by Ian Kershaw
A few days earlier, on the very day that the Citadel in Budapest was capitulating to Skorzeny’s men, the enemy had also burst into German territory in the east. On 16 October, the ‘3rd White Russian Front’, led by General Ivan Tscherniakowski, had broken through into East Prussia as far as Nemmersdorf, Goldap – the first sizeable town in the province – and the fringes of Gumbinnen, heading for Königsberg.268 The roads were full of refugees fleeing in panic from the oncoming Russians.269 The Red Army was within striking reach of Führer Headquarters. Bormann told his wife that ‘we would like rather more safety for the Führer – sixty or eighty kilometres are no distance for armoured cars’.270 For the time being, however, Hitler resisted pressure to leave the Wolf’s Lair. A move to the Berghof or to Berlin, he thought, would send the wrong signals to his fighting men at the front.271 He gave strict instructions that there should be no talk of leaving. But the staff was reduced, while Schaub packed all Hitler’s files and possessions, ready to depart at any moment.272 It proved possible to delay the moment. Gumbinnen was recaptured – revealing horrifying scenes of atrocities (including untold cases of women raped and murdered, and houses plundered at will by Soviet troops). The Red Army was forced on the defensive in East Prussia. Goldap, too, was retaken by the Wehrmacht a fortnight or so later. The immediate danger was contained.273
When Nicolaus von Below, Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant, returned to the Wolf’s Lair on 24 October, after recuperating for several weeks from the effects of the bomb-blast on 20 July, he found the dictator heavily involved in preparations for the Ardennes offensive, expected to take place in late November or early December.274 The big anxiety, as ever, was whether by then the Luftwaffe would be in any position to provide the necessary air cover. The failure of the Luftwaffe, Below was told by naval adjutant Karl-Jesko von Puttkamer, was still the ‘number one topic’, and there was permanent tension between Hitler and Göring.275
Already in September, Hitler had wanted to put the Luftwaffe in the hands of Colonel-General Robert Ritter von Greim, a First World War flying-ace, romantic nationalist, and fervent admirer of the Nazi leader since the early 1920s, who had later rapidly risen through the ranks and distinguished himself as a Luftwaffe commander, mainly on the eastern front. Though Greim would have had operational control, Hitler, characteristically, wanted to leave Göring, to whom he attached nothing but bitter recrimination for the failure of the Luftwaffe, in post as commander-in-chief.276 Hitler’s criticism of Göring was scathing. But, as Goebbels put it, he still held to the Reich Marshal with a ‘real Nibelung loyalty’.277 Despite Göring’s almost universal loss of prestige and popularity, the removal from office at this point of such a key figure in the regime could for Hitler only have been interpreted as a sign of weakness and desperation.278 There could, therefore, be no question of discarding the Reich Marshal, whatever his failings. Greim was evidently more than aware of the impossible proposition being put to him, and was in no rush to accept. In any case, Göring’s own objections appear to have persuaded Hitler that the idea had little chance of working. By the beginning of November, it had been dropped. As Greim told Below, everything would remain as it was – except for the appointment of General Karl Koller as Luftwaffe Chief of Staff in place of General Werner Kreipe (whom Hitler had refused to see for six weeks).279 Göring had held on to his position. But he appeared listless, resigned, a shadow of his former ebullient self.280
None of this left Hitler deterred from his coming offensive, on which so much hinged. The rise in fighter production now gave him a fleet – at least nominally – of over 3,000 planes at his disposal, and the first Me262s were coming into service (though Hitler continued to place few hopes in them as fighters, instead of the bombers he had for so long demanded).281 In reality, few of the planes could fly at any one time on account of the chronic lack of fuel.282 Though he put the best face on it, Hitler was well aware that air-power was his weakest suit;283 hence the constant tirades against Göring. The odds in the coming offensive were far more heavily stacked against him than he was prepared to acknowledge.
