Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis (Allen Lane History)

by Ian Kershaw

  235. Hewel recorded the ‘very depressed mood (sehr deprimierte Stimmung)’ among the Nazi leadership on account of the fate of the Bismarck. Hitler was ‘endlessly sad (unendlich traurig)’, and had ‘immeasurable anger at the navy leadership (Maßlose Wut auf Seekriegsleitung)’ for failure to adopt the correct tactics and unnecessary exposure of the Bismarck. (IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Hewel-Tagebuch, entries for 26 May, especially, 27 May, and 31 May 1941. See also Raeder, Mein Leben, ii.269–71; Lagevorträge, 239 (6 June 1941); Irving, HW, 254, 258.)

  236. Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men. Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York, 1992, 11.

  237. Anatomie, ii. 176–82, 2o6ff.

  238. Krausnick/Wilhelm, 141–50; Höhne, Death’s Head, 328–30.

  239. Höhne, Death’s Head, 328.

  240. Krausnick/Wilhelm, 148.

  241. Ulrich Herbert, ’ “Generation der Sachlichkeit”. Die völkische Studentenbewegung der frühen zwanziger Jahre in Deutschland’, in Frank Bajohr, Werner Johe and Uwe Lohalm (eds.), Zivilisation und Barbarei, Hamburg, 1991, 115–44, especially 137–8.

  242. Krausnick/Wilhelm, 148–9.

  243. Höhne, Death’s Head, 330.

  244. TBJG, I/9, 346 (31 May 1941).

  245. Domarus, 1722.

  246. CD, 352 (1 June 1941).

  247. IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Hewel-Tagebuch, entry for 2 June 1941; Irving, HW, 262. Hitler told Goebbels just before the invasion that Mussolini had been broadly orientated during their Brenner meeting (TBJG, I/9, 395 (22 June 1941)).

  248. CD, 352 (2 June 1941).

  249. Hitler, noted Goebbels on the day that ‘Barbarossabegan, had nothing but contempt for Heß, who had caused the Party and the Wehrmacht enormous damage and ought to have been shot, had he not been mad (TBJG, I/9, 395–6 (22 June 1941)).

  250. CP, 442.

  251. Staatsmänner I, 260–76.

  252. CD, 352 (1 June 1941); CP, 441; Staatsmänner I, 262–3.

  253. Staatsmänner I, 264–6, 269–72, 276.

  254. See Schmidt, 550.

  255. Domarus, 1722.

  256. CD, 352 (2 June 1941).

  257. IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Hewel-Tagebuch, entry for 3 June 1941; Irving, HW, 262; Bernd Martin, Deutschland und Japan im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Göttingen, 1969, 97 n.13; Boyd, 21.

  258. Staatsmänner I, 277–91.

  259. Staatsmänner I, 279, 285, 289 and n.39.

  260. Staatsmänner I, 280 n.14, 288 n.36, 289 n.39.

  261. Staatsmänner I, 284–90.

  262. Staatsmänner I, 291.

  263. Below, 277.

  264. Halder KTB, 455 (14 June 1941). Despite this apparent confidence, he had, in fact, only three days earlier issued Directive 32, laying out operational plans for continuing the struggle against the British position in the Mediterranean, North Africa, and the Middle East (Weisungen, 151ff.).

  265. Below, 277.

  266. Below, 278.

  267. The following from TBJG, I/9, 377–80 (16 June 1941).

  268. Below, 272–3. Goebbels was himself aware of accurate rumours and a good deal of tension both at home and abroad about the impending ‘action’ (TBJG, I/9, 372 (14 June 1941), 387 (19 June I941)).

  269. BA/MA, RW 20–13/9, ‘Geschichte der Rüstungs-Inspektion XII’, Fol.156: ‘Die Konzentration zahlreicher Truppen in den Ostgebieten batte zwar die Vermutung aufkommen lassen, als bereiten sich dort bedeutungsvolle Ereignisse vor, jedoch glaubte wobl der überwiegende Teil des deutschen Volkes an keine kriegerische Auseinandersetzung mit der Sow jet-Union.’

