by Ian Kershaw
Bulgaria, a country which since 1941 had played a careful diplomatic hand, was now hopelessly exposed. Soviet troops crossed its borders on 8 September (the USSR having declared war three days earlier), and on the same day Bulgaria rapidly switched sides and declared war on Germany.194 The German control over the entire Balkan region now held by the most slender of threads. The collapse of Romania and Bulgaria, followed by rapid Soviet occupation, meant the urgent withdrawal of German troops from Greece was imperative. This began in September. In mid-October British airborne troops were able to occupy Athens. By that time, Tito’s partisan army was on the verge of entry into Belgrade.195 German troops were meanwhile engaged in the brutal suppression, finally accomplished by the end of October, of a rising, undertaken in the main by Soviet-inspired indigenous partisans alongside a sizeable minority of the 60,000-strong army, in the puppet state of Slovakia.196 Most important of all, from Hitler’s point of view, in the gathering mayhem in south-eastern Europe Hungary, his chief ally, but long wavering, had immediately following the volte-face in Romania begun urgent soundings for peace with the Soviet Union. The consequences would soon be felt with the German takeover of the country in mid-October.197
In these same critical weeks, Hitler was also losing a vital ally in northern Europe. The danger signals about Finland’s position had been flashing brightly for months. The grave setbacks on the north of the German eastern front in the summer boosted the growing feeling in Finland that the country must extricate itself from its German alliance, and from the war. State President Risto Ryti resigned on 1 August and was replaced by the veteran war hero Marshal Carl Gustaf von Mannerheim. It was clear to the Nazi leadership that the next step for Mannerheim would be to seek an armistice with the Soviet Union.198 It was to no avail that Hitler dispatched Colonel-General Ferdinand Schörner to Finland on 3 August in an attempt to stiffen Mannerheim’s resolve; nor that Keitel was sent later in the month to Helsinki to bestow the Oak-Leaves to the Marshal’s Knight’s Cross.199 On 2 September, Mannerheim informed Hitler that Finland was unable to continue the struggle. Relations were to be broken off immediately. German troops were to leave the country by 15 September. On 19 September, Finland signed an armistice with the Soviet Union.200
In these same momentous months, throughout the whole of August and September, the German leadership was also faced with suppressing the dangerous rising taking place in Warsaw. The rising had begun on 1 August, two days after tanks of the Red Army had pushed into the suburbs of Warsaw on the east of the Vistula and Soviet radio had encouraged the inhabitants of the city to rise against their occupiers. General Tadeusz Bor-Komorowski, head of the Polish underground army (around 25,000 strong) presumed the Red Army was poised to enter Warsaw, and wanted, with an eye on the future, to have the capital city liberated by Poles – and by Poles representing the exiled government based in London, not the ‘Polish Committee for National Liberation’ that Stalin had set up in Lublin. The uprising was not well planned. The Poles were aware that they could reckon with little help from the western powers. But they were unprepared to be left in the lurch by the Soviet Union. However, the Red Army halted at the Vistula and did not enter the city while Stalin – cynically conscious of containing hopes of Polish independence in a post-war order – neither aided the Poles nor, until it was too late, facilitated attempts by the British and Americans to supply the insurgents with weapons and munition.201
Unaware of Stalin’s cynical ploy, the German Chief of Staff Guderian, fearing cooperation between the insurgents and the Red Army, asked Hitler to include Warsaw – still under the aegis of Hans Frank as Governor General – in the military zone of operations and place it thereby under Wehrmacht control.202 Hitler refused. Instead, he handed over full responsibility for the crushing of the rising to SS chief Himmler. As soon as he had heard of the rising, Himmler had hastened to see Hitler. Himmler spoke shortly afterwards of how he had put the news of the rising to Hitler: ‘I said, “Mein Führer, the time is disagreeable. Seen historically [however] it is a blessing that the Poles are doing it. We’ll get through the five, six weeks. But by then Warsaw, the capital, the head, the intelligence of this former 16–17 million Polish people will be extinguished – this people that has blocked the east for us for 700 years and has always stood in our way ever since the first battle of Tannenberg. Then the Polish problem will historically no longer be a big problem for our children and for all who come after us, nor indeed for us.”’203
Himmler now ordered the total destruction of Warsaw,204 putting in SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, formerly involved in massacres of Jews in Russia and subsequently in charge of combating partisans on the eastern front, to suppress the rising with all the ruthlessness he needed. Over the next weeks, Bach directed a ferocious onslaught on the Polish insurgents, using as his spearhead the notoriously brutal Kaminski and Dirlewanger Brigades – SS units of around 6,000 men comprised in the former case of Russian ex-prisoners-of-war, many of them rabidly anti-Polish, in the latter of criminals and desperadoes drawn from the concentration camps.205 Wild orgies of atrocities predictably followed as men, women, and children were slaughtered in their thousands while Warsaw burned. By the time General Bor surrendered on 2 October, the savage repression had left Polish civilian victims numbering around 200,000. German losses amounted to some 26,000 men killed, wounded, or missing.206 On 11 October, Hans Frank received notification that all raw materials, textiles, and furniture left in Warsaw were to be removed before the smouldering remains of the city were razed to the ground.207
