Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis (Allen Lane History)

by Ian Kershaw

17. BA/MA, RW19/56, Wehrwirtschaftsinspektion VI, July 1939.

  18. See the references in Ch.5 n. 41. Though it never posed any serious danger to the regime, the illegal oppositional activity of the Left, especially the Communists, never ceased and appears to have intensified in the years immediately before the war. See Klaus Mammach, ‘Widerstandsaktionen und oppositionelles Verhalten’, in Eichholtz and Pätzold, 403–34.

  19. BA, R43II/194, Fol.103.

  20. IfZ, Doc. NG-5428.

  21. BA, R43II/528. Lammers also regularly brought the reports of the Reich Labour Minister to Hitler’s attention in the years 1935–7, but ceased to do so after 5 January 1938 (R43II/533).

  22. BA, R43II/195,Fol.182.

  23. See Speer, 229.

  24. See Mason, Sozialpolitik, ch.1.

  25. Treue, ‘Hitlers Rede vor der deutschen Presse’, 188–9.

  26. Wiedemann, 90.

  27. Domarus, 1317.

  28. See Below, 162.

  29. Schneider, 24 October 1952, 8.

  30. See Thies, Architekt; and Jost Dülffer, Jochen Thies, and Josef Henke (eds.), Hitlers Städte. Baupolitik im Dritten Reich. Eine Dokumentation, Cologne, 1978.

  31. See Martin Broszat and Klaus Schwabe (eds.), Die deutschen Eliten und der Weg in den Zweiten Weltkrieg, Munich, 1989, especially 61–71 (Hitler); 133 (industry’s worries about war); 224–5 (role of diplomats); 285–90 (position of the military after Munich); 383ff. (agrarians’ hopes from expansion).

  32. See Fritsch’s remark to von Hassell in December 1938: ‘This man – Hitler – is Germany’s fate for better or worse. If it is now into the abyss,’ which Fritsch thought likely, ‘he will drag us all down with him. There’s nothing to be done’ (Hassell, 71). The remarks betray little recognition of the part Fritsch and those like him had played in placing Hitler in such a position.

  33. CD 78, for the length of the speech.

  34. Domarus, 1137–8.

  35. Below, 161.

  36. Domarus, 1173.

  37. Domarus, 1148–79 (for the text of the speech; Roosevelt ‘answers’, 1166–79); Shirer, 133, for the laughter of the. deputies.

  38. Schneider, Nr.48, 28.22.52, 8.

  39. Below, 162. See also Shirer, 133, who thought Hitler’s reply ‘rather shrewd’ in playing to the sympathies of the appeasers.

  40. Shirer, 133.

  41. Domarus, 1158–9.

  42. Watt, How War Came, 196–7; Dirks/Janßen, 94ff.

  43. Domarus, 1161 —3.

  44. Weinberg II, 560 and n.87, and see 561 and n.90. The avoidance of further negotiations from this date favours the interpretation that Hitler had decided to solve the ‘Polish Question’ by force. (For differing positions on this point, see Müller, Heer, 391, and Henke, England, 242–5.) It is not consonant with the view that he still believed that the Poles could be coerced into accepting his terms. (Watt, How War Came, 196.)

  45. Müller, Heer, 392 and n.73; see also Weinberg II, 558 and n.78.

  46. Müller, Heer, 390–91 and n.67.

  47. Müller, 392. Halder had reservations (393–6), but, in discussions with Beck, one of his arguments about the lack of prospect of opposition was that Danzig was unquestionably a German city (395–6). See also Below, 175; also, Hartmann/Slutsch, ‘Franz Halder und die Kriegsvorbereitungen im Frühjahr 1939’ for Halder’s aggressive speech to military leaders in April 1939, cited in the previous chapter.

  48. Dülffer, Marine, 507, 510, 529–30. According to Below, 163, those present were expecting a discussion of ‘Fall Weiß’ (‘Case White’), the plan for the attack on Poland.

