The Führer had no inhibitions, however, about exploring closer cooperation with Japan, which could put pressure on the British Empire in the Far East and prevent the United States from bringing its full force to bear on Europe.38 In early March 1941, he issued Directive 24.39 ‘The aim of the collaboration under the Tripartite Pact,’ Hitler announced, ‘must be to persuade Japan to act in the Far East as quickly as possible.’ ‘This would tie down substantial British forces,’ he continued, ‘and divert the attention of the United States of America to the Pacific.’ The ‘common aim of [Axis] strategy,’ Hitler elaborated, was ‘to subdue Britain quickly and thereby keep the United States out of the war.’ Attacks on America should be undertaken only if war with that power ‘cannot be avoided’. To this end, he instructed that Japan should be strengthened in every way, for example through the exchange of information, even if the benefits were one-sided. Hitler made no mention of any Japanese action against the Soviet Union; the pact was primarily conceived as an instrument against Britain and a deterrent against the United States.40
The other major plank of Hitler’s containment strategy against Anglo-America was the persecution of the Jews. Privately, he let it be known in January 1941 that it was his ‘will’ that there should be a ‘final solution’ of the Jewish question in Germany and German-dominated Europe;41 at this point, this did not necessarily mean mass murder. Publicly, Hitler announced that he regarded the Jews under German occupation as hostages for the good behaviour of the supposedly Jewish-controlled United States. On the anniversary of the seizure of power in late January 1941, Hitler reminded his listeners of the remarks ‘which I already gave once before on 1 September 1939 in the German Reichstag’, that is, the prediction that ‘if the other world [sic] was plunged into a general war by Jewry’, then ‘all Jewry’ would have ‘played out its role in Europe’. ‘They may still be laughing about this [prediction] today,’ he continued, ‘just as they previously laughed about my domestic prophecies,’ but he promised that ‘the coming months and years’ would vindicate his remarks.42 There is no evidence that this shot across the bows of Anglo-America, or any other such ‘warning’, was understood in its enormity by its addressees in London, Washington and New York.
The open struggle against Britain and the cold war against America were flanked by a massive propaganda campaign. At home, the regime sought complete domination of the media in order to put out a carefully controlled message. Before the war, Hitler had taken a keen interest in film censorship, but after September 1939 he left that task largely to his propaganda minister. In the course of 1941, as relations with Washington plummeted, Goebbels banned the import of American films.43 Hitler took an increased interest, by contrast, in the official newsreels. Goebbels closely supervised the production of the weekly Wochenschau before showing it to Hitler in the Imperial Chancellery or Führer’s Headquarters for final approval.44 He would often demand changes–sometimes fairly minor ones to subject, text, tone and music, and he was particularly concerned with any programmes which featured him.45 Newspapers, magazines and other media were also subject to close supervision.
Abroad, the Third Reich sought to engage world opinion through a variety of media. In mid January 1941, the Führer ordered a gradual shift from the cumbersome Gothic font, which he considered archaic and which tended to deter foreign readers, to typefaces which would make it easier for German-speaking foreigners to read regime texts; another motivation was to save time in schools.46 Front and centre in the whole campaign, was the attempt to ‘educate’ the world about the Jewish threat. In late January, Hitler approved Rosenberg’s plan to establish an ‘institute to research the Jewish question’, to which foreign experts were to be invited.47 The Führer was thus still hopeful that Anglo-America would see the light. Six weeks later, the ‘World Service’ announced that Rosenberg had assembled ‘the greatest library on the Jewish question’ ever in Frankfurt.48
In order to mobilize the German people for the challenge ahead, Hitler continued his programme of domestic transformation. On the social front, he sought to open careers to talent. His main target here was the officer corps. In the spring of 1941, Hitler made a fresh attempt to push through promotion on merit alone, primarily on the basis of combat performance, without any social restrictions or privileging of the general staff, which he described as ‘an order, which closes itself off and lives according to its own laws’. He let it be known that ‘only thus could the principle of performance, which the Führer supported in the most emphatic manner, be implemented and thus the rejuvenation of the officer corps at all levels for which he was striving be achieved’.49 For now, however, he made little headway against the entrenched conservatism or, depending on one’s viewpoint, professionalism of the officer corps.
