On 26 May 1942, Rommel opened his offensive in North Africa. The Panzerarmee Afrika punched through the British lines and raced towards the Egyptian border. By 11 June, Rommel had taken Bir Hakim, followed by Tobruk on 21 June 1942. That same day, he sent his adjutant, Oberleutnant Brandt, to Hitler to report and to sound him out about future moves. The logistical situation was dire, because once the pressure on Malta had been relaxed, the British were able to resume attacks on German and Italian shipping from the island. In June 1942, only about 50 per cent of Axis cargoes got through. Hitler responded by making Rommel a field marshal, but he sent no new forces and did nothing to address the problem of Malta by deploying Luftwaffe units against the island. Priority was given to the eastern front. The Führer’s hope was that the Panzerarmee Afrika could be resupplied via Crete and Tobruk. For now, this did not matter, because Hitler was confident that the fall of Tobruk, after its earlier stout defence, signalled the imminent demise of the British Empire, which would be followed by a negotiated peace.114
A few days later, on 28 June, Hitler launched Operation Blue. The Wehrmacht achieved total surprise and made rapid progress. Germany’s allies marched behind and sometimes beside the German advance. On 3 July 1942, Hitler flew to the region of Voronezh to see for himself. He did not share the general optimism, agreeing with Bock that the Red Army was not beaten but engaging in flexible defence.115 He insisted that the encirclement rings not be drawn too wide, so that the Russians would not have the chance to escape.116 The Luftwaffe was deployed extensively to make up for the shortage of ground forces, and to overcome the challenges of operating over huge spaces.117 For now, this approach worked well. On 4 July, Sebastopol finally surrendered, clearing the way for a push into the Caucasus across the Straits of Kertsch. Voronezh was captured on 11 July 1942, amidst heavy Soviet losses. Rostov on Don was taken on 23 July. In order to be closer to the action, Hitler moved his headquarters to Vinnytsia in the Ukraine.118 Victory in the east, or at least the attainment of the objectives set for Operation Blue, seemed within his grasp.
Determined to burnish his credentials as a military genius, Hitler sought to shape the history of the campaign as it unfolded. During the planning stages, he issued a decree containing the ‘basic instructions for the military-historical treatment of the Greater German liberation struggle’. Three weeks before the offensive began, he put Colonel Scherff in charge of the ‘military-historical section of the army’, which would have the task of recording the army’s contribution.119 Hitler also prepared to secure the economic resources so vital to the German war effort. On the very first day of the offensive, he issued a decree stressing that ‘the rapid restoration of coal extraction in the Donets area is one of the most important preconditions for the continuation of the operations in the east and the exploitation of the Russian space by the German war economy’.120 Army Group South was instructed to support this endeavour, which was one of the principal objectives of the offensive, with all the means at its disposal. After the capture of Sebastopol, a new directive, number 43, called for the dropping of paratroops on the oil installations at Maykop, now only a few hundred miles away.121
In mid July 1942, Hitler speeded up the murder of the Jews still further, whether in response to the early successes of Operation Blue, or simply because rolling stock had now become available again for the deportations or for some other reason.122 What is beyond doubt is that both Hitler and Himmler had become impatient with the rate of killing, and that after a meeting on 16 July at the Führer’s Headquarters it was resolved to break the various transportation deadlocks. The following day, Himmler went to Auschwitz to witness the gassing of a transport of Jews. He then ordered the camp commandant to accelerate the expansion of the killing facilities. This was done either at Hitler’s direct behest, or in response to some more general instruction from the Führer. ‘The occupied eastern territories will be free of Jews,’ Himmler wrote a fortnight later. ‘The carrying-out of this very difficult order has been laid on my shoulders by the Führer.’ The escalation was so dramatic that it was noticed on the ground and relayed to the World Jewish Congress and thus to the Allies through intermediaries.123
As the Wehrmacht sped through southern Russia, Hitler’s settlement plans moved further up the agenda. On 12 July 1942, immediately after the fall of Sebastopol, Hitler ordered that the Crimea be emptied of all ‘Russians and Ukrainians living there’.124 In late July 1942, Himmler presented Hitler with the revised version of the Generalplan Ost, with detailed maps and plans for the construction of settler villages. An important part of these plans was the resettlement of German-American returnees, who were deemed to have the right qualities of hardiness and initiative to colonize the steppes as their forefathers had once settled the plains. Some of the planned settlements were thus to be called ‘USA-Colonies’.125 ‘The Führer not only listened to me,’ Himmler said shortly afterwards, ‘he even refrained from constant interruptions, as is his usual habit.’126 Hitler approved the plan. This vision was by no means purely agrarian. On the contrary, Hitler envisaged not merely the Germanization of some existing cities, but also the construction of a whole new set of urban centres.127 The modernity of Hitler’s vision was also demonstrated by his plans for a huge broad-gauge railway which would connect the population centres of the new territories with the Reich.128
At around the same time, the Führer set out how he envisaged the treatment of the native population (or at least of the Slavic residue, once the ‘Nordic’ elements had been filtered out). Abortions in the occupied eastern territories were to be encouraged, indeed it would be desirable to have a ‘vigorous trade in contraception there’ to prevent ‘the non-German population from multiplying’. The non-German population was not to have any access to the ‘German medical welfare system’; they should not, for example, be inoculated or offered any form of preventative medicine. The non-German population should not be taught more than how to read or write. They should certainly not be given any ‘higher education’, for fear of encouraging ‘future resistance’. The German settler population, he stressed, should be kept strictly apart, if necessary at first in temporary barracks. The Slav cities were to be kept run down, so that the native population would not have a ‘higher standard of living’ than the German settlers would achieve in their planned separate ‘newly built cities and villages’.129 It was a bleak prospect for the Slavs, but still a more promising one than the future Hitler had originally had in store for them under the ‘Hunger Plan’. He would not strive to keep them alive, but nor would he now actively set out to kill them. The Slav ‘problem’ would be solved by evolutionary neglect, rather than radical violence.