  49. Weinberg II, 576.

  50. Brauchitsch claimed after the war to remember Hitler’s words at this point: ‘I would have to be an idiot to slide into a war on account of Poland like the incapable lot (die Unfähigen) of 1914’ (/MCxx.623).

  51. IMG, xxxvii.546–56, Doc.079-L; DGFP, D, VI, 574–80 (quotations 576–80); Domarus, 1196–1201; Below, 163–4 for reactions. See also Weinberg II, 579–83.

  52. Mario Toscano, The Origins of the Pact of Steel, Baltimore, 1967, 367 (and chs. 4–5 for the genesis and significance of the pact).

  53. CD, 46.

  54. Weinberg II. 565–6.

  55. DGFP, D, VI, 450–52, No.341; see also Bloch, 225; and Toscano, Pact of Steel, 307–34; and, for Hitler’s comment on Ribbentrop, CD, 91.

  56. By 1939, Sweden and Norway supplied 54 per cent of Germany’s imports of iron-ore, with 13 per cent coming from France, 8 per cent from Luxemburg, and most of the remainder from Spain, North Africa, and Newfoundland (Lotte Zumpe, Wirtschaft und Staat in Deutschland 1933 bis 194S, East Berlin, 1980, 175).

  57. Weinberg II, 581, 584–93, and, a more negative assessment, Bloch, 223. For the level of economic penetration of the Balkan countries, see also Alan S. Milward, ‘Fascism and the Economy’, in Walter Laqueur (ed.), Fascism. A Reader’s Guide, Harmondsworth 1979, 409–53, here 440–41; and George W. F. Hallgarten and Joachim Radkau, Deutsche Industrie und Politik von Bismarck bis in die Gegenwart, Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1981,330–32. Wendt, Großdeutschland, 167–9,245–8, indicates the continued serious deficiencies for the German economy in 1939 despite such penetration.

  58. Bloch, 235. According to Below, 155, Hitler had also begun to play with such ideas following the occupation of Czechoslovakia. At this point, Hitler was, he himself later claimed, unsure whether to strike first in the east or in the west (Domarus, 1422–3 (from Hitler’s speech to military leaders on 23 November 1939)).

  59. See Ribbentrop, Zwischen London und Moskau, 171; Wolfgang Michalka, Ribbentrop und die deutsche Weltpolitik 1933–1940. Außenpolitische Konzeptionen und Entscheidungsprozesse im Dritten Reich, Munich, 1979, 278–9; and Wolfgang Michalka, ‘From the Anti-Comintern Pact to the Euro-Asiatic Bloc: Ribbentrop’s Alternative Concept to Hitler’s Foreign Policy Programme’, in Koch, Aspects, 267–84, here 275–8.

  60. Weinberg II, 550–53, 568–77; Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin. Parallel Lives, London, 1991, 676–7; Bloch, 235; Geoffrey Roberts, The Unholy Alliance. Stalin’s Pact with Hitler, London, 1989, 109–19; Watt, How War Came, ch. 13. Carley, 1939: the Alliance that Never Was, examines in detail the failings of the French and British negotiations with the USSR.

  61. Roberts, 151–4.

  62. Ribbentrop Memoirs, 109. For Stalin’s speech, Roberts, 118; Weinberg II, 550. Ribbentrop (if his recollections were accurate) was reading too much into Stalin’s speech. Stalin was, in fact, keeping his options open by indicating that the Soviet Union intended to keep its distance from any war among capitalist-imperialist states (Weinberg II, 550).

  63. Peter Kleist, Die europäische Tragödie, Göttingen, 1961, 52.

  64. DGFP, D, VI, 266–7 (here 266), N0.215.

  65. Gustav Hilger and Holger G. Meyer, The Incompatible Allies: A Memoir-History of German-Soviet Relations 1918–1941, New York, 1953, 293–7. Hilger believed that Litvinov had been dismissed because he had pressed for an understanding with Britain and France, while Stalin had been more inclined to look to Germany. See also Bloch, 236; and Weinberg II, 570–72, for the change of Soviet foreign minister. Hitler referred to the significance of the dismissal of Litvinov in his speech to his generals on 22 August 1939 (Winfried Baumgart, ‘Zur Ansprache Hitlers vor den Führern der Wehrmacht am 22. August 1939. Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung’, VfZ, 16 (1968), 120–49, here 145), and in his letter to Mussolini of 25 August 1939 (Domarus, 1254).