In his bid to increase production, Hitler was prepared to countenance increased participation of women in the workforce. In his speech on the occasion of Memorial Day on 16 March 1941, he announced that it was ‘not only the man who had shown the capacity to resist but especially also the woman’. Six weeks later, Hitler explained that while ‘millions’ of German women were in the fields and the factories releasing men for service at the front, many more were required. In the autumn of that year, he returned to this theme, praising ‘the German woman, [and] the German girl’, for ‘replacing millions of men who are at the front today’. ‘We can truly say,’ Hitler exulted, ‘that for the first time in history the entire people is engaged in the struggle, partly at the front, and partly at home.’50
On the ‘racial’ front, Hitler continued his twin-track approach. Efforts to purify the body politic through the murder–‘euthanasia’–of the disabled or those with hereditary illnesses were speeded up in the course of early 1941, despite mounting concern in some sectors of the population. At the same time, the regime redoubled its efforts to encourage the ‘racially valuable’ elements. The SS Lebensborn project began to comb Nazi-controlled Europe for children of ‘Nordic’ origin, either the offspring of liaisons between German security forces and non-German ‘Nordic’ women, particularly in Scandinavia, or the supposed descendants of German settlers, especially in eastern Europe.51 These measures went hand in hand with ambitious settlement plans, initially in Poland. The problem was that Germany–ironically from the point of view of Hitler’s Lebensraum ideology–suffered from a shortage of people to ‘settle’ in the new lands; there was now full employment at home, indeed a labour shortage. Most of the effort here was directed at ‘resettling’ ethnic Germans from the Soviet Union and areas under Soviet occupation. Further treaties were concluded with Moscow in January 1941 to facilitate the ‘repatriation’ of Germans from the three Baltic States.52
The regime had still not given up hope of bringing back German emigrants from overseas. A report to the German Institute for the Outside World in February 1941 from Alexander Dolezalek, an official in the Planning Sections of the Settlement Staff for Litzmannstadt and Posen in Poland, showed just how much Hitler’s thinking on this subject informed the settlements plans for the east. The author pointed out that the inflow from ethnic Germans in other parts of eastern Europe was insufficient to colonize the new lands, and because they were mostly farmers, they in any case lacked the industrial and managerial skills necessary to build up the new society. If more were not found then the regime might have to fall back on Polish settlers. ‘It appears to me,’ the report argued, ‘that the only hope is a resettlement from the United States proper. There one finds skilled German workers of all kinds who, in one generation, can develop a united people.’ They would be critical to welding the disparate newcomers together. Dolezalek was under no illusions about the difficulty of such an undertaking. Most Germans were too integrated into the United States, with its high standard of living and wide-open spaces. He was therefore resigned to the fact that the best hope of luring Germans ‘back’ would be after a victorious war which would make them proud to identify with the Third Reich.53
The answer to these problems
, Hitler believed, lay in invading the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa. Its immediate purpose was to strike at Britain, and to deter the United States, psychologically, diplomatically, militarily and economically. Hitler remained convinced that one of the reasons the British were holding out, was the prospect of Russian intervention. This was the main reason given in the directive to launch Barbarossa, and Hitler repeated it on several occasions during the first half of 1941. It was ‘the hope that Russia [and the] USA’ would intervene ‘that keeps Britain going’, Hitler told the assembled Wehrmacht leadership at the Berghof on 8 January 1941.54 For this reason it was necessary to ‘smash’ the ‘last continental hope’ of the British, namely ‘Russia’. This would also, Hitler added, ‘permit Japan to turn with all her strength against the United States’ and thus ‘prevent [her] from entering the war’.55 The immediate purpose of the invasion of Russia in 1941, in short, was the delivery of effect against Anglo-America.