  270. TBJG, I/9, 380 (16 June 1941).

  271. TBJG, I/9, 387 (19 June 1941); Tb Reuth, 1606 has 800,000. Goebbels had noted some days earlier that 30 million leaflets had been prepared in the Propaganda Ministry for distribution about the war in the east (TBJG, I/9, 366–7 (12 June 1941)).

  272. Below, 278; TBJG, I/9, 395 (22 June 1941). Goebbels suggested a few alterations.

  273. Below, 178–9; TBJG, I/9, 395 (22 June 1941).

  274. TBJG, I/9, 395–6 (22 June 1941).

  275. According to KTB OKW, i.408 (22 June 1941), the attack began at 3a.m. Domarus, 1733, has it beginning at 3.05a.m.; DRZW, iv.451, states that it began between 3.00 and 3.30, noting (n.1) that the variations in time arose from the differing point of sunrise along such a lengthy front. TBJG, I/9, 396 (22 June 1941), has ‘3.30. Now the guns are thundering.’

  276. TBJG, I/9, 396 (22 June 1941); Tb Reuth, 1611 n.128.

  277. Domarus, 1727.

  278. Domarus, 1731.

  279. Domarus, 1732.

  280. Domarus, 1735–6.

  281. DGFP, D, XII, 1066–9, No.660, quotation 1069.

  CHAPTER 9: SHOWDOWN

  1. TBJG, II/1, 36–7 (9 July 1941); Domarus, 1732. Hitler was by summer 1942 sufficiently aware that the parallel was being drawn that he had ‘experts’ counter the talk by declaring that Napoleon really only commenced his march into Russia on 23 June (Picker, 462 (19 July 1942)).

  2. DRZW, iv.72, 75; Leach, 192; Omer Bartov, ‘From Blitzkrieg to Total War: Controversial Links between Image and Reality’, in Kershaw and Lewin, 158–84, here 165 (who points out that the Luftwaffe deployed significantly fewer aircraft than in the Western campaign); Hartmut Schustereit, Vabanque: Hitler’s Angriff auf die Sowjetunion 1941 als Versuch, durcb den Sieg im Osten den Westen zu bezwingen, Herford, 1988, 30–41. A detailed evaluation of the rival forces and the early military operations is provided by David M. Glantz (ed.), The Initial Period of War on the Eastern Front, 22 June-August 1941, London, 1993; see 29–31 for Soviet troop dispositions and deployment on 22 June 1941.

  3. DRZW, iv.Beiheft, maps 5, 7; Domarus, 1744 for the fall of Minsk, reported on 10 July.

  4. See above all Gerd R. Ueberschär and Lev A. Bezymenskij (eds.), Der deutsche Überfall auf die Sowjetunion. Die Kontroverse um die Präventivkriegsthese, Darmstadt, 1988, here especially VIII-IX, 59, 100–101, and, for the plan of Timoshenko and Zhukov, 186–93. See also Gabriel Gorodetsky, ‘Stalin und Hitlers Angriff auf die Sowjetunion. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Legende vom deutschen Präventivschlag’, VfZ, 37 (1989), 645–72; and Bianka Pietrow, ‘Deutschland im Juni 1941 – ein Opfer sowjetischer Aggression? Zur Kontroverse über die Präventivkriegsthese’, GG, 14 (1988), 116–35. Stalin had in a speech on 5 May warned a large audience of graduates from Soviet military academies that war was imminent. But the belated discovery of a text of the speech, of which all copies were thought lost, has disproved those reports suggesting that Stalin was advocating a preventive war against Germany. See Lev A. Bezymenskij, ‘Stalins Rede vom 5. Mai 1941 – neu dokumentiert’, in Ueberschär and Bezymenskij, 131–44; also DGFP, D, XII, 964–5, No.593; Alexander Werth, Russia at War 1941–1945, New York (1964), 1984,122–3; John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad. Stalin’s War with Germany, London, (1975), Phoenix paperback edn, 1998, 82; Falin, 194—7; Weinberg III, 203—4, Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, 791, 798—9, 807.

  5. Bullock, Hitler and Stalin, 791–3.

  6. Volkogonov, 411–13.

  7. Bernd Bonwetsch, ‘Stalin, the Red Army, and the “Great Patriotic War” ’, in Kershaw and Lewin, 185–207, here 188, 193–5; and see Glantz, Initial Period, 31.

