Hitler
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Beneath the surface, however, Hitler remained deeply ambivalent about the value of his alliances. The only coalition troops for whom he had untrammelled regard were the Finns and Spaniards. ‘These are the bravest of men,’ Hitler remarked privately, and ‘he did not see them as mere hangers-on but as real allies’.162 The Spaniards of the ‘Blue Division’, who arrived later in the autumn, also gained his admiration during the subsequent winter battles.163 Hitler had a low regard for the Slovak, Italian, Hungarian and (most of) the Romanian forces. He did not think much of his various political allies either. Hitler was particularly scathing about the White Russian émigrés whom he had known well in the 1920s and who were now queuing up to return. He considered them lazy, feckless and generally far inferior to their womenfolk.164 The Führer’s main worry, however, was that he might be forced to share some of his plunder with the rest of Europe. He was infuriated by the suggestion of a ‘cheeky’ Vichy newspaper165 that the war against the Soviet Union was a European war from which not only Germany but the whole of the continent should benefit. This made Hitler more determined to ensure that the Reich, which had paid the largest blood price, should also be the primary beneficiary of the campaign.
The tension between the emancipationist and exploitative character of Barbarossa was particularly evident in the discussion over settlement plans. Hitler began his remarks on the future of the east with the claim that ‘final decisions’, especially on states and borders, should not be proclaimed in advance, but that it would be enough to ‘appear as liberators from Bolshevism’. In this sense, Hitler argued, echoing his public statements, ‘Germany’s struggle was also in Europe’s interest’.166 Somewhat in contradiction to the general tenor of his plans, Hitler agreed with Rosenberg that national sentiment should be encouraged among Ukrainians by giving them a university at Kiev. This shows that in July 1941 Hitler’s mind was still open on the future relationship with the planned successor states. He appears to have envisaged a combination of the American and the British forms of colonialism. In some areas, such as the Crimea and other parts of the Ukraine, the local population would be simply replaced by German settlers in the style of the settlement of the American West. In others, such as the remaining areas of the Ukraine, Hitler planned to set up disarmed semi-independent statelets in the style of the Raj. ‘Here too,’ he remarked, ‘the behaviour of the British in India towards the Indian princes is a model.’167
That said, Hitler left no doubt that the relationship between the Germans and the Slav population would be a profoundly unequal one, nor did he disguise the fact that his ‘European’ rhetoric was largely designed to gull world opinion while he created facts on the ground. ‘Our steps,’ Hitler explained, ‘must be driven by tactical considerations,’ just as had been done with regard to the occupations in the west. Germany, he continued, should stress that it had been ‘forced’ to occupy and order a territory and was now obliged to care for its population. ‘We should simply pretend,’ he said, ‘that we are carrying out a [League of Nations-style] mandate,’ so that it was ‘not clear’ that a final settlement was intended. Hitler’s caution was driven by the need, as he put it, ‘not to make enemies of certain people unnecessarily and prematurely’. Whatever ‘needed’ to be done–‘shooting, deporting, etc.’–should continue to be done, of course. The recent Soviet call for partisan warfare was a boon in this regard, Hitler argued, because it provided a pretext to ‘exterminate everything opposing us’. The key point was ‘we will never leave these territories’.168 The Germans were in the east to stay.
Despite his investment of time and effort in running the Russian campaign and planning for its aftermath in the summer of 1941, Hitler never lost sight of the broader struggle against Anglo-America. The structure of military decision-making reflected these priorities. Hitler headed the High Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW), which was responsible for the war as a whole and all the individual theatres, with the exception of the Russian front, which was run by the High Command of the Army (OKH). The main enemy for the Kriegsmarine, the Luftwaffe and the Wehrmacht as a whole remained Britain, and ultimately America; the concentration on Russia was regarded as purely temporary.
