Hitler in Hell

by Martin van Creveld

  Back to the military situation. Admittedly, in early 1942 it was not as good as we had expected. But it was far from hopeless. In the short term, indeed, my declaration of war on the U.S. helped our war effort. It enabled Dönitz to sink not just English ships supplying England but American ones as well. As had been the case since the middle of 1941, our most dangerous enemy by far was Russia. I therefore resolved to knock it out as soon as I possibly could. No longer able to attack along the entire vast front, I selected two objectives. One was Stalingrad, the city that bore Stalin’s name and also commanded the Volga through which Allied supplies were arriving from Persia. The other was the Caucasus; it alone could provide us with the oil without which we could not continue the war.

  As in 1940, there was a last-minute hitch. Some idiot of an officer flew a reconnaissance mission over the front. He was forced to make an emergency landing in Russian territory, with the result that all directives and maps fell into enemy hands. These people never learn! Nevertheless, the operation, commanded by me personally from my forward headquarters in the Ukraine, went like clockwork. Seldom in history were such great advances made so quickly; 1. Panzer Army, which was moving in the direction of the Caucasus, covered 500 kilometers in two weeks! On 4 July, just five days after the beginning of the offensive, Manstein’s 11. Army took Sebastopol, the main Russian port on the Black Sea and an important symbolic objective which had resisted our efforts to capture it in the previous year. On the next day other forces occupied Rostov after fierce fighting. They crossed the Don on 21 August, and reached the Volga north of Stalingrad two days later. Other forces captured Maikop. Unfortunately, the Russians had thoroughly destroyed the oilfields there. As a result, our advance petered out and came to a halt.

  All eyes were now upon Stalingrad. Our direct assault on it opened on 10 September. Both the ground forces and the Luftwaffe participated, the latter using its Stukas in order to drop bombs almost literally at our own soldiers’ feet. We made slow, but steady, progress. Gradually, though, we began to discover that the enemy, with typical Russian deviousness, had traded land for time. Contrary to our expectations, his resistance, instead of weakening, grew stronger and stronger. The struggle for the city went on for two months, during which it was almost entirely demolished.

  Throughout October, I kept warning my generals against a possible Russian counteroffensive in the direction of Rostov. As so often, they refused to listen. This time the most important culprit was General Reinhard Gehlen, chief of Fremde Heere Ost (Foreign Armies East). Ere “Barbarossa” started, he had grossly underestimated the size of the Red Army. Now he insisted that Stalin would aim his blow at Army Group Center near Smolensk. On 20 November, just as our forces were approaching the Volga, the Reds did as I had predicted. A few days later, two vast Russian armies, one coming from the north and the other from the south, met west of Stalingrad. They cut off our 6. Army with as many as 250,000 troops. Gehlen apart, it was all the fault of our Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian allies whom, for lack of better troops and not because I had any illusions about them, I put in charge of our northern flank. The latter two in particular were always on the point of shooting at each other. When the Russians attacked, they ran.

  I will not repeat the numerous accounts that have been written about the struggle that followed. There was a time when military history was written by serious authors in order to enable serious students to draw serious conclusions from it. Since about 1990, though, most of it has aimed at satisfying the curiosity of ordinary people—Western people, of course, who have never been within a thousand kilometers of a battlefield. That explains the heavy focus on individual soldiers, their deeds, their feelings, and their sufferings. I, however, had spent four years in the trenches. I knew what war is like and did not need this often maudlin stuff to remind me.

  Still there is one point I want to emphasize. Had I agreed to evacuate Stalingrad, as many of my top commanders suggested, the Russians, driving west with nothing to stop them, would have cut off our forces in the Caucasus. It was the heroic resistance of 6. Army which saved those forces from destruction. Unfortunately, they had to leave much of their equipment behind. Furthermore, by continuing to hold the city, we bought time to bring up other formations. Had it been otherwise, the eastern front could never have been stabilized as eventually it was.

  When I say 6. Army, I do not include its commander, Friedrich Paulus. Paulus had been Halder’s deputy. Like him, he had never commanded a major formation in war. By appointing him to the post in December 1941, as part of the general reshuffle of that time, I hoped to give him an opportunity to show what he could do. As things became difficult inside the besieged city, he repeatedly begged me to allow him to break out. I, however, with wider considerations in mind, could not agree. Instead, I ordered him to stay put until he could be rescued.

  Not long afterward, it became clear that he could not be rescued. Once again, it was Göring’s fault. He had promised to supply the army by air but failed to keep his word. So many aircraft were lost in the effort that the Luftwaffe’s transport command never recovered. For my part, I made Paulus a field-marshal in the hope that honor would prevent him from becoming the first officer of that rank in German history to surrender. He understood, of course, but betrayed my trust. Having been taken prisoner, he put himself at the disposal of his captors. Along with his chief of staff, General Arthur Schmidt, he formed the National Committee for a Free Germany. Over the next two years it did its mediocre best to make more of our men defect and join the Russians. How anyone could sink as low as he did is beyond me.