  8. Soviet captives numbered some 3.8 million by the end of 1941, and 5.25 million by the end of the war (DRZW, iv.727 (586 n.523 for slightly different figures for the numbers captured by late 1941)). At least 2½ million died in German captivity, apart from a minimum of 140,000 liquidated immediately on capture (DRZW, iv.730; Streit, ch.VII). Goebbels spoke in mid-December of 900,000 already dead of hunger, exhaustion, and illness, with many more certain to die in the next weeks and months (TBJG, II.2, 484 (12 December 1941)). Shortly before this, Göing had spoken to Ciano of cannibalism in the Russian prison-of-war camps (CP, 464–5 (24–27 November 1941)).

  9. Bonwetsch, 189.

  10. See Streit, ch.VI; DRZW, iv.Teil II, Kap.VII; Omer Bartov, The Eastern Front, 1941–45, German
Troops, and the Barbarisation of Warfare, New York, 1986, Ch.4.

  11. Volkogonov, 413; Irving, HW, 286–7.

  12. IMG, xxxviii. 86–94, Doc. 221 – L; Klee and Dreßen, ‘Gott mit uns’, 23 (meeting of 16 July 1941). For the Wehrmacht’s brutal struggle against the partisans, see Hannes Heer, ‘Die Logik des Vernichtungskriegs. Wehrmacht und Partisanenkampf’, in Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann (eds.), Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944, Hamburg, 1995, 104–38; Hannes Heer, ‘Killing Fields: the Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belorussia, 1941–1942’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 11 (1997), 79—101; Lutz Klinkhammer, ‘Der Partisanenkrieg der Wehrmacht 1941 – 1944’ and Timm C. Richter, ‘Die Wehrmacht und der Partisanenkrieg in den besetzten Gebieten der Sowjetunion’, both in Müllier and Volkmann, Die Wehrmacht, 815–36, 837–57.

  13. TBJG, I/9, 398 (23 June 1941).

  14. Below, 253, 281.

  15. Domarus, 1743 for the name ‘Wolf; Schroeder, 111.

  16. Below, 281–2; Warlimont, 172–3; Alfons Schulz, Drei Jahre in der Nachrichtenzentrale des Führerhauptquartiers, Stein am Rhein, 1996, 30—31, 39ff.; Hitler’s succession decree relating to Göring in Domarus, 1741.

  17. Schroeder, 116, 120–21; Below, 282–3. Schroeder implies that the second briefing of the day, as later in the war, was late in the evening. But Below is precise in stipulating that it took place during the early weeks of the campaign at 6 p.m.

  18. Schroeder, 115.

  19. Schroeder, 120–21.

  20. Schroeder, 113.

  21. Below, 282–3, 285.

  22. IMG, xv, 325. See also Picker, 374 (28 May 1942), where life at FHQ was referred to by Picker as a ‘monastic existence (Klösterdasein)’.

  23. Schroeder, 119, 121–2.

  24. Schroeder, 111–12. Goebbels remarked on the swarms of midges in the area when he first visited FHQ on 8 July 1941 (TBJG, II/1, 30 (9 July 1941)).

  25. Schroeder, 112.

  26. Schroeder, 125.

  27. Below, 283.

  28. Schroeder, 113–14. For similarly optimistic notions from the OKW and Ribbentrop around this time, see Irving, HW, 282. In the earlier version of her memoirs, noted by Zoller, Hitler allegedly added that he would build a reservoir (Staubecken) on the site of Moscow (Zoller, 143).

  29. Schroeder, 120.

  30. TBJG, II/1, 30 (9 July 1941).

  31. TBJG, II/1, 35 (9 July 1941).

  32. TBJG, II/1, 32–5 (9 July 1941).

  33. Schroeder, 113.

  34. Staatsmänner I, 293. Oshima was impressed by what he heard of German progress in the war and recommended to his government that Japan quickly strike against the Soviet Union in the east (Boyd, 27).

  35. Schroeder, 114.

  36. Below, 283; Domarus, 1740.

  37. TBJG, I/9, 412 (30 June 1941). Domarus, 1740 n.323 mistakenly suggests that the ‘Russian Fanfare’ was based upon Liszt’s ‘Hungarian Rhapsody’ instead of his Symphonic Poem No. 3, ‘Les Préludes’.

