by Ian Kershaw
The objective was to gain time to develop new weapons.230 From a new position of strength, he could then turn against the Russians.231 He was well aware that the ‘miracle weapons’ were, in their current state of deployment, incapable of bringing any decisive change in war fortunes, or of satisfying the exaggerated hopes that incessant propaganda had raised in them among the German public.232 When he had first seen the prototypes of the V2, Hitler had envisaged 5,000 of the rockets being directed against Britain in a massive initial onslaught.233 But when the eventual launch took place on 8 September, it proved possible only to dispatch twenty-five rockets in a period of ten days.234 They were little more than a pin-prick in the Allied thrust against Nazi Germany. Even so, Hitler expected a great deal from the further deployment of the weapon.235 By the end of the war, through the brutal exploitation of foreign workers, it had proved possible to aim over 3,000 V2s mainly at London, Antwerp, and Brussels. There was no defence against the missiles. Their terroristic effect was considerable, causing the deaths of 2,724 persons in England and many more in Belgium. Their military effect was, however, negligible.236
Meanwhile, the development of the one secret weapon certainly capable of affecting Germany’s war fortunes, the atomic bomb, had been worked on since the start of the war (though with only slow progress). The research was given special support by Speer in 1942 but, despite his offer of increased funding, was still nowhere near completion and – though the German nuclear scientists were unaware of it – lagged far behind advances made in the USA. There had seemed no need to force research on such a weapon during the early, triumphant phase of the war. By the time of Speer’s meeting with leading atomic scientists, including Otto Hahn and Werner Heisenberg, in mid-1942, a nuclear weapon was – as the Armaments Minister was told – theoretically possible but in practice several years off. Hitler, already aware in a general sense of the feasibility of an atomic bomb in the more distant future, took Speer’s report as confirmation that he would never live to see its deployment, that it could play no part in the present war. Consequently, he took no great interest in it. By this time, in any case, the resources needed to deploy it were simply not available – and diminishing fast. It is as well, nevertheless, that the bomb was not on offer: Hitler would not have hesitated for an instant to drop it on London and Moscow.237
A key part of Hitler’s strategy was the deployment of large numbers of fighters on the western front to regain the initiative in the air. He had emphasized this in his briefing with Jodl at the end of July.238 In August, when Speer and Adolf Galland, the flying ace who headed the Luftwaffe’s fighter arm, tried to persuade him to use the fighters in the Reich rather than at the western front, he had exploded in such a frenzy of rage that he had ordered a stop to all aircraft production in favour of total concentration on flak.239 Speer had ignored the outburst of frustration. In September, fighter production reached a record 2,878 aircraft – a two-and-a-half-fold increase over production in January.240 Hitler had his fighters.
Whether they would have any fuel was another question. Hitler knew that raw materials and fuel had sunk to perilous levels. Speer sent him a memorandum on 5 September pointing out that the loss of chrome from Turkey meant that the entire armaments production would grind to a halt within sixteen or so months, by 1 January 1946. Hitler took the news calmly.241 It can only have encouraged him in the thought that there was nothing to lose, and that everything had to be staked on the new western offensive. He was also informed by Speer that the fuel situation was so critical that fighter squadrons were being grounded and army movements restricted. To make 17,500 tons of fuel – what had formerly been two-and-a-half days’ production – available for the Ardennes offensive, delivery to other parts of the front had to be seriously curtailed.242