  66. Kleist, 58.

  67. Weinberg II, 573–4.

  68. Below, 170.

  69. Bloch, 236; Weinberg II, 573.

  70. Weinberg II, 574; Bloch, 236.

  71. DGFP, D, VI, 589–93, 597–8, Nos.441, 446 (quotation, 598).

  72. DGFP, D, VI, 790, 810, 813, Nos. 570, 583, 588.

  73. Weinberg II, 604–5; Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, 678; Bloch, 237.

  74. DGFP, D, VI, 755–6 (quotation 755), N0.700.

  75. DGFP, D, VI, 1006–9, No.729; and Anthony Read and David Fisher, Th
e Deadly Embrace, London, 1988, 122–6.

  76. DGFP, D, VI, 1047–8 (here 1048), N0.757.

  77. DGFP, D, VI, 1059–62 (here 1060), 1067–8, Nos.766, 772.

  78. DGFP, D, VI, 1006–9, 1015–16, 1047–8, Nos.729, 736, 757; Weizsäcker-Papiere, 157 (entry for 30 July 1939); Weinberg II, 605.

  79. DGFP, D, VI, 1059–62, No.766. Molotov had been ‘unusually open’ (1059) and twice mentioned ‘well-known demands on Poland’ (1060–61).

  80. Weinberg II, 604.

  81. CP, 300, 304; DGFP, D, VII, 39–49 (quotation, 47), N0.43.

  82. Domarus, 1217.

  83. Keitel, 206; Domarus, 1214; Irving, Führer, 190.

  84. Below, 166–9.

  85. Below, 172–4.

  86. Domarus, 1217–19.

  87. Schneider, Nr.44, 31 October 1952.

  88. Kubizek, 282–6.

  89. CD, 91 (21 May 1939). Ciano had found Hitler well, but looking older, with more wrinkled eyes. He remarked on Hitler’s insomnia.

  90. Schneider, Nr.43, 24 October 1952, 1,8. See also Sereny, Speer, 193–5.

  91. Seraphim, Rosenberg-Tagebuch, 81 (6 February 1939). Rosenberg’s opinion that Goebbels was so disliked was based, to go from the context of his remarks, on the Propaganda Minister’s use of his power for the sexual exploitation of young women hoping for career-advancement. In conversation with Himmler, Rosenberg also went on to criticize Goebbels for the damage to the state caused by the ‘Reichskristallnacht’ pogrom.

  92. See Martens, 178ff., 199; Kube, 312; Irving, Göring, 247–54.

  93. Sereny, 206.

  94. Weizsäcker, Erinnerungen, 234.

  95. Weinberg II, 583–4 and n.199.

  96. Steinert, 84ff.; Ian Kershaw, ‘Der Überfall auf Polen und die öffentliche Meinung in Deutschland’, in Ernst Willi Hansen, Gerhard Schreiber, and Bernd Wegner (eds.), Politischer Wandel, organisierte Gewalt und nationale Sicherheit. Beiträge zur neueren Geschichte Deutschlands und Frankreichs. Festschrift für Klaus-Jürgen Müller, Munich, 1995, 237–50, here 239–45.

  97. DBS, vi.407ff.

  98. McKee, 27.

  99. StA Bamberg, K8/III, 18473, BA Ebermannstadt, no date (end of July 1939).

  100. DBS, vi.275.

  101. DBS, vi.561.

  102. DBS, vi.818.

  103. DBS, vi.409ff.

  104. Herbert S. Levine, Hitler’s Free City. A History of the Nazi Party in Danzig, 1925–39, Chicago/London, 1973, 151; and Weinberg II, 584 n.208.

