Hitler 1936-1945: Nemesis (Allen Lane History)

by Ian Kershaw

  313. Kehrig, Stalingrad. Analyse und Dokumentation, 219; Kehrig, ‘Die 6.Armee’, 86; DRZW, vi. 1025–6; Gruchmann, Zweiter Weltkrieg, 192.

  314. Kehrig, Stalingrad. Analyse und Dokumentation, 220; Kehrig, ‘Die 6.Armee’, 87; DRZW, vi.1028–9.

  315. Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 192.

  316. Kehrig, Stalingrad. Analyse und Dokumentation, 224; Kehrig, ‘Die 6.Armee’, 87–8; Manstein, 315; DRZW, vi.1032. Manstein’s own post-war account of Stalingrad (Manstein, 289–366) showed, naturally enough, his own actions in the best possible light. Hitler (almost exclusively), though to some extent Göring (for his unrealistic claims to relieve Stalingrad by air), and Paulus (for errors in not attempting to break out while there was still time) were held responsible for the débâcle. While Hitler’s disastrous leadership and overriding culpability are undeniable, it was accepted by a strong critic of Hitler’s direction of the war, former Army Operations Chief Adolf Heusinger, long after the war, that Manstein had to share some of the blame for the catastrophe. (Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York, Toland Tapes, T1-S1, interview of Adolf Heusinger by John Toland, 30 March 1970.) See also the critical assessments by Joachim Wieder and Heinrich Graf von Einsiedel (eds.), Stalingrad. Memories and Reassessments, (1962), London, 1997, 148–78; Beevor, 308–10; and, especially, DRZW, vi.1060–3. Less critical of Manstein is Geoffrey Jukes, Hitler’s Stalingrad Decisions, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, 1985, 106–47, where, however, Hitler’s disastrous role is portrayed within an increasingly overloaded process of decision-making, not just on the Stalingrad front.

  317. Manstein, 316; DRZW, vi.1033.

  318. Kehrig, Stalingrad. Analyse und Dokumentation, 386ff.; Kehrig, ‘Die 6.Armee’, 97–8; DRZW, vi.1033–4.

  319. Below, 324; Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 192–3. For Hoth’s attempt, DRZW, vi.1035ff.

  320. According to KTB OKW, ii/2, 1168 (21 December 1942), Manstein had stated at the briefing that the 6th Army could advance a maximum of 30 kilometres; Kehrig, ‘Die 6.Armee’, 99; Kehrig, Stalingrad. Analyse und Dokumentation, 334; DRZW, vi.1048.

  321. Kehrig, Stalingrad. Analyse und Dokumentation, 406–7; Kehrig, ‘Die 6.Armee’, 99–100.

  322. KTB OKW, ii/2, 1168 (21 December 1942).

  323. Kehrig, Stalingrad. Analyse und Dokumentation, 407; Kehrig, ‘Die 6.Armee’, 100; DRZW, vi.1048.

  324. Kehrig, Stalingrad. Analyse und Dokumentation, 410; Kehrig, ‘Die 6.Armee’, 100; DRZW, vi. 1048–9.

  325. Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 1 93.

  326. Kehrig, Stalingrad. Analyse und Dokumentation, 431–2; Kehrig, ‘Die 6.Armee’, 101.

  327. Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 1 93.

  328. Below, 324.

  329. Kehrig, ‘Die 6.Armee’, 102; Manstein, 373.

  330. Weinberg III, 441; Below, 329.

  331. Irving, Göring, 372–3.

  332. Weinberg III, 434, 436.

  333. Irving, Göring, 373.

  334. See The Rommel Papers, ed. B.H. Liddell Hart, London, 1953, 368–9.

  335. Staatsmänner II, 160–81 (18 December 1942), 190–6 (19 December 1942, 20 December 1942), here especially 165, 168–70, 195 (‘kriegsentscheidend’).

  336. CD, 536 (18 December 1942).

  337. CD, 535 (18 December 1942); Staatsmänner II, 169–70 (18 December 1942).

  338. Staatsmänner II, 192 (19 December 1942).

  339. William Craig, Enemy at the Gates. The Battle for Stalingrad, London, 1973, 295–6; Beevor, 313.

  340. Craig, 293.

  341. Kershaw, ‘Hitler Myth’, 191; Buchbender/Sterz, 99. For graphic accounts of the terrible conditions of the doomed army in its last weeks, see Beevor, especially ch. 19–22; and Craig, 259–381.