Together with Jodl, Hitler pored over maps of the Ardennes while lying on his sick-bed at the end of September.243 He later told Goebbels that he had spent the weeks of his illness almost exclusively brooding over his revenge. Now he was well again, he could begin to put his intentions into effect.244 It would be his final gamble. As he knew, it was a long shot. ‘If it doesn’t succeed,’ he told Speer, ‘I see no other possibility of bringing the war to a favourable conclusion.’ ‘But,’ he added, ‘we’ll pull through.’245
From Hitler’s perspective, there was no alternative. Even if the fronts could be stabilized, the shortages of fuel meant the war would be lost within months.246 As his negative response to Oshima’s proposal had shown, he would not entertain thoughts of suing for peace with Stalin from a position of weakness. He was equally dismissive of suggestions from Papen that soundings could be made towards peace in the west.247 He had to regain the initiative – and this could only be achieved in the west. That was his thinking in autumn 1944. In Speer’s view, Hitler knew that he was playing his last card.248
Before he could fully focus his attention on operational preparations for the coming offensive, a lingering remnant of the July bomb-plot momentarily detained him. Hitler had suspected since early August that Rommel had known about the plot against him.249 This had been confirmed by the testimony of Lieutenant-Colonel Cäsar von Hofacker, a member of Stülpnagel’s staff in Paris implicated in the plot, who had provided a written statement of Rommel’s support for the conspiracy. Hitler showed the statement to Keitel and had Rommel summoned to see him. The field-marshal, recuperating from his injuries at home near Ulm, claimed he was not fit to travel. At this, Keitel wrote Rommel a letter, drafted by Hitler, suggesting he report to the Führer if innocent. Otherwise, he would face trial. He should weigh up the consequences and if necessary act on them. Hitler ordered the letter and Hofacker’s incriminating statement to be taken to Rommel by General Wilhelm Burgdorf (Schmundt’s replacement as his chief adjutant).
Burgdorf, accompanied by his deputy, General Ernst Maisel, drove to Rommel’s home at Herrlingen on Saturday, 14 October, and handed over the letter together with Hofacker’s statement. Rommel inquired whether Hitler was aware of the statement. He then requested a little time to think matters over. He did not take long. Hitler had given orders to Burgdorf that Rommel should be prevented from shooting himself – the traditional mode of suicide among officers – and should be offered poison so that the death could be attributed to brain damage following the car accident. Mindful of Rommel’s popularity among the German public, Hitler offered him a state funeral with all honours. Faced with expulsion from the army, trial before the People’s Court, certain execution, and inevitable recriminations for his family, Rommel took the poison.250
Hitler was represented by Rundstedt at the state funeral in the town hall at Ulm on 18 October. Rundstedt declared in his eulogy that Rommel’s ‘heart belonged to the Führer’. Addressing the dead field-marshal, he intoned: ‘Our Führer and Supreme Commander sends you through me his thanks and his greetings.’ For public consumption, Hitler announced the same day that Rommel had succumbed to his severe wounds following his car accident. ‘With him, one of our best army leaders has passed away… His name has entered the history of the German people.’251
Another, more far-reaching, problem preoccupied Hitler in the middle of October: Hungary’s attempt to defect from its alliance with Germany. Hitler had feared (and expected) this eventuality for weeks. The alliance with Hungary had become increasingly unstable across the summer. The defections of Romania and Bulgaria in August had then made it a matter of time before Hungary would seek to extricate itself from its dependence upon Germany. The feelers, known to German intelligence, put out both to the western allies and to the Soviet Union after Romania’s defection gave a clear sign of the way things were moving. Another indicator, following the Romanian switch of sides, was the replacement by Admiral Horthy, the head of state, of the puppet Sztojay government, installed at German behest in March, by a military administration under General Geisa Lakatos directly answerable to him. At the beginning of October, Horthy had sent a delegation to Moscow to begin negotiations to take Hungary out of the war.