Hitler also saw Barbarossa as the solution to the Reich’s chronic shortage of foodstuffs and raw materials. The seizure of the Ukraine and the Caucasus would prevent Germany from being strangled by the British blockade or held to ransom by Stalin. His plan was to carry off the grain harvest to the Reich, and to ship oil from the Caucasus by tanker across the Black Sea and up the Danube.56 The experts were sceptical about the entire strategy. The War Economics Office pointed out that the Reich already enjoyed access to the resources of the Soviet Union by virtue of the Pact, and that an invasion would end that arrangement, cutting Germany off from the supply of vital metals such as manganese.57 With regard to energy, Hitler was told that even if the oil-fields of the Caucasus were captured more or less intact, Germany simply did not yet have the capacity to transport it back to the Reich, or indeed the steel to build a huge new tanker fleet. As for foodstuffs, there were two equally impractical options: taking the grain crop before it was harvested, in which case the task of gathering it would fall to the administration, or attacking at a later date with the risk that it would be much easier for the enemy to destroy it. The list of objections was almost endless. Hitler thought the risk of inaction was greater. Fortified with the immense natural resources of the Soviet Union, he hoped, Germany might deter the US from entering the war, or at least contain Anglo-America if she did.
Finally, Barbarossa would enable Hitler to achieve his medium- to long-term objective of securing the Lebensraum for the German people, in his view, so desperately needed. He had articulated this aim at length for almost twenty years. The looming conflict with the United States made it more urgent. Only by ‘solving the questions of land thoroughly and finally’, Hitler argued, ‘will we be in a position in terms of material and personnel to master the problems we will face within two years’, by which he meant the belligerency of the United States.58 Barbarossa, in short, was the panacea for each and every one of Hitler’s major ills. It would solve all of his problems in one fell liberating blow.
In all of this, anti-Bolshevism and fear of the Soviet Union itself, though important, were second-order considerations.59 Barbarossa was predicated on the assumption that the Soviet Union was not a major threat, but rather a largely helpless victim (though, as we shall see below, there were also times when he talked up Soviet capabilities). ‘I will fight,’ he told the generals in early February 1941, and professed himself ‘convinced that our attack will pass over them like a hailstorm’.60 In so far as he was worried about Soviet military power it was as a threat against the oil needed to contain Anglo-America. ‘Now, in the era of air power,’ he told his generals in late January 1941, ‘Russia can turn the Rumanian oil-fields into an expanse of smoking debris… and the very life of the Axis depends on those fields.’61 Hitler’s relative insouciance about the Soviet communist threat was reflected in the fact that his aims, though grandiose and ultimately delusional, were limited. It is obvious with hindsight that Hitler greatly underestimated the military task ahead, and catastrophically misjudged the capacity of the Soviet war economy, but that does not mean that he was completely insouciant about the challenge posed by the Red Army. To be sure, he repeatedly ran down the Soviet Union in order to justify his expectation of a swift campaign, but when it came to detailed discussion the Führer showed some awareness of what lay on the other side of the hill. Hitler judged the Russian tank force ‘respectable’, being very large with some good models, but that ‘the majority were obsolete’. Similarly, he rated the Soviet Air Force as ‘very large numerically but with very many obsolete types’. Even so, Hitler did not believe that the Luftwaffe could ‘knock it out’ on account of their own ‘losses in the west’ and the sheer immensity of the Russian ‘space’. Overall, despite various weaknesses, he judged the Russians a ‘tough enemy’.62 In short, Hitler seems to have believed that the invasion of the Soviet Union would be no cakewalk, but a gamble, justified only by the even greater risk of standing still and awaiting strangulation at the hands of Anglo-America. Hitler’s evident anxiety about Soviet power and the natural obstacles was also reflected in his concern to refute the comparison with Napoleon Bonaparte’s disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812.63