  105. Carl J. Burckhardt, Meine Danziger Mission 1937–1939, Munich, 1962, 254–5 for the customs crisis.

  106. Burckhardt, 255–6.

  107. See Herbert S. Levine, ‘The Mediator: Carl J. Burckhardt’s Efforts to Avert a Second World War’, JMH, 45 (1973), 439–55. here 453–5.

  108. Burckhardt, 261–3; and see Paul Stauffer, Zwischen Hofmannsthal und Hitler. Carl J. Burckhardt: Facetten einer aussergewöhnlichen Existenz, Zurich, 1991, 141ff., who points out (152–3) that news of the ‘secret’ meeting was deliberately leaked in advance, almost certainly on Hitler’s initiative, in an attempt to demonstrate his openness to dialogue with the west, to the French journalist (known to have sympathized in the past with Nazi Germany) Bertrand de Jouvenel.

  109. Burckhardt, 264. The ‘Eagle’s Nest’, built at a height of almost 2,000 metres, some 800 metres higher up than the Berghof itself, was actually no ‘Tea House’. Hitler’s ‘Tea House’, the regular goal of his afternoon walks, lay below the Berghof. The name ‘Teehaus’ was a corruption of the official name D-Haus (Diplomaten-Haus), which betrayed the intention of making the maximum impression upon selected important foreign visitors. It had been designed by Bormann, with plans reaching back to 1936, as a present for Hitler’s fiftieth birthday. Around 3,500 men worked on it and, by the time that it was finished in summer 1938, it had cost some 30 million Reich Marks. During most of the war years it was empty and unused. (Ernst Hanisch, Der Obersalzberg: das Kehlsteinhaus und Adolf Hitler, Berchtesgaden, 1995, 18–21; Below, 124. See the impressions of François-Poncet, Als Botschafter, 395–7.)

  110. Below, 124.

  111. Schneider, Nr.46, 14 November 1952, 8; Speer, 176.

  112. At his first visit to the ‘Eagle’s Nest’ the previous summer, Hitler had mentioned that he would take up there visitors he wanted especially to honour or impress (Below, 124).

  113. Schneider, Nr.46, 14 November 1952, 8.

  114. Burckhardt, 264–70; English text in DBFP, Ser.3, VI, 691–6, No. 659, (quotations, 694–5). See Watt, How War Came, 332, for the description of Ironside. The Ironside suggestion was also advanced by Weizsäcker, and by Henderson, but it was eventually decided in London that he would not be an appropriate person to send (Meehan, 232–3, 235). The British Embassy in Paris had warned the Foreign Office that it might be damaging to good relations between France and Britain were the Ironside proposal to be accepted without consultation with the French (Stauffer, 154).

  115. Burckhardt met, in the house of his mother in Basel, Roger Makins from the British Foreign Office and Pierre Arnal of the Quai d’Orsay already on 13 August. Makins’s report on the meeting (DBFP, Ser.3, VI, 691–5, No.659) was largely dictated by Burckhardt, and was translated into German for Meine Danziger Mission, 264ff (Stauffer, 141, 179, 182).