A Soviet offensive driving forward on the Hungarian plains, beginning on 6 October, though fought off by German panzer divisions, gave the final impetus. Tough conditions laid down by Molotov, on behalf of the Allies, for Hungary to change sides, including an immediate declaration of war on Germany, were accepted by Horthy and signed by the Hungarian delegation in Moscow on 11 October. Their implementation had to await the coup being prepared in Budapest against the German forces in Hungary. Pressed by the Soviet Union to act, Horthy informed the German envoy Edmund Veesenmayer on 15 October that Hungary was leaving the German alliance and announced the armistice in a radio broadcast in the early afternoon.252
Hitler had not stood idly by while these developments were taking place. Both strategically, and also on account of its economic importance for foodstuffs and fuel supplies, everything had to be done to prevent Hungary going the way of Romania and Bulgaria. For weeks, Hitler had been preparing his own counter-coup in Budapest, aimed at ousting Horthy, replacing him with a puppet government under Ferencz Szalasi – fanatical leader of the radical Hungarian fascist Party, the Arrow Cross, a former discharged army officer who had subsequently served a three-year jail sentence – and thus ensuring that Hungary did not defect. Already in mid-September Otto Skorzeny, Hitler’s leading troubleshooter (since his daring rescue of Mussolini a year earlier), had been called to the Wolf’s Lair and told that Horthy was approaching the western Allies and the Russians with a view to an imminent separate peace, and was ready to throw himself on the mercy of the Kremlin. Hitler ordered Skorzeny to prepare an operational plan to seize by force the Citadel in Budapest – the fortress which was the residence of Horthy and his entourage – should Hungary betray its alliance with Germany.
Skorzeny immediately began detailed planning of the complex operation (which he dubbed ‘Panzerfaust’ – ‘Bazooka’) against the heavily fortified government quarter, with its labyrinth of subterranean passages. He was adamant that the action could only follow, not precede, a hostile act by Hungary against Germany.253 Probably, German intelligence was aware of the Hungarian delegation’s visit to Moscow. In any case, it was plain that events were rapidly reaching their denouement. The SS commander in Budapest, SS-Obergruppenführer Otto Winkelmann, pressed for urgent action. Hitler sent SS-Obergruppenführer von dem Bach-Zelewski, fresh from his brutal suppression of the rising in Warsaw, to Budapest to take charge of ‘Panzerfaust’. Skorzeny had some initial difficulty in deflecting Bach-Zelewski from using the same crude brutality – including deployment of his massive 65cm mortar against the city of Budapest as earlier against Sevastopol and Warsaw – but eventually a more sophisticated approach was agreed.254 This involved the kidnapping of Horthy’s son, Nicklas (who, as German intelligence knew, had been working through Yugoslav contacts to promote a separate peace with the Soviet Union) in order to blackmail his father into abandoning intentions to defect. Skorzeny called the operation – a play on the name of Horthy’s son – (Nicky) ‘Mouse’.255 In a daring ambush on the morning of Sunday, 15 October, Skorzeny’s men, following a five-minute flurry of shooting with Hungarian bodyguards, carried off the younger Horthy, rolled up in a carpet, bundled him into a waiting lorry, whisked him to an airfield, and put him in a plane bound for Vienna and his eventual destination, Mauthausen concentration camp.256
Admiral Horthy was faced with the fact of his son’s kidnap when Veesenmayer arrived for their prearranged meeting at noon. Veesenmayer told Horthy that at the first sign of ‘treason’, his son would be shot. The Regent’s response was a combination of furious protestation and near nervous collapse. Neither were, of course, to any avail. But nor could German threats deter him, given the predicament he was in, from making his radio announcement two hours later of the separate peace with the Soviet Union. No sooner had he finished speaking than the radio building was seized by Arrow Cross men who put out a counter-declaration avowing Hungary’s continuation of the fight against the Soviet Union on Germany’s side. A little later Szalasi announced his takeover of power. That evening, the blackmail on Horthy came into full effect. He was told that if he resigned and formally handed over power to Szalasi, he would be given asylum in Germany, and his son would be freed; if not, the Citadel would be taken by force. Horthy buckled under the extreme pressure. He agreed to step down from office and make way for Szalasi. Skorzeny met little resistance when, accompanied by units of ‘Panther’ and ‘Goliath’ tanks, he entered the Citadel early next morning. Two days later, on 18 October, Horthy was on his way to Germany in a special train, accompanied by Skorzeny and a German army escort. He would spend the remainder of the war ‘as the Führer’s guest’, in Schloß Hirschberg, near Weilheim, in Upper Bavaria. Under its new, fanatical fascist leadership, Hungary’s fate remained tied to Germany’s until the encircled defendants of Budapest gave up the struggle on 11 February 1945. Only a few hundred succeeded in breaking through to German lines. It was the end of Hitler’s last remaining ally in south-eastern Europe.257