  Meanwhile, in the Mediterranean, Rommel’s tactical genius, assisted by an infusion of new tanks and other equipment, finally reasserted itself. In January 1942 he counterattacked the English 8. Army. In June, following a lightning campaign with few equals in history, he took the little town of Tobruk, which in the previous year had held out for 240 days. For that feat I gave him his field-marshal’s baton. By this time even the enemy had fallen under his spell, extolling his supposed genius so as to excuse their own blunders. From Tobruk the Africa Corps continued its eastward drive. How the English ran! In July our spearheads reached Alamein, a desert dump just 100 kilometers from Alexandria. Understandably, our troops were enthusiastic about the prospect of exchanging the desert for the amenities a great city can offer. So was Mussolini, who was already planning a grand victory parade with himself, riding a white horse, holding “the Sword of Islam” in his hand, and accompanied by the march from Aida!

  Not surprisingly, the Jews in Palestine panicked. Echoing our own accusations against their race, some hoped that the “fact” that, unlike their brethren in the diaspora, they were “working Jews” would save them. Others called on kabbalists—kabbalists!—to protect them against the Devil, i.e. me. They mumbled their prayers, cast their spells, and blew their shofars so hard as to render God deaf. Unfortunately, I was unable to deal with them as I would have liked to. The ongoing gigantic battle in Russia, as well as Rommel’s own overextended communications, prevented us from supplying him. To ease his situation the Italians and we, assisted by some Japanese experts, seriously considered an operation against Malta. However, so heavy had the losses of our paratroopers in Crete in the previous year been that I decided to desist. Rommel’s own attempt to break through the English lines at Alam Halfa did not go well either. Next came the English victory over the Africa Corps in October-November 1942, which caused Churchill to ring the church bells all over England. In one of his more bombastic speeches, delivered not long thereafter, he called the battle “the end of the beginning.”

  As so often in his long and mendacious career, he was exaggerating. To be sure it would have been better if Rommel had been able to remain where he was. However, given the relative unimportance of the theater and the fairly small German forces involved, his retreat from Alamein did not worry me much. The English commander on the spot, General Bernard Montgomery, was notable for his eccentric personality and behav
ior. The son of a bishop, speaking in the House of Lords after his retirement, he once suggested that the entire army be made up solely of bachelors such as himself! Militarily, he was mediocre at best. Proceeding cautiously and systematically, always afraid of falling into some trap that only existed in his imagination, sooner or later his advance would have petered out. That, in fact, had happened to his predecessors both in early 1941 and at the end of the same year.

  The Allied landings in West Africa were something else. As happened all too often, our admirals, with Raeder at their head, were slow to realize what was afoot. When they finally did understand, they still believed that the Allied blow would fall on Corsica, Sardinia, and Tunisia rather than on Algeria and Morocco as it ultimately did. And, had the Allied commanders possessed any guts, it would have. As a result, when the battle started, our submarines were stationed too far east to take part in it. Once the enemy had gained a foothold, it was clear that North Africa would have to be defended at all costs. Not necessarily for military reasons but because I foresaw, which indeed was not difficult, that its loss would have important political repercussions in Italy. That is why I poured some 50,000 of our best troops into Tunisia. Reinforcing those already there, they fought like the devil and taught the Americans a sharp lesson at Kasserine. But, ultimately, they could not hold out against the enemy’s overwhelming superiority on the ground, at sea, and in the air.

  In January 1943 Churchill and Roosevelt, meeting at Casablanca, declared that their policy toward us would be to insist on “unconditional surrender.” The declaration was an extraordinary piece of stupidity on their part, particularly because, as became clear almost as soon as the war ended in 1945, they did not really mean it. As they soon realized, they needed us to resist the Russian steamroller. Meanwhile, the declaration enabled Goebbels to have a field day at our enemies’ expense by explaining to the German people that they had no choice but to fight to the end. A few months later, in the spring and early summer of 1943, I authorized Ribbentrop to send out feelers to see whether it would be possible to reach some kind of accommodation with Stalin. He, however, demanded terms that would have left the whole of Europe, us included, at his tender mercies. Later attempts by Himmler and Göring, acting behind my back, to contact the Western Powers in cities such as Stockholm, Geneva, and Madrid fared no better. So the war had to go on.

  The summer of 1943 witnessed three other important developments. First, the Western Allies, having cleared North Africa, invaded Sicily. Thereupon, Mussolini fell from power. He was betrayed by the King, the Fascist “Grand Council,” and that vile toad, Field-Marshal Pietro Badoglio, an aristocrat much given to wearing black gloves. His motto was “I swoop like a falcon.” In reality he was a weak, vain, and devious man. In October 1922 he had refused to defend Rome against the Fascist columns converging on it. In 1936 he “proved” himself by using poison gas against barefooted Abyssinian warriors. For that feat Mussolini made him Duke of Addis Ababa! As Chief of Staff of the Italian armed forces early in the war, he was a complete failure. Now, appointed Prime Minster by my old “friend” Vittorio Emmanuelle, he immediately opened negotiations with the English and the Americans in order to bring about the surrender of his country while hoping I would not notice.

