Hitler in Hell

by Martin van Creveld

  For me, personally, the decisive moment came in September 1937. We were holding our usual autumn maneuvers. The scale on which we went to work was nothing short of gigantic; no fewer than 160,000 troops, 25,000 horses, 21,700 motor vehicles, and 830 tanks participated. The way our forces were organized at that time, the last-mentioned figure was the equivalent of about two armored divisions. German soil was never to see their like again. Nor, after 1941, did that of any other country. The spectacle of our Panzers in action was enormously impressive. As I watched them, I had what religious people like to call a revelation. I saw, in a flash, what future wars would be like and what we ourselves needed and wanted. I turned to our tank expert, General Heinz Guderian, and told him so. The rest is history.

  At that time we were deeply involved in Spain. Our intervention in the Civil War was motivated principally by political considerations, not military ones. Having France surrounded on three sides by Fascist regimes looked like a good idea. That is why, no sooner had Göring suggested that we provide the Nationalists with aircraft to fly their troops from Morocco to Spain, than I agreed. The operation, the first of its kind in history, jump-started the rebellion which eventually got Franco to power. However, unlike the Italians we never sent ground troops. Our main contribution consisted of the Legion Condor, an improvised Luftwaffe force that never numbered more than 5,000 men at any one time. Its first commander was General Hugo Sperrle, a typical monocled Prussian whose experience as an air force officer went back to World War I and who always looked as if he was getting ready to swallow someone whole. Later I had him replaced by General Wolfram von Richthofen, a younger man and a distant relative of the famous World War I ace.

  It was the Legion which carried out the bombardment of Guernica in April 1937, an incident whose real extent was vastly exaggerated by the world press. However, it certainly served a useful purpose in putting the fear of God into our enemies’ hearts. The Legion’s contribution to Franco’s victory was great. It also served our own purposes well. Having had no air force for so long, we were lagging behind the remaining powers. The war in Spain enabled us to prepare our commanders, to train our men, to test our equipment, and to devise doctrines, including, among other things, the “finger four” formation later adopted by all other air forces as well. Returning from Spain, many of the men were given training assignments. Their contribution to the further development of our Luftwaffe was invaluable.

  Inevitably, the vast sums we were spending on armaments had a negative impact on our economy. Instead of exporting our products, we built weapons. As one story had it, one customer, having bought one of those baby prams meant to be assembled at home, was surprised to find himself handling a machine gun instead. Seriously, rearmament caused our balance of trade to go from bad to worse. As our wealthy Western opponents caught on and started to rearm, time was working against us. In November 1937 I summoned my generals to what later became known as the Hossbach Conference, after the aforementioned officer who took notes. I explained the point, saying that they could get the details from Göring, as the man in charge of the Four Year Plan, if they wanted to. I do not recall that anyone asked. Military technicians that they were, doing so would have been totally out of character.

  Based on this, I announced my unalterable determination to go to war. Not immediately, but by 1943-45 at the latest. Any further delay would find me too old. It would also work against us by making our equipment obsolete. It, might however, be possible to open hostilities at an earlier date. One scenario I mentioned was the outbreak of civil war in France, which would enable us to tackle Czechoslovakia. These, after all, were the years of the Popular Front Government; there seemed to be a real possibility that France would follow in the footsteps of Spain. Another was a war between France and Italy that would lead to the same result. In any event, neither of these eventualities materialized. When we went to war in 1939, we did so against an enemy, Poland, whom the memorandum did not even mention as a possibility.

  The generals did not like the speech. Once again, they raised objections. France might do this and Britain that. Clearly, it was time to get rid of the old, reluctant horses and hitch my carriage to some new and more highly spirited ones. Here fortune came to my aid. In January 1938 Blomberg, who was a widower, remarried. Both Göring and I were present at the wedding. But then it turned out that his new wife, a shorthand typist by the name of Erna Gruhn, had a criminal record. In fact she was registered as a prostitute in no fewer than seven different cities! When the file was brought to my attention, I offered Blomberg the chance to annul his marriage. After all, the man, though not terribly bright, had acted in good faith. He refused and decided to stick to his wife instead. Under such circumstances, and if only because his fellow generals would no longer tolerate him, I had no choice but to fire him for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. But he had always been loyal, and his fate made me feel sorry for him.

  Hardly had this affair ended then another one burst on us. This time the problem was von Fritsch. As stiff as a stick and speaking with a grating, unpleasant voice, Fritsch had never been married. In 1936 Heydrich, in his capacity as Chief of the Reich Security Service, prepared a file on his alleged homosexual activities and presented it to me. Personally, I have never liked denunciators or denunciation. This time, too, my response was to order him to destroy it. But Heydrich being Heydrich, he never did. Now he put it into the hands of Himmler, as his superior, and of Göring. They turned it over to me, and the fat was in the fire. Previously, Fritsch had been one of those who demanded that Blomberg resign. Now he himself came under similar pressure. Later, a court discovered that the man who had denounced him, possibly acting on the instructions of the Gestapo, had consciously lied by mixing him up with another man by the name of Frisch. By then, though, it was too late to repair the damage.