If things were still going well against the Soviet Union, the same could not be said of the hot war against the British Empire and the cold war with the United States. Both London and Washington announced their intention to supply Stalin with war material. Two days after the start of the invasion, Roosevelt unfroze Soviet accounts in the US and a few months later extended Lend-Lease to Stalin. His confidant, Harry Hopkins, was sent to Moscow. Two weeks after the start of Barbarossa, on 7 July 1941, the United States took over the occupations of Iceland and Greenland, not only releasing British troops for service elsewhere but also taking the Americans much closer to the fighting in Europe; the Führer registered this with profound alarm.169 On 12 July, Britain signed a formal pact with the Soviet Union. Hitler had himself brought about the encirclement he so feared.
Moreover, despite the early successes, Russian resistance was stiffer than Hitler had expected. German infantry and tank losses in the first weeks of the invasion were much heavier than in any previous campaign. Ralph Ross, the Chicago-raised son of Hitler’s ‘America adviser’ Colin Ross, was killed in the Ukraine in early July 1941, six days short of his eighteenth birthday.170 Not long after, the Führer conceded that while the Soviet officer corps was weak, the commissars were ‘hard’ and ‘the Russian was individually as fanatic as he had been in the [First] World War’, that is, ‘obstinate and determined’.171 Hitler admitted privately to Rosenberg that ‘the Soviets had many more and better tanks than had been assumed’.172 A week after that, he remarked with exasperation that the Russians always seemed to have men left over. By mid July 1941, however, Hitler was reasonably confident that the collapse of the Soviet Union was only a matter of time. He did not think, he remarked privately, ‘that the resistance in European Russia will last longer than six weeks’.173
The Führer now turned back to face the main enemy, Anglo-America. On 13 July 1941, Hitler decreed that strong tank forces would be left to secure Russia, but new formations–such as ‘tropical armoured divisions’–were to be established for use against Britain.174 A day later, he issued Directive 32b, his first after the start of the invasion.175 Its title referred back to the original Directive 32 concerning the time after Barbarossa. That moment, Hitler believed, had now come. ‘The military domination of the European space after the defeat of Russia,’ he predicted, ‘will soon allow us to reduce the size of the army’; only the armoured forces were to be increased. Naval armaments were to be limited to the level necessary for the immediate prosecution of the war ‘against Britain, and, in the event, against America’. ‘The centre of gravity of armaments,’ Hitler decreed, ‘will be transferred to the Luftwaffe,’ which was to be ‘greatly enlarged’. There was no sign of euphoria, or sense of imminent victory. On the contrary, he decreed that all construction ‘which did not serve the immediate needs of the Wehrmacht and the war economy’ was to cease. As Barbarossa appeared to draw to a close, Hitler’s war was not over; it had hardly begun.
That same day Hitler met with Oshima in order to maintain Japanese pressure on the US, to guard against his nightmare scenario, which was the possibility of a rapprochement between Tokyo and Washington, and to assure his interlocutor that he was in no sense intimidated by American industrial potential. ‘Europe,’ he claimed, was a ‘much greater armoury than the USA,’ citing the superiority of Krupp, Rheinmetall, Skoda and even Schneider-Creusot. ‘As far as soldiers were concerned,’ Hitler continued, ‘he was not worried at all,’ because ‘what was the American soldier anyway–he had got to know him in the [First] World War’. The Führer was, of course, protesting too much, especially if one recalls his earlier respectful remarks about the quality of the US troops he had encountered in July 1918, and his bluster revealed the extent of his anxiety about the looming struggle with the overwhelming might of the United State
s.176 One way or the other, it was clear that the confrontation could not be ducked. ‘If one had to fight against the United States,’ he concluded, ‘then that should happen on his watch,’ because he ‘considered the idea of delaying that sort of thing cowardly’. Hitler would not shy away from his ‘generational’ task. In this respect, time which was lengthening in the east, was shortening again in the west.