  342. Buchbender/Sterz, 102. Goebbels’s plans for an edition of last letters from soldiers at Stalingrad had to be abandoned when it transpired that most of them contained sentiments far from the heroic tone required. (Steinert, 328. See Letzte Briefe aus Stalingrad, Frankfurt am Main/Heidelberg, 1950, 5–6 (pointing out that only 2 per cent of the letters were favourably disposed towards the leadership of the war)).

  343. Letzte Briefe, 21.

  344. Letzte Briefe, 1 4.

  345. Letzte Briefe, 25.

  346. Letzte Briefe, 1 6–17.

  347. Below, 326.

  348. Below, 325–7.

  349. The above based on Kehrig, ‘Die 6.Armee’, 104–6; Below, 327; Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 1 94; DRZW, vi.1056–7.

  350. Boelcke, Wollt ihr, 422.

  351. Boelcke, Wollt ihr, 425–6; Steinert, 327. For Goebbels’s pressure for a reorientation of press and OKW propaganda, see TBJG, II/7, 164, 180 (23 January 1943).

  352. TBJG, II/7, 1 62, (23 January 1943).

  353. TBJG, II/7, 169, 173 (23 January 1943).

  354. TBJG, II/7, 162, 168–9 (23 January 1943).

  355. TBJG, II/7, 166 (23 January 1943).

  356. TBJG, II/7, 1 62, 168 (23 January 1943).

  357. TBJG, II/7, 162–3, 171–2 (23 January 1943).

  358. TBJG, II/7, 175 (23 January 1943).

  359. Kehrig, ‘Die 6.Armee’, 107; DRZW, vi.1057–8.

  360. Domarus, 1974.

  361. Kehrig, Stalingrad. Analyse und Dokumentation, 531; Kehrig, ‘Die 6.Armee’, 108; Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 1 94; DRZW, vi.1059–60.

  362. Kehrig, ‘Die 6.Armee’, 108.

  363. Domarus, 1975.

  364. This had been arranged at Goebbels’s visit to FHQ on 22 January (TBJG, II/7,173 (23 January 1943); the text is in Domarus, 1976–80).

  365. Domarus, 1979.

  366. Kehrig, ‘Die 6.Armee’, 108.

  367. Domarus, 1981.

  368. Kehrig, ‘Die 6.Armee’, 109. The splitting of the two pockets in Stalingrad, completed on 26 January, had led to a break in communications between them from the following day. Paulus commanded the larger, southern pocket (LB Darmstadt, 72 n.76). According to Lew Besymenski, who acted as interpreter at Paulus’s first interrogation after capture, the newly elevated field-marshal insisted on recognition of his new rank, denied that he had surrendered (claiming he had been ‘surprised’ by his assailants, although he had engaged in lengthy prior negotiations), and refused to sanction the capitulation of his men (despite his own surrender) as ‘unworthy of a soldier’. (‘“Nein, nein, das ist nicht mehr meine Pflicht”. Lew Besymenski über Stalingrad und seine Erlebnisse mit Generalfeldmarschall Paulus’, Der Spiegel, 37/1992, 170 – 71.)

  369. Gruchmann, Der Zweite Weltkrieg, 1 94; Kehrig, ‘Die 6.Armee’, 109.

  370. LB Darmstadt, 73 (1 February 1943).

  371. LB Darmstadt, 72.

  372. LB Darmstadt, 73.

  373. LB Darmstadt, 74 and n.84, 79.

  374. LB Darmstadt, 77, 79–80. Paulus entered Soviet captivity with the remainder of his troops, and was eventually released in 1953. In 1944 he provided support from Moscow for the ‘National Committee of Free Germany’, the organization initiated by the Soviet leadership and comprising exiled German Communists and prisoners-of-war, which sought – largely in vain – to subvert morale at the front among German troops and to incite resistance to the Nazi regime. Ernst Nolte, Der europäische Bürgerkrieg. Nationalsozialismus und Bolschewismus, Berlin, 1987, 114–23 (especially 115), 528–9, 564 n.24, 596 n.36, used Hitler’s comments on rats in the Lubljanka prison as part of a speculative hypothesis that his paranoid antisemitism arose out of his acute and lasting horror at Bolshevik atrocities in the years immediately following the Russian Revolution. This assertion was then incorporated in the construction of his heavily criticized interpretation positing Bolshevism, and ‘class genocide’, as the prior agent of a causal nexus leading ultimately to the Nazi ‘race genocide’ against the Jews. (See Ernst Nolte, ‘Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will’, in ‘Historikerstreit’. Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernicbtung, 2nd edn, Munich/Zurich, 1987, 39–47.