Immersed in military matters and facing calamity on all sides, Hitler was in no mood to travel through a war-weary Reich to address the Party’s ‘Old Guard’ as usual on 8 November, the anniversary of the Putsch in 1923 and the most sacred date in the Nazi calendar. Goebbels had tried in September to persuade Hitler to speak to the German people again, at least through a brief radio broadcast. Hitler had agreed in principle, but wanted to await developments in Hungary. This was unintelligible to Goebbels. But the coup under preparation to prevent Hungary’s defection was the only potential success in view for Hitler. And he evidently felt as always that he needed some success to proclaim if speaking to the German people, both to stir up morale at home and for consumption outside Germany.
Goebbels wanted an early broadcast, but, predictably, nothing came of the idea. Then Hitler’s illness intervened and any hopes of a speech disappeared.284 The dangers of a bombing-raid to coincide with a public speech as normal in the Löwenbräukeller in Munich probably also contributed to its cancellation this year. Instead, a pale shadow of the normal event was scheduled to take place for the first time not on the actual anniversary of the Putsch, but on the following Sunday, 12 November, in Munich. Its centrepiece was a proclamation by Hitler to be read out by Himmler. As Goebbels pointed out, this had nothing like the effect of hearing Hitler himself, particularly when read out in Himmler’s cold diction.285
The proclamation itself, despite Goebbels’s praise for its content and style, could only have been a disappointment for those hoping for news of some reversal of war fortunes or – the desire of most people – a hint that the war would soon be over. Hitler did not even refer directly to events at the front. A lengthy preamble reasserted the principles of National Socialism and drew the faintest of parallels between the current struggle and the crises the Party had mastered after 1923 and in gaining power ten years later. The fight for national survival against enemies intent upon the ‘annihilation of our people [and] the eradication and thereby ending of its existence’ was as usual underlined, as was the ‘satanic will to persecution and destruction’ of Jewry.286 The ‘salvation of Europe from the Bolshevik monster’ could only be brought about by the German Reich under National Socialist leadership.287 He went on to berate the ‘betrayal on betrayal’ that had beset Germany over the previous two years, saving his most poisonous bile for the ‘criminals’ within who had tried to stab Germany in the back.288 He praised the bravery of the Wehrmacht and, quite especially, of the home front. He insisted that eventual triumph would come. And he made it clear that as long as he was alive, there would be no capitulation, no end to the fighting. His opponents were right in one thing, he said: ‘As long as I live, Germany will not suffer the fate of the European states inundated by Bolshevism.’289 He was, he said, ‘unshakeable in his will to give the world to follow a no less praiseworthy example in this struggle than great Germans have given in the past’.290 In this struggle, his own life was of no consequence. It was a veiled hint that what now remained for him to fight for was his place in history. The ‘heroic’ struggle he envisaged, one of Wagnerian proportions, ruled out any contemplation of capitulation, the shameful act of 1918. The fight to the last, it seemed clear, was destined to drag down to destruction the German people itself with the ‘heroic’ self-destruction of its warlord.
The warlord came close in the days following his speech, in fact, almost for the first time, even in private, to admitting the war was lost. His own end was now starting to occupy his mind. When Jodl recommended moving Führer Headquarters to Berlin, using the coming Ardennes offensive as an argument, Hitler stated that he would not leave East Prussia again.291 Perhaps a renewed bout of illness, now affecting his throat, prompted his depressed mood.292 It may also have encouraged him to agree with Bormann that the time had indeed finally come to move his headquarters from East Prussia, since it had been established that he needed a minor operation i
n Berlin to remove a polyp from his vocal cords.293 On the afternoon of 20 November, Hitler and his entourage boarded his special train bound for Berlin and left the Wolf’s Lair for good.