With the failure of Horthy’s attempt to take Hungary out of the war, the final torment of the largest Jewish community still under German control began. As we noted earlier, Horthy had halted deportations – mainly to Auschwitz – in July. By that date, 437,402 Jews – more than half of the entire community – had been sent to their deaths.258 By the time of the deposition of Horthy and takeover of power by Szalasi in mid-October, Himmler was halting the ‘Final Solution’ and terminating the killings at Auschwitz.259 But the desperate labour shortage in Germany now led to plans to deploy Hungarian Jews as slave labourers in the underground assembly sites of V2 missiles. Without trains to transport them, they would have to walk. Within days of Szalasi taking over, tens of thousands of Jews – women as well as men – were being rounded up and, by the end of the month, beginning what for so many would turn into death marches as they succumbed to exhaustion, cold, and the torture of both Hungarian and SS guards. So high was the death rate among Jewish women, in fact, that Szalasi, probably concerned for his own skin as the war fortunes continued to worsen for Germany, stopped the treks in mid-November. Subsequent attempts of the SS to remove more Jews by rail were vitiated by lack of transport.260 Meanwhile, for the 70,000 remaining Budapest Jews, crammed into a ghetto within range of Soviet guns, deprived of all property, terrorized and killed at will by Arrow Cross men, the daily nightmare continued until the surrender of the city in February. It is estimated that the bodies of some 10,000 Jews were lying unburied in the streets and houses of Budapest by that time.261
Meanwhile, on 21 October a delighted Hitler, recovered from his recent illness, was welcoming Skorzeny with outstretched arms as he led him into his dimly-lit bunker at the Wolf’s Lair to hear the story of his triumph in Budapest and reward him with promotion to Obersturmbannführer. When Skorzeny stood up to leave, Hitler detained him: ‘Don’t go, Skorzeny,’ he remarked. ‘I have perhaps the most important job in your life for you. So far very few people know of the preparations for a secret plan in which you have a great part to play. In December, Germany will start a great offensive, which may well decide her fate.’ He proceeded to give Skorzeny a detailed outline of the military operation which would from now on occupy so much of his time: the Ardennes offensive.262
VII
Hitler had laid out his demands for an Ardennes offensive on 16 September. Guderian voiced grave misgivings because of the situation on the eastern front, the theatre for which he was directly responsible. Jodl warned of air supremacy and the likelihood of parachute landings. Hitler ignored them. He wanted, he said, 1,500 fighters by 1 November, when preparations for the offensive must be complete. The launch of the offensive would take place in bad weather, when enemy aircraft were badly handicapped. Enemy forces would be split and encircled. Antwerp would be taken, leaving the enemy without an escape route.263
By this time, the enemy was already on German soil in the west. Even by mid-September, American soldiers from the 1st US Army had penetrated the Westwall and reached the outskirts of Aachen.
German rule in the city had been momentarily in disarray. The Party leaders had tried to organize a chaotic evacuation of the population, while the local Wehrmacht commander, General Gerd Graf von Schwerin, countered the order, dismissing it as ‘stupid’, and made preparations for surrender.264 Schwerin had been peremptorily dismissed, and Hitler had issued orders that every inch of German soil should be defended by the most radical means; that nothing of value should be allowed to fall into enemy hands – a ‘scorched earth’ policy which prompted sharply varying responses even among Nazi leaders.265 Rundstedt, reinstated on 5 September as Commander-in-Chief in the West, had declared, in his proclamation of Hitler’s defence order, that every house was to be turned into a fortress, and that the destruction of German property and cultural monuments had to be carried out if it served defence needs.266 In the event, Aachen had held out longer than had at first seemed likely. But after a month of heavy fighting in the area, the city was eventually surrounded by American forces on 13 October and, after a week of sustained bombardment, finally taken on 21 October.267