Hitler’s next two directives, issued on 19 and 23 July 1941, entitled ‘Continuation of the War in the East’, essentially envisaged a mopping-up operation within the framework of the original plan for Barbarossa.177 Hitler demanded that Soviet forces be prevented from withdrawing into the depths of Russia, followed by advances to the Dnieper, Leningrad and towards Moscow. The Romanians were to cover the southern flanks. No new forces would be sent to fight partisans, who should be dealt with through terror rather than legal means. In late July, over protests from commanders such as Bock, he ordered the sealing of smaller and tighter pockets to prevent the Red Army from escaping eastwards.178 Around this time, however, Hitler’s optimism in Russia was dented by stiffening Soviet resistance on the central front. He remarked to Halder on 26 July 1941 that ‘the Russians could not be beaten operationally’.179 A quick decision there now seemed unlikely.
In response to this, Hitler abandoned the original Barbarossa conception. This had involved both military-political and economic objectives, with the main thrust being made in the north and centre against the Red Army and the principal loci of Soviet power, to be followed by the occupation of the Ukraine. Now Hitler had to make a choice; he had neither the resources nor the time to achieve both objectives. He confessed to his adjutant on 28 July 1941 that he was having difficulty sleeping because he was struggling with the two ‘souls in his breast’. In political-ideological terms, Hitler believed that the main task was to eliminate the ‘main abscesses’ of Leningrad and Moscow, but the economic objectives all lay to the south, a land where milk and honey flowed, and where he would find ‘oil, grain and everything that was necessary to secure the Lebensraum’.180 That same day, Hitler let it be known to the generals that his main aim was the elimination of Soviet forces around Leningrad and the capture of the raw materials of the Donets basin in the south; he was less interested in Moscow.181 Two days later, Hitler instructed that Army Group Centre should go over to the defensive.182 He would strike south, partly to encircle large bodies of Soviet troops, partly to deprive the Soviet regime of the industrial and agrarian resources of the Ukraine, but mainly in order to secure these for the Reich to support the struggle against Anglo-America.
Over the next fortnight, there was a perceptible grinding and clashing of gears as the Wehrmacht regrouped. On 12 August 1941, Hitler issued a fresh directive in which the primacy of economic objectives was spelled out.183 The Wehrmacht was ordered to capture not only the Donets but also the ‘industrial area of Kharkov’. Crimea was to be taken and future operations against Baku prepared. Army Group Centre would remain on the defensive until the time had come to renew the offensive on Moscow.
Late July and early August 1941 also marked a discernible shift in policy towards Soviet Jewry.184 The timing and motivation of this change, and whether it originated in a specific order from Hitler, are not clear. What is certain, however, is that at Hitler’s behest Göring issued an order to Heydrich on 31 July 1941 to present in the near future ‘an overall plan for the organizational, technical and material preparations necessary for the implementation of the desired final solution of the Jewish question’.185 Subsequently, the Einsatzgruppen gradually moved from murdering ‘only’ or principally male Jews to slaughtering whole communities, including women and children. The Wehrmacht was often complicit in these killings, especially when they overlapped with the campaign against Soviet partisans.186 Whether or not he actually ordered them in writing, Hitler was the ultimate driving force behind these actions. In late July, he explained to a visiting foreign dignitary that ‘if just one state tolerates a single Jewish family’, then this would become the ‘germ-centre’ for a new ‘wave of decomposition’. ‘If there were no more Jews in Europe’, Hitler continued, ‘then the unity of European states would no longer be disturbed’.187
The Führer does not seem to have followed the activities of the Einsatzgruppen in detail. There is no evidence that he was sent or read their reports. It is true that on 1 August 1941, Gestapo Chief Müller asked the Einsatzgruppen commanders to provide him with material with which he could brief Hitler. The order referred explicitly only to ‘particularly interesting visual material, such as photographs, posters, leaflets, and other documents’, in other words objects which could be used for propagandistic purposes; the Führer does not seem to have been sent or studied detailed lists of executions.188 One way or the other, the escalation of late July and early August 1941 affected primarily Soviet and Baltic Jews under German occupation, most of whom were killed by the end of the year.189 The vast majority of Polish, Balkan, German and western European Jews were still alive, though their deportation east was already being planned. Deportation was not (yet) a euphemism for murder; the decision to kill all European Jews under Nazi control had not yet been taken.