So little was Hitler a real presence for the German people by this time that, as Goebbels had to note, rumours were rife that he was seriously ill, or even dead.294 Goebbels had the opportunity to speak at length with him at the beginning of December. He found him recovered from his stomach troubles, able to eat and drink normally again. He was also over the operation to his vocal cords, and his voice was back to normal.295 Hitler told him he had come to Berlin to prepare for the coming attack in the West. Everything was prepared for a major blow to the Allies which would give him not just a military but also a political success. He said he had worked day and night on the plan for the offensive, also during his illness. Goebbels thought Hitler back to his old form.296 They broke off their discussion in the afternoon, resuming it at midnight and carrying on until 5.30a.m.297
Operational plans for the Ardennes offensive – known at the time as ‘Watch on the Rhine’, it was later changed to ‘Autumn Mist’ – had been worked out by the OKW in September and put to Hitler on 9 October. The objective of the operation – the sweep through the Eifel and Ardennes through Belgium to the Channel coast, taking Antwerp – was finalized at this point. The detailed plans of the offensive were outlined by Jodl to senior western commanders on 3 November. Sixteen divisions, eight of them armoured, would form the focal point of the attack. SS-Oberstgruppenführer Sepp Dietrich would lead the 6th SS-Panzer Army; General Hasso von Manteufel the 5th Panzer Army.300 Without exception, the assembled military commanders thought the objective – the taking of Antwerp, some 125 miles away – quite unrealistic. The forces available to them were simply inadequate, they argued, especially in winter conditions. At best, they claimed, a more limited objective – recovery of Aachen and the adjacent parts of the Westwall, with perhaps the base being laid for a later westward push – might be attained. Jodl ruled out the objections. He made clear to the commanders that limited gains would not suffice. Hitler had to be in a position, as a result of the offensive, to ‘make the western powers ready to negotiate’. On 10 November, Hitler signed the order for the offensive which had been prepared by the OKW. He acknowledged in the preamble that he was prepared ‘to accept the maximum risk in order to proceed with this operation’. The date was set for 27 November, then, in numerous postponements brought about by delays in assembling both equipment and army units engaged in fighting, eventually reset for 10 December.301 Two further delays ensued before the date was finally fixed at 16 December.302
Hitler outlined the grandiose plan of the offensive. Antwerp would be taken within eight to ten days. The intention was to smash the entire enemy force to the north and south, then turn a massive rocket attack on London. A major success would have a huge impact on morale at home, and affect attitudes towards Germany abroad.298 Hitler, in Goebbels’s judgement, was like a man revived.299 The prospect of a new offensive, and of regaining the initiative, had evidently worked on him like a drug.
In preparation for the offensive, Hitler had left Berlin on the evening of 10 December and moved his headquarters to Ziegenberg, not far from Bad Nauheim, close to the western front. Bunkers and barracks had been constructed in a woodland area by the Organisation Todt earlier in the war. Rundstedt and his staff were quartered in a stately residence nearby.303
In two groups, on the day of his arrival, 11 December, and again the following day, Hitler spoke to his military commanders at the ‘Adlerhorst’ (‘Eagle’s Eyrie’), as the new headquarters were called, to brief them on the coming offensive. After a lengthy preamble giving his own account of the background to the war, he outlined his thinking behind the offensive. Psychological considerations, as always, were paramount for Hitler. War could only be endured as long as there was hope of victory. It was necessary, therefore, to destroy this hope through offensive action. A defensive strategy could not achieve this goal. It had to be followed by successful attack. ‘I have striven, therefore, from the beginning to conduct the war wherever possible offensively,’ he stated. ‘Wars are finally decided through the recognition by one side or the other that the war as such can no longer be won. To get the enemy to realize this is therefore the most important task.’304 If forced back on to the defensive, it was all the more important to convince the enemy that victory was not in sight. Hitler came to another unalterable premiss of his conduct of the war. ‘It is also important to strengthen these psychological factors in letting no moment pass without making plain to the enemy that whatever he does he can never reckon with capitulation, never, never. That is the decisive point.’305 He referred, almost inevitably, to the reversal of Frederick the Great’s fortunes in the Seven Years War. Here, he had reached another constant in his thinking: the will of the heroic leader, which alone made triumph out of adversity possible when all around him despaired of success.
This brought him to the fragility (he thought) of the coalition he was facing. A few months earlier, he had castigated those who had plotted to bring him down for their naïvety in presuming that it was possible to split the Allies.306 Now his view was that the Alliance comprised such heterogeneous elements with conflicting goals and interests diverging ‘by the hour’ that ‘if a few really heavy blows were inflicted, it could happen any moment that this artificially sustained common front could suddenly collapse with a huge clap of thunder’.307 The tensions between the Soviet and western Allies had, indeed, become more apparent during the second half of 1944. But Hitler was certainly rational enough to know that his own destruction, and that of the regime he headed, provided sufficient common ground to hold the coalition together until Germany’s defeat. He knew, too, that neither the western Allies nor – despite what Oshima had told him – the Soviets would look for peace with Germany while they were militarily so totally in the ascendancy.