  375. Domarus, 1
985.

  376. Kershaw, ‘Hitler Myth’, 192.

  377. Nadler, 73, 76.

  378. MadR, xii.4720 (28 January 1943), 4750–1 (4 February 1943), 4760–1 (8 February 1943).

  379. Goebbels acknowledged that the criticism was now also directed at Hitler (TBJG, II/7, 266 (5 February 1943).

  380. Hassell, 347 (14 February 1943).

  381. MadR, xii.4720 (28 January 1943).

  382. GStA, Munich, MA 106671, report of the Regierungspräsident of Oberbayern, 10 March 1943: ‘Der Stalingrad-Mörder’.

  383. Hassell, 348–9 (14 February 1943); Gisevius, To the Bitter End, 464ff.; Ritter, 35off.; Hoffmann, 346ff., Joachim Fest, Staatsstreich. Der lange Weg zum 20. Juli, Berlin, 1994, 199–205.

  384. Inge Scholl, Die Weiβe Rose, Frankfurt am Main, 1952, 108; (‘Kommilitonen! Kommilitoninnen! Erschüttert steht unser Volk vor dem Untergang der Manner von Stalingrad. Dreihundertdreiβigtausend deutsche Manner hat die geniale Strategie des Weltkriegsgefreiten sinn- und verantwortungslos in Tod und Verderben gehetzt. Führer, wir danken dir!’); also printed in Hinrich Siefken (ed.), Die Weiβe Rose und ihre Flugblätter, Manchester, 1994, 32. This was the sixth and final broadsheet. The fifth, produced between 13 and 29 January, is printed (wrongly dated to 18 February 1943) alongside other texts related to the ‘White Rose’ in Peter Steinbach and Johannes Tuchel (eds.), Widerstand in Deutschland 1933–1945. Ein historisches Lesebuch, Munich, 1994, 236–7 (trans, in N & P, iv.457) and reproduced in facsimile in Siefken, Die Weiβe Rose und ihre Flugblätter, 88–9 (see 20–1 for dating). See also J. P. Stern, ‘The White Rose’, in Hinrich Siefken (ed.), Die Weiβe Rose. Student Resistance to National Socialism 1942/43. Forschungsergebnisse und Erfahrungsberichte, Nottingham, n.d. (1991), 11–36.

  385. Benz and Pehle, Lexikon, 318–19.

  386. See IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, Fol.79: Hitler was on the evening of the news of the fall of Stalingrad ‘a tired old man (ein müder alter Herrn)’, and the mood at headquarters reminded her of a visit to a cemetery on a rainy November day. See also Irving, HW, 480. According to Speer, 264, after the capitulation Hitler never referred to Stalingrad again.

  387. TBJG, II/7, 171 (23 January 1943).

  388. Schroeder, 130; TBJG, II/7, 171 (23 January 1943).

  389. See Irving, HW, 480.

  390. Below, 326.

  391. Below, 329–30.

  392. TBJG, II/7, 285 (8 February 1943).

  393. TBJG, II/ 7, 293 (8 February 1943).

  394. TBJG, II/7, 285–6 (8 February 1943); also 287–8, 293–5.

  395. TBJG, II/ 7, 288–9 (8 February 1943).

  396. TBJG, II/ 7, 287 (8 February 1943).

  397. Below, 327.

  398. TBJG, II/ 7, 287 (8 February 1943).

  399. TBJG, II/ 7, 291–2 (8 February 1943).

  400. TBJG, II/ 7, 290–2, 294 (8 February 1943).

  401. TBJG, II/ 7, 295–6 (8 February 1943).

  402. TBJG, II/ 7, 295–7, (8 February 1943).

  403. TBJG, II/ 7, 292 (8 February 1943).

  404. TBJG, II/7, 296 (8 February 1943).

  405. The speech had been postponed from 14 March (RGBl, 1 943 I, 137; Domarus, 1998). Hitler indicated at the beginning of his speech (Domarus, 1999) that the postponement had been caused by the crisis on the eastern front. This had – temporarily – been ended by the retaking of Kharkov (which the Red Army had regained in February) on 14–15 March (KTB OKW, ii/2, 209 (14 March 1943), 214–15 (15 March 1943).