  Decades later, the entire business remains shrouded in mystery. Göring, it was said, may have wanted to prevent Fritsch from taking over from Blomberg as he wanted to take the post of Minister of War for himself. Perhaps so, but the accusation has never been proved. I want to put it on record that I myself was not involved. Why should I be? Hindenburg was long gone. The military had sworn a personal oath to me as Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, promising to obey me and to sacrifice their lives “at all times” if ordered to do so. My position in Germany was as strong as that of any ruler in the whole of our history. Probably stronger. I did not need to stir up a scandal to let both of them go. On the contrary, throughout my years in power, I did what I could to prevent public scandals as far as I could.

  If Göring had hoped to take Blomberg’s place, he was up for a disappointment. As was to become abundantly clear later on, he simply did not have the necessary stamina and capacity for hard work. Instead, I took on the post myself. To help me I chose General Wilhelm Keitel. Keitel, whose voice bore an astonishing resemblance to mine, always made an impression by standing ramrod straight. But his behavior belied his appearance, so much so that his fellow generals nicknamed him Lackeitel. No translation needed! As a strategist, he was not exactly famous; neither on that account nor on any other did he ever cause me any problems. On one occasion he even said that, every time he thought of opposing me in any way, he wetted his pants. But let’s give him his due: he was a first-class organizer. And no one, but no one, worked harder than he. If the Wehrmacht survived and fought on for as long as it did, then part of the credit belongs to him. In May 1945 he had the painful duty of signing the capitulation of Berlin to the Russians. In the next year he and his deputy, Jodl, were both hanged at Nuremberg.

  My replacement for Fritsch was General Walter von Brauchitsch. A hero he was not. No sooner had he been appointed than he expressed his opposition both to our annexation of Austria and to the intervention in Czechoslovakia. That was not because he disagreed with the principles behind my policies; he did not. He did so out of sheer cowardice. Later, he used to hide behind the back of his chief of staff, General Franz Halder, abou
t whom more presently. Brauchitsch was obliged to me. First, I made an exception for him by allowing him to divorce his wife. Next, I personally saw to it that he should survive the trial without financial disaster. In return for 1,300 marks a month paid out to his wife, I had him in my pocket, After the Polish campaign, he caused me some minor difficulties with respect to our treatment of the Jews. During the Russian one he proved totally worthless. He was a man with over-boiled macaroni for nerves. At the end of 1941 I got rid of him and took over his post myself.

  Important as these changes were, they were merely part of a larger reform. Like most countries at the time, Germany had never had a single high command with authority over the two, and later three, services. One outcome was that, in 1914-18, the only formal link between the army and the navy had been the Kaiser himself. How weak that link was hardly needs to be retold! In 1938-39 I tried to change this situation by putting Keitel in charge of a new organization, the OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Wehrmacht High Command). The OKW, in turn, was supposed to coordinate the operations of the Army, Navy, and Air Force (Luftwaffe) High Commands.

  In theory it was a good solution, well ahead of its time and one which most other countries adopted after 1945. In practice it never worked very well. In part the reason was that both the Army and Navy High Commands were much older and better established than OKW and unwilling to take its orders. In addition, Göring, as commander in chief of the Luftwaffe, refused to obey anyone but me. Göring’s squabbles with the Navy High Command were even worse. As I shall explain later on, his declaration that “everything that flies belongs to me” was to cost us dearly. Thus the relationship between the four organizations always remained somewhat shaky. Our attempt to make the officers of the services less parochial and to facilitate cooperation among them by setting up a new Wehrmachtakademie common to all three services did not work out well either. Jealous of their independence, the services hated it and never made their best officers attend it. That is why it only graduated three classes consisting of ten officers each before it was closed. Its impact on the Wehrmacht was next to zero.

  In March 1938 we annexed Austria. For me personally it was the realization of a dream I had had ever since my time as a schoolboy in Linz; I shall have more to say about it later. There was neither resistance nor bloodshed. Wherever our troops went, they were received with unparalleled enthusiasm. But militarily, the operation was a mess. Driving the 400 kilometers from Munich to Vienna, Guderian’s Panzers could neither be kept supplied nor properly repaired. So many of them broke down that the highway became littered with them. In Guderian’s defense it must be said that it was the world’s first operation of its kind. He and his men learned their lesson, and a similar debacle did not take place again.

  My problems with my senior commanders continued. This time the troublemaker was General Beck, the Army Chief of Staff. Dour faced—no one had ever accused him of having a sense of humor—he had the reputation of being an intellectual. He had been responsible for, and had signed, the famous 1936 regulations, Truppenführung. But that seems to have been the limit of his soldierly achievement. Like so many others of his caste he shared our National Socialist objectives, especially with respect to the need to rearm and to reclaim our lost provinces. In 1930 he had even testified on behalf of some of his subordinates who, acting against the law, had joined our Party. However, like so many others of his caste he was, at heart, a coward. How so many weak-kneed men ever came to command our armed forces, the army in particular, is beyond me. Judging from what I hear and read and see, the situation in the Bundeswehr is even worse. In Berlin nowadays, cowardice seems to be not an obstacle for reaching high command but a prerequisite for doing so.