V
As the news from all parts of his empire turned from appalling to disastrous, Hitler fell ill. On 8 September, he complained to Morell, his doctor, of pressure around his right eye. In his notes, Morell indicated blood-pressure. Six days later, he recorded fluctuating blood-pressure ‘following great agitation (Aufregung)’. Next day, 15 September, Morell noted: ‘Complains of dizziness, throbbing head, and return of the tremor to his legs, particularly the left, and hands.’ His left ankle was swollen. Again, ‘much agitation (viel Aufregungen)’ was registered by Morell.208 The systolic blood-pressure, at 150mm, was not unduly high, though higher than it had been at the start of the month. In accordance with contemporary practice, Morell was less concerned with Hitler’s diastolic blood-pressure, which he relatively seldom took. When he did, it was regularly too high, sometimes worryingly so.209 It was an indication that Hitler had a cardiac problem, and an electrocardiogram on 24 September did indicate progressive arteriosclerosis (though no acute anginal danger).210
During the night before his cardiogram, Hitler’s acute stomach spasms returned – as Morell indicated ‘after great agitation’ (probably in connection with the Allied airborne landing in Arnhem and Hitler’s fury at the inadequacy of the Luftwaffe).211 They were so bad the following night that Hitler was unable to get up in the morning – an extremely rare occurrence – and seemed unusually apathetic.212 By 27 September, Morell pointed out to Hitler that his skin had a yellowish appearance – something Dr Giesing had noticed a few days earlier. Hitler refused to let Morell examine him.213 But by now he was quite ill. The jaundice, accompanied by high temperature and severe stomach cramps, kept him in bed during the following days. It was 2 October, the day that Hitler was told of the death (following the injuries suffered in the bomb blast on 20 July) of his favourite adjutant, Rudolf Schmundt, that the yellow skin-colouring finally disappeared and Hitler felt well enough to get out of bed, dress himself, and make his way to the first situation briefing since he had fallen ill. He still seemed lifeless, however, to those in his company. It was the middle of the month before he felt himself again. By then, after eating little during his illness (when he was confined to a diet largely comprising mashed potatoes, oatmeal soup, and stewed fruit), he had lost sixteen pounds in weight.214
While Hitler was suffering from jaundice, Dr Giesing, the ear, nose, and throat specialist who had been brought in to treat him after Stauffenberg’s bo
mb had exploded, began to be suspicious about Morell’s treatment. He started to wonder whether the little black tablets that Hitler took each day on Morell’s prescription, ‘Dr Koester’s Anti-Gas Pills’, were in fact a contributory cause of the dictator’s chronic stomach complaint rather than a satisfactory medicine for it. Whatever his concern for Hitler, Giesing’s own ambitions to oust and displace Morell probably played a part in what he did next. He managed to lay hands on a number of the pills, had them analysed, and discovered that they contained strychnine. Giesing dosed himself with the pills and found they had mildly harmful effects – effects he associated with those on Hitler. Giesing made mention of his findings, and his suspicions, to Hitler’s other attendant doctors, Dr Karl Brandt and Dr Hanskarl von Hasselbach, who passed on the sentiments to others in Hitler’s entourage. When Hitler found out, he was furious. He announced his complete faith in Morell, and dismissed Brandt and Hasselbach, who had both been with him since the early years of his rule. Giesing, too, was requested to leave Hitler’s service. Their replacement was one of Himmler’s former staff doctors, SS-Obersturmbannführer Ludwig Stumpfegger.215
Morell’s diagnoses and methods of treatment were indeed often questionable. Many of the innumerable tablets, medicines, and injections he prescribed for Hitler – which his valet Heinz Linge provided on demand from the medical chest that was always ready at hand216 – were of dubious value, often useless, and in some instances even exacerbating the problem (particularly relating to the chronic intestinal disorder). But allegations that Morell was intentionally harming Hitler were misplaced. The fat, unctuously perspiring Morell was both physically unattractive and, in his privileged access to Hitler – becoming more extensive as the dictator’s ailments mounted – provoked much resentment in the ‘court circle’. That he visibly exploited the relationship to his patient to further his own power, influence, and material advantage simply magnified the ill-feeling towards Morell. But, whatever his considerable limitations as a medical practitioner, Morell was certainly doing his best for the Leader he so much admired and to whom he was devoted.