  Needless to say, I did notice. And I knew better than to trust him. When the surrender came at the beginning of September, we were ready. Commanded by Rommel, our troops occupied most of the country, disarmed most of the Italian troops, and took them prisoner. Many ended up working in our factories; that way, at any rate, they did something useful. Our most dramatic move was to free Mussolini, whom Badoglio had imprisoned at some mountain resort and whose fate weighed on me like a nightmare. A daring commando raid succeeded in extricating him; I subsequently had him flown to my headquarters at Rastenburg, where I did my best to boost his flagging spirits. Next, I put him in charge of northern Italy, where he formed the so-called Salò Republic. I did that not because I did not realize that he was a spent force whose time had passed, but because there was no one else able or willing to take his place.

  All too often, these brilliant moves had to be carried out against the advice of some of my generals. Meanwhile, the struggle in Italy continued. Having captured Sicily after 38 days of fierce fighting, the Allies crossed the Straits of Messina and landed at the toe of the boot. From there they hoped to advance north. When that did not work as well as they had expected, they used their navy to land forces at Salerno. When that did not work, they did the same at Anzio. In the whole of history, it is hard to find a less imaginative campaign! Each time they tried some maneuver my commander on the spot, Field-Marshal Kesselring, was able to save the bulk of his forces from being cut off. Making full use of the difficult topography, he and his men fought for every inch. Best of all, he was operating on internal lines. Partly because of the terrain, partly because of the heroic efforts of our railway companies, the Allies, in spite of their crushing superiority in the air, never succeeded in shutting off his logistic lifeline. For almost two years he held out against forces far superior to his own, diverting them from more important tasks. It was a real military masterpiece, I must say.

  At the same time, the Allies mounted their largest bombing attack of the war thus far by bombing Hamburg. The city was an important center of communication, commerce, and industry. Above all, it was where many of our submarines were built. By this time our self-proclaimed “liberal” and “humane” enemies had perfected the technique of using incendiaries to set alight entire cities by causing a firestorm. The outcome was that tens of thousands—to this day, no one knows just how many—men, women, and children were incinerated. The smoke from the burning city could be seen from dozens of kilometers away.

  On this occasion as on others, I refrained from visiting the bombed-out areas as Goebbels, taking Churchill as his example, suggested I do. Then, as now, I took full responsibility for the casualties that my efforts to secure the German nation a place under the sun necessarily incurred. However, I was worried that the sight of my people suffering such devastation might be more than I could stand. It might divert me from my historic task, and that was at a time when they needed me more than ever.

  Starting with me and ending with the humblest fighter pilot, all of us were determined not to let anything of the kind to happen again. Göring, it is true, was too well known and too close to the very essence of the regime to sack. So I left him nominally in place, an enormously fat, pompous apparition with manicured nails and rings on his fingers. He continued to wave his field-marshal’s baton, went on looting tours of the occupied territories in the west, and became more and more addicted to diamonds, silk underwear, and morphine.

  Behind his back, I entrusted the real power over the Luftwaffe to two “new” men. They were General Adolf Galland, commander of the fighter arm, and General Joseph Kammhuber, chief of night fighters. In this capacity he set up the so-called Kammhuber Line, an integrated system of radars, headquarters, and communications. It detected enemy bombers as they approached and directed our pilots to them. We also greatly increased the production of fighter aircraft, including, above all, the new Focke Wulf-190 some of whose variants carried a powerful 30-millimeter cannon. It worked. In October 1943, such a colossal failure was the Americans’ attack on the ball-bearing factories at Schweinfurt that they had to suspend their air campaign for several months. Not until the attacks on Berlin and Dresden in January-February 1945, by which time we had become practically defenseless in the air, did anything similar to Hamburg take place again.

  Third, we mounted what was to prove our last major offensive in Russia. The fighting that followed our defeat at Stalingrad had left a Russian “bulge” around the city of Kursk. It jutted into our front from east to west. Now I decided to nip it off. One arm of the offensive, commanded by Model, was to advance from the north. The other, commanded by Manstein, came from the south. The stakes were enormous as were the forces on both sides. To this day, it remains the largest armo
red battle in history. Unfortunately Operation Citadel, as we called it, did not work out. Summer came late that year, forcing us to postpone the beginning of the offensive time and again. Another factor was the late delivery of our magnificent new Panther tanks. They developed teething troubles, which took time until they could be fixed. Even here in Hell, many years later, I can remember my feeling at that time. I knew that the offensive was critical to the outcome of the war; it made my stomach turn.

  When the offensive finally got under way, it turned out that the Russians had discovered our intentions and were ready for us. They had built their defenses to a depth unmatched in history: dozens of kilometers of barbed wire, extensive minefields, anti-tank trenches, fortified bunkers, dug-in anti-tank guns, booby traps—well suited to the Russian mentality—what have you. Unknown to our field intelligence, they were also holding an entire armored corps in reserve, ready to be unleashed at any moment. Hard as our troops fought, they were unable to make progress. In the end I had to call off the offensive, thereby opening the way to a Russian counterattack.