  38. TBJG, I/9, 412, 415–16 (30 July 1941), 415–16 (1 July 1941), 426 (5 July 1941).

  39. Willi A. Boelcke (ed.), Wollt Ihr den totalen Krieg? Die geheimen Goebbels-Konferenzen 1939–1943, Munich, 1969, 235–7; Tb Reuth, 1623 n.144. And see Wolfram Wette, ‘Die propagandistische Begleitmusik zum deutschen Überfall auf die Sowjetunion am 22. Juni 1941’, in Gerd R. Ueberschär and Wolfram Wette (eds.), ‘Unternehmen Barbarossa’. Der deutsche Überfall auf die Sowjetunion 1941. Berichte, Analysen, Dokumente, Paderborn, 1984, 111–29, here especially 118–19.

  40. See TBJG, II/1, 30–9 (9 July 1941): ‘The Führer is blazing about the Bolshevik leadership clique which intended to invade Germany, and thus Europe, and at the last moment, with the Reich weakened, to carry out the attempt to bolshevize the continent that had been planned since 1917’ (31). ‘The preventive war is always still the surest and mildest, if there is certainty that the enemy will in any case attack at the first best opportunity; and that was the case with Bolshevism’ (33). ‘Without doubt [the Kremlin] wanted this autumn, when we had no further possibility of aggressive action against Russia on account of the weather, to occupy Romania. Through this the Kremlin would have cut off our petroleum supply’ (38). Hitler told his entourage in mid-September: ‘It needed the greatest strength to take the decision last year for the attack on Bolshevism. I had to reckon that Stalin would go over to the attack in the course of this year. It was necessary to move as soon as at all possible. The earliest date was June 1941.’ (Monologe, 60–61 (17–18 September 1941).)

  41. DRZW, iv.461.

  42. Leach, 200.

  43. Leach, 202.

  44. KTB OKW, i.1021; DRZW, iv.487; Leach, 201.

  45. Halder KTB, iii, 38; trans. Halder Diary, 446–7 (3 July 1941).

  46. Monologe, 39 (5–6 July 1941).

  47. ‘Aufzeichnungen des persönlichen Referenten Rosenbergs Dr Koeppen über Hitlers Tischgesprä-che 1941’(= Koeppen), Fol. 15 (19 September 1941). In fact, as the hopes of the Volkswagenwerk of returning to production of cars for civilian use dimmed over the summer and autumn of 1941, the campaign in the east demanded the production of more and more tanks. (See Hans Mommsen and Manfred Grieger, Das Volkswagenwerk und seine Arbeiter im Dritten Reich, Düsseldorf, 1996, 453, 46off.)

  48. Monologe, 39 (5–6 July 1941).

  49. Koeppen, Fol.9 (10 September 1941).

  50. Koeppen, Fol.12 (19 September 1941). Goebbels reported Hitler’s intention on 18 August as the starvation of St Petersburg (Leningrad) and Kiev. Once Leningrad had been put under siege and the bombardment had taken place, ran Hitler’s plan, ‘there would probably not be much left of this city’ (TBJG, II/1, 260–61 (19 August 1941)).

  51. Monologe, 48 (27 July 1941).

  52. Koeppen, Fol.28 (23 September 1941).

  53. Monologe, 38 (5 July 1941).

  54. Koeppen, Fol.12 (19 September 1941).

  55. Koeppen, Fol.28 (24 September 1941).

  56. Monologe, 42 (11–12 July 1941).

  57. In September, Hitler commented that it would be a mistake to educate the native population. All this would achieve would be the sort of semi-knowledge that leads to revolution. (Monologe, 63 (17–18 September 1941); Koeppen, Fol.12 (18 September 1941).

  58. Monologe, 48 (27 July 1941).

  59. Monologe, 54–5 (8–11 August 1941).

  60. Monologe, 51 (1–2 August 1941).

  61. Monologe, 54 (8–11 August 1941).

  62. Monologe, 55 (8–11 August 1941). He repeated the sentiments in similar words a month later. ‘The Russian territory (Raum) is our India,’ he stated, ‘and just as the English rule it with a handful of people, so we will govern this, our colonial territory’ (Monologe, 62–3 (17–18 September 1941)); Koeppen, Fol.12 (18 September 1941).

