spectacular had little lasting effect. Goebbels was soon to learn anew the lesson that, mighty though he was, he remained only one player in the power-games to try to secure the backing of Hitler’s unqualified authority. He would also rapidly realize again, in the aftermath of the speech, that although the dictator’s own authority was undiminished, his physical absence, preoccupation with military matters, and sporadic, semi-detached involvement in the day-to-day governance of the Reich meant that he was more than ever exposed to the influence of those in his presence – ‘the entire baggage of court-idiots and irresponsible agitators’13 – incapable of reconciling or overriding the competing interests of his feuding barons. Even had he been willing, therefore, he was completely unable to impose clear strands of authority to combat the already advanced signs of disintegration in government and administration.

  For Hitler, the months after Stalingrad intensified the familiar, ingrained character-traits. The façade of often absurd optimism remained largely intact, even among his inner circle. The show of indomitable will continued. The flights of fantasy, detached from reality, took on new dimensions. But the mask slipped from time to time in remarks revealing deep depression and fatalism. It was fleeting recognition of what he already inwardly acknowledged: he had lost the initiative for ever. The recognition invariably brought new torrents of rage, lashing any who might bear the brunt of the blame – most of all, as ever, his military leaders. They were all liars, disloyal, opposed to National Socialism, reactionaries, and lacking in any cultural appreciation, he ranted. He yearned to have nothing more to do with them.14 Ultimately, he would blame the German people themselves, whom he would see as too weak to survive and unworthy of him in the great struggle. As setback followed setback, so the beleaguered Führer resorted ever more readily to the search for ruthless revenge and retaliation, both on his external enemies – behind whom, as always, he saw the demonic figure of the Jew – and on any within who might dare to show defeatism, let alone ‘betray’ him. There were no personal influences that might have moderated his fundamental inhumanity. The man who had been idolized by millions was friendless – apart from (as he himself commented) Eva Braun and his dog, Blondi.15

  The war, and the hatreds Hitler had invested in it, consumed him ever more. The musical evenings had stopped after Stalingrad.16 He ate on his own a good deal of the time, to avoid having to converse with his generals. Outside the war and his
buildings mania, he could rouse little interest. He told Goebbels how he longed to be able to go to the theatre or see cinema again, to be among people as he used to be, to enjoy life once more when the war was ended.17 This was mere nostalgia in the midst of a war of which, though he failed to see it, he was the main author, and which had been at the centre of his thoughts for two decades. He was by now in many respects an empty, burnt-out shell of an individual. But his resilience and strength of will remained extraordinary. And in the strangely shapeless regime over which he presided, his power was still immense, unrestricted, and uncontested.

  As the war that Hitler had unleashed ‘came home to the Reich’, the dictator – now rapidly ageing, becoming increasingly a physical wreck, and showing pronounced signs of intense nervous strain – distanced himself ever more from his people. It was as if he could not face them now that there were no more triumphs to report, and he had to take the responsibility for the mounting losses and misery. Even before the Stalingrad calamity, in early November 1942, when his train had by chance stopped directly alongside a troop train returning from the east carrying dejected-looking, battle-weary soldiers, his only reaction had been to ask one of his manservants to pull down the blinds.18 As Germany’s war fortunes plummeted between 1943 and 1945, the former corporal from an earlier great war never sought to experience at first hand the feelings of ordinary soldiers.

  The number of big public speeches he delivered constituted a plain indicator of the widening gulf between Führer and people. In 1940 Hitler had given nine big public addresses, in 1941 seven, in 1942 five. In 1943 he gave only two (apart from a radio broadcast on 10 September) – on ‘Heroes’ Memorial Day’ on 21 March, and to the Old Guard in the Löwenbräukeller in Munich, as usual, on 8 November.19 The bulk of his time was spent well away from the government ministries in Berlin’s Wilhelmstraße – and well away from the German people – at his field headquarters, or at his mountain eyrie above Berchtesgaden. He spent no more than a few days in Berlin – mainly in May – during the whole of 1943. For some three months in all he was at the Berghof. During the rest of the time he was cooped up in his headquarters in East Prussia, leaving aside a number of short visits to the Ukraine.20

  Goebbels lamented in July 1943 the way Hitler had cut himself off from the masses. These, commented the Propaganda Minister, had provided the acclaim on which his unique authority had rested. He had given them the belief and trust that had been the focal point of the regime’s support. But now, in Goebbels’s eyes, that relationship was seriously endangered – and with it the stability of the regime. He pointed to the large number and critical tone of the letters – half of them anonymous – arriving at the Propaganda Ministry. ‘Above all, the question is again and again raised in these letters,’ he went on, ‘why the Führer never visits the areas which have suffered from air-raids, why Göring never shows himself, but especially why the Führer does not even speak to the German people to explain the current situation. I regard it as most necessary that the Führer does that, despite his burden through the events in the military sector. One can’t neglect the people too long. Ultimately, they are the heart of our war effort. If the people were once to lose their strength of resistance and belief in the German leadership, then the most serious leadership crisis which ever faced us would have been created.’21

  I

  The move to ‘total war’, introduced during the Stalingrad crisis, provided the final demonstration that no semblance of collective government and rational decision-making within the Reich was compatible with Hitler’s personal rule.