  406. TBJG, II/7, 593–4, 607, 611 (20 March 1943).

  407. TBJG, II/7, 610 (20 March 1943).

  408. Kershaw, ‘Hitler Myth’, 196–7. The figures probably seemed far too low because most people conflated them with the total casualties. In Haider’s last note of casualties on the eastern front before he left office, he gave the total killed for the period between 22 June 1941 and 10 September 1942 as 336,349, and the total losses (killed, wounded, missing) as 1,637,280 (Haider KTB, iii.522 (15 September 1942). The figure for dead provided by Hitler in March 1943 was, therefore, less outlandish than it seemed to his audience. Many presumed Hitler was referring only to dead on the eastern front, not in all theatres of war. But the eastern front in any case accounted for the vast proportion of those killed in action.

  409. Kershaw, ‘Hitler Myth’, 207–10.

  CHAPTER 12: BELEAGUERED

  1. Iring Fetscher, Joseph Goebbels im Berliner Sportpalast 1943. ‘Wollt ihr den totalen Krieg?’, Hamburg, 1998, 95, 98; Hofer, Der Nationalsozialismus, 251. The text of the speech is printed in Helmut Heiber (ed.), Goebbels-Reden, 2 Bde., Düsseldorf, 1971, 1972 (Bd.1:1932–1939; Bd.2: 1939–1945), ii.172–208; and Fetscher, 63–98; and analysed in Fetscher, 104–22, and Günter Moltmann, ‘Goebbels’ Rede zum totalen Krieg am 18. Februar 1943’, VfZ, 12 (1964), 13–43 (background to speech, 13–29, analysis 30–43); English trans., Günter Moltmann, ‘Goebbels’ Speech on Total War, February 18, 1943’, in Hajo Holborn (ed.), Republic to Reich. The Making of the Nazi Revolution, Vintage Books edn, New York, 1973, 298–342. See also Reuth, Goebbels, 518ff.; Irving, Goebbels, 421ff. Fetscher, pt.II, offers a thorough analysis of the reception of the speech abroad.

  2. Boelcke, Wollt 1hr, 445–6. See also, for the aims of the speech, Fetscher, 107–8.

  3. Boelcke, Wollt 1hr, 25.

  4. For conflicting interpretations, see Moltmann, ‘Goebbels’ Speech’, 310 – 14; and Irving, HW, 421, 659 n.II.

  5. TBJG, II/7, 373 (19 February 1943).

  6. Moltmann, ‘Goebbels’ Speech’, 311, 313–14; TBJG, II/7, 508 (9 March 1943).

  7. See Mason, Sozialpolitik, ch.1. Moltmann, ‘Goebbels’ Speech’, 305, refers to Göring’s opposition to ‘total war’ measures in 1942.

  8. See Stephen Salter, ‘The Mobilisation of German Labour, 1939–1945. A Contribution to the History of the Working Class in the Third Reich’, unpubl. D.Phil, thesis, Oxford, 1983, 29–38, 48–56, 73–4, emphasizing the concern to avoid damage to morale and political tension on the home front; and Dörte Winkler, ‘Frauenarbeit versus Frauenideologie. Probleme der weiblichen Erwerbstätigkeit in Deutschland 1930–1945’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 17 (1977), 99–126, here 116–20, acknowledging the morale question but stressing the decisive role of Hitler’s ideological objections.

  9. Moltmann, ‘Goebbels’ Speech’, 306–7.

  10. On the rival power-blocs of Sauckel and Speer, contesting control of labour deployment, see Walter Naasner, Neue Machtzentren in der deutschen Kriegswirtschaft 1942–1945, Boppard am Rhein, 1994, pts.1 – 2.