  63. A month after these comments in mid–August, Hitler enthused about the capture of the iron-ore district of Kriwoi-Rog, whose productive capacity, he claimed, removed all worries about covering demand (Koeppen, Fol 10 (17 September 1941)).

  64. Monologe, 58 (19–20 August 1941).

  65. Monologe, 63 (17–18 September 1941).

  66. Monologe, 62 (17–18 September 1941).

  67. Monologe, 69–71 (25 September 1941).

  68. Monologe, 66 (23 September 1941).

  69. Monologe, 67 (23 September 1941); Koeppen, Fol.29 (23 September 1941).

  70. Monologe, 68 (25 September 1941). On 27–28 September, he spoke of the aim of fighting war ‘on the edges’ of German territory (Monologe, 72). Hitler had referred earlier to a ‘living wall’ to protect the new east ‘against the mid-Asian masses’ (Monologe, 55 (8–11 August 1941)). See also Rolf-Dieter Müller, Hitlers Ostkrieg und die deutsche Siedlungspolitik, Frankfurt am Main, 1991, 23–4.

  71. Monologe, 71 (25–6 September 1941).

  72. Monologe, 71 (25–6 September 1941).

  73. Monologe, 58 (19–20 August 1941).

  74. Monologe, 72 (27–8 September 1941).

  75. Monologe, 65 (22–3 Septemb
er 1941).

  76. Monologe, 65 (22–3 September 1941).

  77. An overemphasis on Hitler’s ‘modernity’ runs through the interpretation of Rainer Zitelmann, Hitler. Selbstverständnis eines Revolutionärs, Hamburg/Leamington Spa/New York, 1987. See also Rainer Zitelmann, Adolf Hitler. Eine politische Biographie, Göttingen, 1989, and his essay ‘Die totalitäre Seite der Moderne’, in Michael Prinz and Rainer Zitelmann (eds.), Nationalsozialismus und Modernisierung, Darmstadt, 1991, 1–20. For strong criticism of such an emphasis, see Hans Mommsen, ‘Nationalsozialismus als vorgetäuschte Modernisierung’, in Walter H. Pehle (ed.), Der historische Ort des Nationalsozialismus. Annäherungen, Frankfurt am Main, 1990,11–46; Norbert Frei, ‘Wie modern war der Nationalsozialismus?’, GG, 19 (1993), 367–87, here especially 374ff.; Axel Schildt, ‘NS-Regime, Modernisierung und Moderne. Anmerkungen zur Hochkonjunktur einer andauernden Diskussion’, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch für deutsche Geschichte, 23 (1994), 3–22, here especially 11ff.

  78. Monologe, 57 (8–11 August 1941).

  79. Monologe, 64 (17–18 September 1941).

  80. IMG, xxxviii, 86–94, quotation 87–8, Doc. 221-L; DGFP, 3, 13, 149–56, No.114; extracts in Klee and Dreßen, Gott mit uns, 22–3. See also Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia 1941–1945. A Study of Occupation Policies, (1957), 2nd edn, Basingstoke/London, 1981, 84, 123, 204; and Eberhard Jäckel, ‘Hitlers doppeltes Kernstück’, in Roland G. Foerster (ed.), ‘Unternehmen Barbarossa’. Zum historischen Ort der deutsch-sowjetischen Beziehungen von 1933 bis Herbst 1941, Munich, 1993, 14–22, here 14–18.

  81. IMG, xxix, 235–7, 1997-PS.

  82. CP, 465 (24–7 November 1941); Klee and Dreßen, Gott mit uns, 23; Halder KTB, ii.335–8 (30 March 1941); IMG, xxxi.135–7, 126-EC. The plans for mass deportation were in the process of being worked out for the ‘General Plan for the East’. See Helmut Heiber (ed.), ‘Der Generalplan Ost’, VfZ, 6 (1958), 281–325; Czeslaw Madajczyk (ed.), Vom Generalplan Ost zum Generalsiedlungsplan, Munich etc., 1994; Mechtild Rößler and Sabine Schleiermacher (eds.), Der ‘Generalplan Ost’. Hauptlinien der nationalsozialistischen Planungs- und Vernichtungspolitik, Berlin, 1993.