The planned invasion of Russia required Hitler to seek allies. On 14 January, he received Romania’s Marshal Antonescu at Berchtesgaden, who offered to join the war on the German side if Stalin intervened against Hitler’s planned measures in the Balkans.64 Hitler therefore put considerable effort into mediating disputes between Hungary and Romania, who would otherwise have fought each other with even greater gusto than they would Stalin.65 Hitler needed Finland, Romania and Hungary for largely strategic reasons, to give Germany additional attack frontage. The northern and southern thrusts, in particular, depended on their cooperation.66 Hitler also tried to win over, or at least to reassure, the Turks, whose neutrality was vital for the security of the southern flank.67 With the exception of Romania’s Marshal Antonescu, he did not really trust or value any of his allies; some, such as the Hungarians, he actively despised. There was no real coordination.68 Hitler feared that involving other powers would lead them to make awkward territorial demands, but the main concern was reliability. ‘Be under no illusions about the allies,’ he warned the generals at the end of March 1941. ‘You can’t do much with Romanians,’ Hitler continued crushingly, ‘perhaps they will be able to secure an area which is not under attack with the help of a very large barrier (like a river)’. The conclusion Hitler drew with odd prescience was that ‘the fate of large German units should not be made dependent on the steadfastness of a Romanian unit’.69
In the course of the first half of 1941, the character of the impending war against the Soviet Union was contested in the Reich leadership. Some German planners, especially Alfred Rosenberg, regarded Operation Barbarossa essentially as a European war of liberation against Bolshevism. They expected a brutal reckoning with Soviet Jewry and the Bolshevik apparatus, to be sure, but for the rest they envisaged recasting the region into a system of friendly and subservient nation states. At first, Hitler seemed to go along with this vision, not least because it fitted his idea of the endgame in Russia. In his instructions for occupation policy in the east of 3 March 1941, he explained that in order to ‘end the war’ it was ‘by no means enough to defeat the enemy army’. Rather, Hitler continued, ‘the whole area must be divided up into states with governments with whom we can make peace’. Intriguingly, but entirely consistently with his previous rhetoric and policy, Hitler had no plans entirely to reverse the transformations of the past twenty-five years of Soviet rule. ‘Every great revolution,’ he stated, ‘creates facts which cannot simply be swept away.’ The ‘socialist idea’, Hitler continued, ‘can no longer be wished away from today’s Russia’. It would have to form the basis of a new state once the ‘Jewish-Bolshevik tendency’ had been ‘eliminated’. What Hitler wanted to ‘avoid under all circumstances’ was the emergence of a new ‘national Russia’. For this reason, Hitler concluded, the solution was to create ‘socialist state entities which depend on us’.70
The general trend of the debate and the planning, however, was moving in the opposite direction. Barbarossa was to be a campaign of conquest and annihilation, for reasons more to do with Anglo-America than the Soviet Union itself. The planners of the German war economy began to think about how to manage the food question. Their conclusion was bleak. While the Ukraine produced a surplus of grain, most other regions of the Soviet Union which would fall under German control did not.71 Victory alone would bring no relief, but rather additional useless mouths to feed. In order to ensure that the Reich could survive the British blockade, they argued, about 30 million inhabitants of European Russia would have to be starved to death. Hitler accepted this assessment in January–February 1941.72 According to this conception, the Germans would have to immediately starve the Russians, so that they would not themselves eventually be starved by the British, as they had been in the First World War.
The ‘Hunger Plan’ also fitted into Hitler’s long-term strategic concept, which was the capture of Lebensraum to balance Anglo-America. By clearing the original population off the land, it would make way for German settlers to hold and develop it. This in turn would give the Reich the spatial heft necessary to survive in the world of huge global powers such as the British Empire, and the United States. It would also enable him to provide Germans with the living standard which he had promised but not delivered in the 1930s. If the twentieth-century American dream involved the distribution of plenty, his dystopia required the control of scarcity.73 Here the history of the United States was not merely in some respects similar,74 but an inspiration, as was that of the British Empire. The question now was whether German-occupied Russia would be based on the colonial British ‘Raj’ model of client states, or the annihilatory American model. Would the fate of the Slavs resemble (in Hitler’s mind) that of the Indians of the subcontinent or of the ‘Red’ Indians? The answer was not yet clear, but it was becoming clearer.
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