  11. TBJG, II/7, 561 (16 March 1943).

  12. He was empowered to issue directives but not binding decrees, and Hitler reserved to himself the right to decide where objections were raised to Goebbels’s directives (Rebentisch, 516 – 17).

  13. TBJG, II/8, 521 (24 June 1943).

  14. TBJG, II/8, 265 (10 May 1943).

  15. Speer, 315. In fact, Hitler seemed remarkably cool and businesslike rather than outwardly friendly towards Eva Braun in overheard telephone conversations in the Wolfsschanze (Schulz, 90–91).

  16. Schroeder, 130.

  17. TBJG, II/8, 265 (10 May 1943).

  18. Speer, 259.

  19. Moltmann, ‘Goebbels’ Speech’, 312; Hauner, Hitler, 1 81–7; Domarus, 1999–2002 (21 March 1943), 2050–9 (8 November 1943).

  20. Hauner, Hitler, 18 1–7.

  21. TBJG, II/9, 160 (25 July 1943).

  22. Rebentisch, 463.

  23. Monologe, 221–2 (24 January 1942); Rebentisch, 466 and n.295.

  24. Rebentisch, 466–70.

  25. Rebentisch, 470–72.

  26. Rebentisch, 473 and n.318. Vast rebuilding projects for Berlin and Linz were among the other fantasy-schemes Hitler had in mind.

  27. Rebentisch, 475.

  28. Rebentisch, 477.

  29. Steinert, 356.

  30. Speer, 234–5.

  31. See Dörte Winkler, Frauenarbeit im Dritten Reich, Hamburg, 1977,114–21, for
Hitler’s attitude to the Women’s Service Duty (Frauendienstpflicht).

  32. IMG, xxv.61, 63–4, Doc. 016-PS (Sauckel’s statement of 20 April 1942).

  33. See, for the figures, Sozialgeschichtliches Arbeitsbuch III. Materialien zur Statistik des Deutschen Reiches 1914–1945, ed. Dietmar Petzina, Werner Abelshauser, and Anselm Faust, Munich, 1978, 85. By 1944, foreign workers would account for 26.5 per cent of the total labour force in Germany, and no less than 46.5 per cent of those working in agriculture (Herbert, Fremdarbeiter, 270).

  34. Rebentisch, 478.

  35. Moll, 311–13; Michalka, Das Dritte Reich, ii.294–5 (Doc.169). For the impact of the decree, see especially Ludolf Herbst, Der Totale Krieg und die Ordnung der Wirtschaft. Die Kriegswirtschaft im Spannungsfeld von Politik, Ideologie und Propaganda 1939–1945, Stuttgart, 1982, 207–31.

  36. Salter, ‘Mobilisation’, 76–81; Stephen Salter, ‘Class Harmony or Class Conflict? The Industrial Working Class and the National Socialist Regime 1933–1945’, in Jeremy Noakes (ed.), Government, Party, and People in Nazi Germany, Exeter, 1980,76–97, here 90–91; Winkler, ‘Frauenarbeit versus Frauenideologie’, 118–20.

  37. Rebentisch, 478.

  38. Rebentisch, 479.

  39. Speer, 265.

  40. Speer, 266; Rebentisch, 480.

  41. Speer, 268; Rebentisch, 479 and n.332.

  42. See Rebentisch, 481ff.

  43. Speer, 270–71.

  44. TBJG, II/7, 444–5 (1 March 1943); Speer, 272.

  45. TBJG, II/7, 450 (2 March 1943).

  46. TBJG, II/7, 452 (2 March 1943).

  47. TBJG, II/7, 452–3 (2 March 1943).

  48. Speer, 270–71.

  49. TBJG, II/7, 452 (2 March 1943).

  50. TBJG, II/7, 454 (2 March 1943).

  51. TBJG, II/7, 454 (2 March 1943).

  52. TBJG, II/7, 456 (2 March 1943). A withering critique – with negligible results – of the Party and the urgency of its reform had been compiled in 1942 by either Gauleiter Carl Rover, or (more probably) his successor as Gauleiter of Weser-Ems, Paul Wegener. (See Peterson, 25–6; and Orlow, ii.352–5.)