  When Beck learned of my plans for dismantling Czechoslovakia, he was aghast. He immediately put together a number of wargames. All were expressly designed to reach the conclusion that, in a war with Czechoslovakia, France, and England, Germany was doomed. He sent me the results. I thought they were childish and told him so. In July 1938 he resigned. At that time, it later turned out, he was already in touch with some officers and diplomats who were hoping to overturn the regime. In 1944 he was part of the conspiracy against me. When that Putsch failed, he was forced to commit suicide. Not by me—I would have loved to have seen him hang—but by his own dear comrades who hoped to save their necks in this way. Serves him right. In 1938 his replacement was General Halder, another artillerist who had made his mark primarily as a trainer. He was an improvement, but hardly a big one.

  As I had predicted, we succeeded first in occupying the Sudetenland and then the rest of Bohemia and Moravia without shedding either our own blood or that of others. They represented a considerable addition to our strength. The most important single acquisition was the Skoda Works at Jungbunzlau. Founded in 1895, they had originally produced arms for Franz Joseph. That included the world’s second largest howitzer after the one Krupp built. Now they worked for us and continued to do so without any problems up to the end of the war. At that point, though, March-April 1939, it was increasingly clear to me that further triumphs would only be possible by the use of armed force. To explain what happened next, I have to retrace my steps to explain how our foreign policy worked.

  18. Foreign Policy

  In the nuclear age, defense and foreign policies tend to revolve about picayune issues. As everyone but a few academic do-gooders understands, the reason is not that the better angels of our nature have taken over or are about to. It is that the most important powers either already have nuclear weapons and their “delivery vehicles” or can build them quite quickly. Consequently, they skirmish—“fight” would be much too big a word—over problems that are almost invisible. A glacier here, an oil well there. Some godforsaken reef fit only for goats in an out-of-the-way place. Certainly in the so-called “developed” world, so much time has passed since the last existential conflict that the vast majority of people there no longer even understand the meaning of the words. Relative to the global population, far fewer people have died in war each year since 1945 than was the case at any other time in the whole of history.

  What I would have done if fortune had caused me to live and act in a nuclear world, I find it very hard to say. Here I want to put it on record: like anyone else, I sometimes got very angry. When necessary, I also knew how to intimidate people by acting out my rage. Both in public and in private, I sometimes did just that. Nevertheless, and regardless of what some of my less intelligent biographers have said about me, I was, and am, no raging maniac. I did not foam at the mouth. I did not fall down to the floor and eat the carpet as some people have alleged. Nor was I a drunk or a slave to my passions as quite a few heads of state, both before or after me, have been. No Mademoiselle de Poisson, no Monica Lewinsky scandal, was ever tied to my name. Nor did I molest any attractive female who was presented to me, as Chairman Mao regularly did and as President Trump claims to have done. I was as much in control, as rational, as capable of “strategic” calculation, as any ruler in history, let alone any historian, political scientist, or “game theorist” who has prattled about such things. And I did not come to destroy the world. I came to increase my people’s share in it and to help them dominate as large a part of it as they deserved and I could.

  Had I been the first and only one to possess nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles, I probably would have used them. Not against small fry, for doing so would have served no purpose. Why bomb a country such as the Netherlands, which we intended to annex, if equally effective but less destructive methods were available? But use them to force my most powerful enemies to see reason and, if necessary, utterly destroy them? Yes, I would have done that. After all, that is what Truman, true-man, did even though victory over Japan was already assured and not far away, and even though the Japanese were already putting out peace feelers. Some historians say his real objective was to impress Stalin. In any case it did not cause him to be execrated nearly as much as I have been. But I would not have us
ed them in a world where other countries also had them and might very well have reacted by turning Germany, our beautiful, densely populated Germany, into a radioactive wasteland fit only for grasses and cockroaches.

  I must, however, admit that, seeing how that Germany of ours was being literally demolished during the last months of the war, the idea of Götterdämmerung began to have some appeal to my mind. The more so because some of my principal collaborators were starting to betray me left and right. I was furious but also completely helpless. Yes, under such circumstances, I probably would have used the bomb if I had it. Who could blame me? I certainly would have threatened to use it. And I would most certainly have known how to use my theatrical talents to make the threat “credible,” as strategists like to say. By so doing, I might very well have saved my country, my people, and myself from the fate that overtook us.

  Back to reality. Unlike today’s Gutmenschen, bleeding hearts who are always kvetching about peace on earth and goodwill among nations, I did not believe that foreign policy was based on some kind of justice or right. Except, of course, the right of the strong to take what he needed. Even if it meant crushing the weak, and even if it meant that many frail flowers had to die in the process. I did not come just to readjust our frontiers or to reacquire our colonies. Let common, or garden variety, politicians amuse themselves with such things. To repeat, my fundamental goal in foreign policy was to gain more Lebensraum for the German nation. Not overseas, which is what Wilhelm II wanted, but right here in Europe. To be precise, Eastern Europe with its enormous, fertile, but badly neglected, spaces.