As the supreme propagandist of old, he could always summon up absolute conviction when addressing an audience and needing to persuade them that what he was proposing was the only alternative on offer. It had proved his greatest strength since the early 1920s. The hints of pessimism – or greater realism – to Below and others in the weeks before the Ardennes offensive, even though only momentary slips of his guard, suggest, however, that Hitler was well aware of the size of the gamble in the Ardennes. He had to take it because, indeed, from his perspective, there was no alternative way out. If the long-shot were to come off, he reasoned, and a serious defeat were to be inflicted on the western powers while new German weaponry started to come into operation and before the expected Soviet winter offensive could begin, then new options could open up. At any rate, the only alternative to the gamble, as he saw it, was to fight for every inch of German soil in a rearguard struggle certain ultimately to end not just in defeat but in Germany’s total destruction – and his own. The gamble had to be taken.
‘Operation Autumn Mist’ – the Ardennes offensive – began in the early morning of 16 December. All possible reserves had been mustered. Around 200,000 German troops backed by 600 tanks were launched against a front comprising around 80,000 American soldiers with 400 tanks.308 The weather was perfect for the German attack, with heavy cloud hindering enemy aircraft. The American forces were taken by surprise. Sepp Dietrich’s SS Panzer Army soon encountered strong defence on the north of the front and could make only slow progress. Manteuffel’s 5th Panzer Army broke through in the south, however, and pressed forward in a deep cut of some sixty-five miles to within a few miles of the river Meuse, laying siege to the town of Bastogne, an important communications point. But aware that American troops were on their way to break the encirclement, Brigadier-General Anthony McAuliffe, commander of the trapped 101st Airborne Division, could offer a straightforward one-word answer to surrender demands: ‘Nuts!’309 Bastogne held out, tying down three German divisions in the process before eventually being relieved by General Patton’s 3rd US Army.
Ma
nteuffel’s advance had meanwhile slowed, handicapped by difficult terrain, bad weather, broken bridges, and fuel shortages as well as increasingly stiff American resistance. On 24 December, the weather lifted, exposing the German troops to relentless air attacks by some 5,000 Allied aircraft. Troop movements could now only take place at night. Supply lines and German airfields were heavily bombed. German fighters suffered serious losses. Once Patton had broken through the German front to relieve Bastogne on 26 December, Manteuffel had to give up any hopes of advancing further. ‘Operation Autumn Mist’ had failed.310
Hitler was still not prepared, however, to bow to the inevitable. As a diversion, he ordered a subsidiary offensive in the north of Alsace (‘Operation North Wind’). The aim was to cut off and destroy the American forces in the north-eastern corner of Alsace, enabling Manteuffel to continue the main offensive in the Ardennes.311 Once more Hitler addressed the commanders of the operation. And once more he laid the stress on pyschological motivation – the all-or-nothing nature of the struggle for Germany’s existence. The problem Germany faced, he began, had to be solved, and would be solved – either to Germany’s advantage, or by bringing the country’s ‘annihilation (Vernichtung)’. It was not, as in earlier wars, a case of an honourable peace being granted by the victors, should Germany be defeated. The war, he declared, would decide ‘the existence of the substance of our German people’. Enemy victory ‘must necessarily bolshevize Europe’. It was a matter not of alteration to the form of state, but of the very substance of the people. If not sustained, it would cease to exist. ‘Elimination destroys such a race under certain circumstances for ever,’ he stated.312 They should not imagine, he added, that he was thereby contemplating for a second the loss of the war. He gave a glimpse of his own psychological motivation underpinning his all-or-nothing philosophy. ‘I have never in my life come to know the term capitulation, and I am one of the men who have worked themselves up from nothing. For me, then, the situation that we find ourselves in is nothing new. The situation was for me at one time a quite different one, and much worse. I’m telling you this only so that you can judge why I pursue my goal with such fanaticism and why nothing can wear me down.’313