  116. DBFP, Ser.3, VI, 696, N0.659; Stauffer, 140–41.

  117. The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, 195.

  118. DBFP, Ser.3, VI, 697–8, No.659; Watt, How War Came, 435. Makins’s report, later reproduced by Burckhardt in his book, did not include remarks by Hitler which the High Commissioner added in his memoirs, written more than twenty years later, claiming, somewhat remarkably, that they had not struck him at the time: ‘Everything that I undertake is directed against Russia. If those in the West are too stupid and too blind to understand this, then I shall be forced to come to an understanding with the Russians to beat the West, and then, after its defeat, turn with all my concerted force against the Soviet Union. I need the Ukraine, so that no one will starve us out as they did in the last war’ (Burckhardt, 272; trans. Klaus Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich, London, 1973, 88). Hildebrand and others have taken it for granted that the comments were intended to carry weight in London. There is, however, no indication that they were passed on, even unofficially. Neither Halifax in his memoirs, nor Cadogan in his diaries, refers to the remarks. Despite the passage finding its way into practically every account of Burckhardt’s meeting with Hitler, it is not surprising that many doubts have been raised about its authenticity. It seems on first impression inherently unlikely that Hitler would have made such comments, knowing that Burckhardt was meant to report the content of the conversation to the western powers at a time when discussions for a pact with the Russians were at such a delicate stage and when those between the Soviet Union and the western democracies were still dragging on. An extant copy of Burckhardt’s own sparse notes of Hitler’s comments, undated but allegedly from the day of his meeting with the Nazi leader, does indicate that Hitler, having stated he was not bluffing and would strike hard, did remark that ‘he would only temporarily come to an arrangement with Russia, then after victory [over] the West attack with entire force on account of Ukraine!! Grain, timber!’ (cit. Stauffer, 188). The original is, however, not contained in Burckhardt’s papers (Stauffer, 308 n.33) and, so it seems, has never been seen. Though Stauffer, after careful inquiry (178–201), is prepared to grant the benefit of doubt as regarding the authenticity of the document (189–90), a question-mark must remain until the original – allegedly held in a bank-vault – is produced. Burckhardt produced no compelling reason why he omitted to mention Hitler’s remark to Makins. If the document is taken to be authentic, the best gloss is perhaps that Hitler’s remarks struck Burckhardt as, in essence, uttered in the heat of the moment, nothing different from that which Hitler had written in Mein Kampf, and consequently uninteresting to the western governments. Hitler had spoken earlier in the meeting of the need for land in the e
ast and the need to secure grain and timber, and the near repetition of the point perhaps made little mark on Burckhardt at the time. In any event, his published version of the remarks must be regarded as a later embellishment on Burckhardt’s part – not the only one in his published memoirs.

  119. CP, 297–9.

  120. CD, 124.

  121. CP, 299–303. Just over a week later, on 20 August, the former head of the London branch of the German News Agency, Fritz Hesse, was conveying to the British Government, on the authorization of Ribbentrop, the impression not simply of Hitler’s determination to resolve the Danzig issue, come what may, but – probably to be seen as bluff – of his awareness ‘that if war should break out between Germany and Poland Great Britain will be in it’. (Josef Henke, ‘Hitler und England Mitte August 1939. Ein Dokument zur Rolle Fritz Hesse in den deutsch-britischen Beziehungen am Vorabend des Zweiten Weltkrieges’, VfZ, 21 (1973), 231–42, especially 240 and (for the quotation) 241. Henke (and Hesse himself, as he later stated) regarded the remarks as a genuine reflection of Hitler’s views at the time, not as a tactical calculation – see 236 and n.20.) The claims made by Hesse in his book, Fritz Hesse, Das Spiel um Deutschland, Munich, 1953, about the importance of his role as an intermediary between the German and British governments in the last weeks of peace are greatly exaggerated.

  122. CD, 124.

  123. DGFP, D, VII, 39–49 (48–9 for the interruption in the talks), 58–9, Nos. 43, 50; CP, 302.

  124. DGFP, D, VII, 68–9, No.62; Bloch, 240; Read and Fisher, The Deadly Embrace, 193–4.

  125. Bloch, 240. Ribbentrop Memoirs, 109–10, suggest that the Foreign Minister had himself proposed Göring. Since the two were arch-rivals, this sounds inherently unlikely. Ribbentrop’s comment that he knew nothing at this time of Hitler’s intention to attack Poland is not credible.

  126. Bloch, 241–4.

  127. DGFP, D, VII, 142–8, 152–3, Nos.131, 135. It was agreed on 19 August and signed, after some further delay from the Moscow end, at 2 a.m. on 20 August.

  128. DGFP, D, VII, 134, No.125; Read and Fisher, The Deadly Embrace, 214.

  129. That Hitler was planning to attack Poland by the end of August or beginning of September had been known to Stalin since June (Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin. Triumph and Tragedy, (1991), Rocklin Ca., 1996, 357). The frenetic diplomatic activity in Berlin in mid-August was an indicator to Stalin and Molotov that the date of the invasion was close (Weinberg II, 608). Bloch, 244, states (without source) that Stalin and Molotov knew that Hitler was intending to invade on 26 August.