The hypochondriac Hitler was, in turn, dependent upon Morell. He needed to believe, and apparently did believe, that Morell’s treatment was the best he could get, and was beneficial. In that way, Morell might indeed have been good for Hitler.217 At any rate, Morell and his medicines were neither a major nor even a minor part of the explanation of Germany’s plight in the autumn of 1944. That Hitler was poisoned by the strychnine and belladonna in the anti-gas pills or other medicaments, drugged on the opiates given him to relieve his intestinal spasms, or dependent upon the cocaine which formed 1 per cent of the ophthalmic drops prescribed by Dr Giesing for conjunctivitis, can be discounted. Whether Hitler took amphetamines to combat tiredness and sustain his energy is uncertain. That he was dependent upon them, even if he took them, cannot be proved; nor that his behaviour was affected by them.218 Hitler’s physical problems in autumn 1944, chronic though they were, had arisen from lifestyle, diet, lack of exercise, and excessive stress, on top of likely congenital weaknesses (which probably accounted for the cardiac problem as well as the Parkinson’s Syndrome).219 Mentally, he was under enormous strain, which magnified his deeply embedded extreme personality traits. His phobias, hypochondria, and hysterical reactions were probable indicators of some form of personality disorder or psychiatric abnormality. An element of paranoia underwrote his entire political ‘career’, and became even more evident towards the end. But Hitler did not suffer from any of the major pyschotic disorders. He was certainly not clinically insane.220 If there was lunacy in the position Germany found itself in by the autumn of 1944, it was not the purported insanity of one man but that of the high-stakes ‘winner-takes-all’ gamble for Continental dominance and world power which the country’s leaders – not just Hitler – backed by much of a gullible population had earlier been prepared to take, and which was now costing the country dearly and revealed as a high-risk policy without an exit-clause.
VI
That all ways out were closed off was made plain once again during these weeks. Hints had come from Japan in late August that Stalin might entertain ideas of a peace settlement with Hitler’s Germany. Japan was interested in brokering such a peace, since it would leave Germany able to devote its entire war effort to the western Allies, thereby, it was hoped, draining the energies of the USA away from the Pacific. With massive casualties on the Soviet side, the territories lost since 1941 regained, and a presumed interest in Stalin wishing to harness what was left of German industrial potential for a later fight with the West, Tokyo thought prospects for a negotiated peace were not altogether negligible.221 On 4 September, Oshima, the Japanese Ambassador in Berlin, travelled to East Prussia to put the suggestion to take up feelers with Stalin directly to Hitler. The response was predictable. Germany would soon launch a fresh counter-offensive with new weapons at its disposal. And there were, in any case, no signs that Stalin was entertaining thoughts of peace. Only a block on his advance might make him change his mind, Hitler realistically concluded. He wanted no overtures to be made by the Japanese for the present.222
Oshima evidently did not give up. Later in the month, he used the pretext of a discussion with Werner Naumann, State Secretary in the Propaganda Ministry, about the ‘total war’ effort to bring the suggestion of a separate peace with the Soviet Union to Goebbels’s ears. He could be certain that by this route the proposal would again reach Hitler, perhaps with the backing of one who was known to carry influence at Führer Headquarters.