  The drive to mobilize all remaining reserves from the home front – what came to be proclaimed as ‘total war’ – had its roots in the need to plug the huge gap in military manpower left by the high losses suffered by the Wehrmacht during the first months of ‘Barbarossa’. As early as December 1941, Keitel had demanded a weeding out of superfluous personnel from the bureaucracies of government ministries, the economy, and the Wehrmacht itself.22 This had led to attempts to release personnel for the army by simplifying the extraordinarily unwieldy and cumbersome governmental administration. The proliferation of ‘special authorities’ alongside government ministries and the Party-State dualism – direct products of the Führer state – alongside the new administrative tasks created by the demands of the war had led to a colossal expansion of bureaucracy, churning out hundreds of regulations, decrees, and ordinances. The amount of red tape involved was suffocating. There was huge resentment at what was dubbed a ‘paper war’.

  Hitler’s tirades against government bureaucracy were well known to all those who came into contact with him. His scorn for legally minded administrators knew no bounds. He took the view that their number could be cut by two-thirds.23 So there was no difficulty in pandering to his prejudices. It was easy to gain his support for the action to reduce bureaucracy. To implement any such measures was a different matter. Hitler’s own stance was in practice often hesitant, contradictory, and ultimately, in the main, conservative. And despite Hitler’s backing, attempts to cut the personnel of government offices rapidly ran up against powerful vested interests. The results were predictably meagre.24 The manpower demands of the front inevitably, however, forced renewed efforts to squeeze out any surplus personnel back home. In the autumn of 1942, Hitler had commissioned General Walter von Unruh, who had earlier been relatively successful in freeing personnel from military and civilian bureaucracies in the eastern occupied territories, to sift through the civil administration and even the armaments economy.25 But this, too, had produced little as government ministers successfully fended off the worst inroads into their personnel. And when General von Unruh attempted to claw back some of those engaged on the Führer’s grandiose building projects (including sixty-eight men aged thirty-five or under employed in the planning office for the intended rebuilding of much of the centre of Munich), Hitler predictably decided that they could not be released.26

  Before the failure of Unruh’s efforts had become clear, Hitler had, at Christmas 1942, given the orders for more radical measures to raise manpower for the front and the armaments industries. Martin Bormann was commissioned to undertake the coordination of the efforts, in collaboration with Head of the Reich Chancellery Hans-Heinrich Lammers.27 Goebbels and Sauckel were immediately informed. The aim was to close down all businesses whose trade was in ‘luxury’ items or was otherwise not necessary for the war effort, and to redeploy the personnel in the army or in arms production. Women were to be subject to conscription for work. Releasing men for front-service was impossible, it was agreed, unless women could replace them in a variety of forms of work. According to the Propaganda Ministry, the number of women working had dropped by some 147,000 since the start of the war.28 And of 8.6 million women in employment at the end of 1942, only 968,000 worked in armaments.29 In the spring of 1942, Hitler had rejected outright the conscription of women to work in war industries. Industrialists had been pressing for this, and Speer had taken up their demand. But Sauckel, jealously guarding his own province and claiming responsibility for labour deployment was his alone, had held Speer at bay, backed by Goring and calling upon the support of the Führer. Probably, as Speer suggests, Sauckel had therefore solicited Hitler’s rejection of female conscription.30 According to Sauckel’s version, Hitler’s reasons had been ideological.31 The birth-rate of the nation would be threatened and as a consequence Germany’s racial strength undermined. He also thought that women would be exposed to moral danger.32

  But by early 1943, the labour situation had worsened to the extent that Hitler was compelled to concede that the conscription of women could no longer be avoided. Even the forced labour of, by this time, approaching 6 million foreign workers and prisoners-of-war could not compensate for the 11 million or so men who had been called up to the Wehrmacht.33 The most he could do to limit what he regarded as a move likely to damage morale was to raise the age of eligibility from sixteen years, as agreed by the government ministers involved, to se
venteen.34 In an unpublished Führer Decree of 13 January 1943, women between seventeen and fifty years old were ordered to report for deployment in the war effort.35 There was little enthusiasm among those affected. Women made use of the exemption criteria – including responsibility for children, and employment in agriculture or the civil service – and any personal connections to avoid duty where they could. Where that was impossible, they headed in the main for light desk jobs, leaving the armaments industries still short of women employees.36

  Even before Hitler signed the decree, the wrangling over spheres of competence had begun in earnest. In order to retain a firm grip on the ‘total war’ measures and prevent the dissipation of centralized control, Lammers, backed by the leading civil servants in the Reich Chancellery, Leo Killy and Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger, suggested to Hitler that all measures should be taken ‘under the authority of the Führer’, and that a special body be set up to handle them. The idea was to create a type of small ‘war cabinet’; the ‘Ministerial Council for the Defence of the Reich’, as we noted in an earlier chapter, had potentially constituted such, but had never functioned as one in practice, and had long fallen into desuetude. Lammers thought the most appropriate arrangement would be for the heads of the three main executive arms of the Führer’s authority – the High Command of the Wehrmacht, the Reich Chancellery, and the Party Chancellery – to act in close collaboration, meeting frequently, keeping regular contact with Hitler himself, and standing above the particularist interests of individual ministries. Hitler agreed. He evidently saw no possible threat to his position from such an arrangement. On the contrary: the three persons involved – Keitel, Lammers, and Bormann – could be guaranteed to uphold his own interests at the expense of any possible over-mighty subjects. An indication that this was, indeed, Hitler’s thinking was the exclusion of Göring, Goebbels, and Speer from the coordinating body – soon known as the ‘Committee of Three’ (Dreierausschuß).37 This was to last until the autumn before withering away – a further casualty of Hitler’s refusal to concede any actual power that might conflict with his authority as Führer, and of his unsystematic, dilettante style of rule.