In early August 1941, the cumulative stresses of the Russian campaign and other worries were beginning to take their toll on Hitler’s health. On 8 August, he was confined to bed with shivering and diarrhoea. His personal doctor, Dr Morell, tried to revive him, but failed to do so in time for the military briefing that day. It was the first meeting that Hitler had missed. He took out his frustration on Morell; ‘Führer very irritable,’ the latter wrote in his diary, ‘have never experienced such hostility towards myself.’ In order to prevent a recurrence, Morell stepped up his treatment. Hitler was daily pumped full of stimulants and other drugs; the list exceeded eighty medicines, more than a dozen of them consciousness altering. Though nominally a vegetarian, Hitler had more and more animal substances coursing in his blood from the autumn of 1941, including derivatives of bulls’ testicles and Homoseran, which is a by-product of uterine blood.190 There was no disguising, however, that Hitler’s health was in decline. He began to complain of dizziness, tinnitus and headaches; there were also the first signs of a tremor.191
Hitler’s sense of anxiety, especially with regard to Anglo-America, was greatly increased by news of the signing of the Atlantic Charter on 14 August 1941. Churchill and Roosevelt had met on board a British battle cruiser in Placentia Bay off Newfoundland and issued a joint declaration. It set out a sunny vision for a new global order based on international cooperation, social justice, free trade and equal access to the world’s resources.192 The Charter also committed the United States and the United Kingdom to ‘certain common principles’, such as a rejection of territorial change without the ‘freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned’ and support for ‘self-government’, which were plainly directed against the Axis. If this was not bad enough, article six of the Charter explicitly looked forward to ‘the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny’. The preamble signalled that the United States would investigate further measures to support ‘those countries actively engaged in resisting aggression’, including the Soviet Union, by ‘the Hitlerite Government of Germany’. For Churchill, the Charter was something of a disappointment, because it did not bring an immediate American entry into the war,193 but for Hitler it was still a considerable shock. He was particularly infuriated by its reference to the ‘final destruction of the Nazi tyranny’.194 Roosevelt was much closer now to finally throwing off the mask. The impact of the Charter on Hitler is attested by the fact that he continued to engage with it on many occasions over the next three years.195
In mid and late August 1941, the Führer pondered his response. The Charter was partly a propaganda challenge, with its eight points echoing the Fourteen Points of President Wilson. Hitler was torn between wanting to ignore it and the urgent need to refute it. He and Goebbels feared that Germans and Europe as a whole might be led astray by the siren voices of Ro
osevelt and Churchill, just as Germans had believed Wilson only to be betrayed at Versailles. The ‘dynamite contained in the eight-point declaration’ would have to be defused.196 Just as Churchill had issued a joint statement with Roosevelt, Hitler wanted to respond after consulting with Mussolini, his main ally, which he did on 25 August 1941. Their joint communiqué was published towards the end of the month. Mimicking the language of their Anglo-Saxon rivals, it stressed that the two men had discussed all political and military matters which affected the development and length of the war in great detail and in the spirit of close comradeship and a sense of common destiny. Then followed the substantive reply. ‘The new European order which will emerge from this war,’ Hitler and Mussolini announced, ‘must remove the causes of past European wars’; here the Jews were meant. ‘The elimination of the Bolshevik threat and of plutocratic exploitation,’ they continued, ‘will enable a peaceful, harmonious and fruitful cooperation of all peoples of the European continent both on political as well as on the economic and cultural levels’.197
The Charter accelerated rather than caused the shift in Hitler’s strategy.198 He was now even more determined to finish the war in the east and refocus his efforts against the west. Significantly, Hitler’s first talk of a separate peace with Russia came on 18 August 1941,199 shortly after news of the Charter reached him. On that day Hitler once again spoke of completing the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin, further evidence of his plans to take on Britain and the United States. Two days later he was briefed by scientists from the experimental station at Peenemünde on their work, and the possibility of bombarding America, or at least US forces on Iceland, with rockets. Hitler was excited by their potential, and remarked ‘that this development was of revolutionary importance for the conduct of war in the whole world’.200