Naumann’s report was plainly the first Goebbels had heard of the Japanese suggestion. The Propaganda Minister called the discussion between his State Secretary and the Japanese Ambassador ‘quite sensational’.223 Oshima told Naumann, according to Goebbels’s summary, that Germany should make every attempt to reach a ‘special peace’. Such an arrangement would be possible, he led Naumann to believe. He was frank about the Japanese interest, forced by its own problems in the war, in giving Germany a free hand in the west. He thought Stalin, a realist, would be open to suggestions if Germany were prepared to accept ‘sacrifices’, and criticized the inflexibility of German foreign policy. Goebbels noted that Oshima’s proposal amounted to a reversal of German war policy, and was aware that the position of the pro-German Japanese Ambassador at home had been seriously weakened as the fortunes of war had turned. But, as Oshima had presumed, Goebbels immediately passed on the information to Bormann and Himmler, for further transmission to Hitler himself.224
Goebbels decided that more must be done. But rather than try to put the case verbally to Hitler, he decided to prepare a lengthy memorandum. By midnight on 20 September, after he had worked all afternoon and evening on it, the memorandum was ready. It was couched in the form of a letter to Hitler. Goebbels was evidently so pleased with it that he dictated the entire text for entry in his diary.
The letter was cleverly attuned to Hitler’s mentality. The events of the summer had cast all their hopes overboard, he began. He pointed to the way Hitler had divided his opponents at the end of 1932 and beginning of 1933 in order to win a ‘limited victory’ on 30 January that then paved the way for the full conquest of power that was to follow. He drew an analogy with the need now to settle for something less than the original war aims in order to divide an alliance already showing distinct signs of fractiousness. Germany had never won a two-front war, he frankly pointed out. There was little prospect of coping with western and eastern enemies simultaneously. ‘We can neither conclude peace with both sides at the same time nor in the long run successfully wage war against both sides at the same time,’ he argued. He came to the main part of his case. Rehearsing what he had heard from Oshima, he suggested that Stalin’s cold realism, knowing that he would sooner or later find himself in conflict with the west, offered an opening since the Soviet leader would not want either to exhaust his own military strength or allow the German armaments potential to fall into the hands of the western powers. He p
ointed to Japan’s self-interest in brokering a deal. An arrangement with Stalin would provide new prospects in the west, and place the Anglo-Americans in a position where they could not indefinitely continue the war. ‘What we would attain,’ he stated, ‘would not be the victory that we dreamed of in 1941, but it would still be the greatest victory in German history. The sacrifices that the German people had made in this war would thereby be fully justified.’
The danger in the east would not, it was true, be fully repelled. ‘But we would stand armed for it in the future,’ he claimed. The next words showed that Goebbels knew how difficult his task was if he were to alter Hitler’s hitherto obdurate refusal to entertain any negotiations. ‘You, my Führer, will reject all that perhaps as Utopian,’ he stated. But were it to be attained, it would mark in the eyes of the people ‘the highest achievement of the German political art of war’. The war situation would be altered at one fell swoop. Germany would again have breathing space, freedom of movement, could regenerate itself and then, when necessary, ‘dole out the blows which would decide the war’.225
Goebbels waited impatiently for Hitler’s reactions to his memorandum. Eventually, he learnt that Hitler had read it, but then put it away without comment. A promised audience to discuss it with him never materialized.226 Hitler’s illness intervened. But in any case, there is no indication that Hitler took the slightest notice of his Propaganda Minister’s suggestion. His own plans ran along quite different lines. The idea of a western offensive, which he had hatched in mid-August,227 was taking concrete shape. He was contemplating a final attempt to turn the tide: using the last reserves of troops and weapons for an offensive through the Ardennes in late autumn or winter aimed at inflicting a significant blow on the western Allies by retaking Antwerp (depriving them of their major continental port) and even forcing them ‘back into the Atlantic’.228 ‘A single breakthrough on the western front! You will see!’ he told Speer. ‘That will lead to a collapse and panic among the Americans. We’ll drive through in the middle and take Antwerp. With that, they’ll have lost their supply harbour. And there’ll be a huge encirclement of the entire English army with hundreds of thousands of prisoners. Like it was in Russia!’229