The most important part of Hitler’s programme, at least in the immediate term, was the war against Anglo-America. As Operation Blue waxed, Hitler turned his attention back to the British Empire and the United States. Rather than attacking Malta, as Kesselring wanted, Hitler backed Rommel’s plan to continue the offensive in Libya. This was partly because he was seduced by Rommel’s razzmatazz,130 but his main thinking was strategic and political. He was worried, as he told Mussolini, that if Britain were not ejected soon from North Africa then ‘American long-range bombers’ would appear there ‘within weeks’ and begin the bombardment of southern Italy. For this reason, the fall of Tobruk should be taken as an opportunity to finish off the 8th Army. ‘It is possible that on this occasion Egypt can be seized from the British,’ Hitler remarked cautiously. It might even be possible to combine that offensive with the thrust through the Caucasus in order to ‘collapse’ Britain’s whole position in the ‘Orient’.131 That same day, Rommel attacked again, once more driving the British back, this time across the Egyptian border. On 27 June 1942, he took Marsa Matruh. The instruments used were military, but Hitler’s real strategy remained political, namely the destruction of the Churchill government, followed by a negotiated peace.
Hitler now ramped up the military, diplomatic and psychological pressure. Right at the start of
July, he issued a joint declaration with Mussolini on Egypt. A day later, he authorized a huge allocation of resources and workers to speed up naval repairs and construction, including the building and conversion of no fewer than five aircraft carriers.132 Shortly after, the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine completed the evisceration of PQ 17, one of the British Arctic convoys carrying supplies to the Soviet Union via Murmansk. The Battle of the Atlantic was also going well, with steadily increasing sinkings of Allied merchantmen. Hitler was delighted with these successes. ‘The Führer was deeply moved by the successes in the Arctic and about the activities of our U-boats,’ Rosenberg noted, ‘he kept on coming back to this event.’133 In the middle of the month, Hitler received the ousted Iraqi prime minister, Rashid Ali. ‘The conversation was conducted in the spirit of trusting friendship,’ the subsequent communiqué announced, ‘which the German people feel towards the Arab peoples.’134 The strangulation of Britain and the collapse of her empire, assaulted by the Germans in the west and the Japanese in the east, now seemed a realistic possibility.
On 23 July 1942, Hitler issued Directive 45 on the continuation of the offensive in southern Russia.135 He declared the Russian forces west of the Don defeated, though he did note the ‘assembly of further enemy forces in the area around Stalingrad which the enemy will probably defend with vigour’. Hitler decreed that Russian forces south of the Don were to be eliminated. Thereafter, the advance would divide, and the sub-divisions of Army Group South reflected this. The main thrust, by Army Group A, with most of the armoured and mobile forces, was to push south to secure the Black Sea coast and the oil-fields. Meanwhile, Army Group B was to ‘build up a defensive line on the Don’ and to advance against the ‘enemy forces’ at Stalingrad, to ‘occupy the city itself’ (a new objective), and to ‘block’ the land bridge between Don and Volga; there was no talk yet of any symbolic or political significance attached to its capture. Once this had been done, ‘fast units’ were to be sent to Astrakhan to cut the ‘main tributary of the Volga’. The Luftwaffe was to support the move on Stalingrad, and to destroy the city, but the ‘main centre of gravity of the air war’ was to be the capture of the Black Sea ports. His plan here was to resupply the Army Group in the Caucasus by sea.136
Given that the region, with its majority Muslim population, now appeared on the verge of falling into his lap, Hitler gave its future some serious thought.137 This was part of a broader ‘Muslim Moment’ in the summer of 1942, in which the Third Reich sought, and often found, allies among the Muslims of the Balkans, the Soviet Union and the Middle East.138 ‘The Führer confirmed to me,’ one German diplomat wrote in mid August 1942, ‘that Germany follows with great interest the fight of the Islamic world against its oppressors and does not intend to enslave or suppress any Islamic country’.139 In early September 1942, the Führer even got as far as drafting a directive on occupation policy in the Caucasus which held out the prospect of subsequent independence for the peoples of the area. Hitler’s motivation here was strategic.140 Managing the Caucasian oil-fields would be difficult without the support or at least the quiescence of the population. In the Führer’s view, this required close supervision to prevent them from indulging in their traditional blood feuds.141 Hitler wanted to extract oil, and for that he needed order.
In late July 1942, the Wehrmacht surged forward again. The Soviet forces south of the Don were quickly overcome. Army Group B dug in to secure the flanks; the 6th Army pressed on to Stalingrad. Army Group A–the main thrust–advanced towards the Caucasus. Krasnodar was taken on 3 August with its oil refineries, and Maykop, with the first oil-fields, was captured on 9/10 August. Nearly all the facilities, however, had been wrecked by the retreating Red Army. Not long after, the mountains of the Caucasus were reached and German mountain troops scaled Mount Elbrus to plant the swastika to great media acclaim back home and internationally. Hot on the heels of the advance came specialist units–the Mineralölbrigade–tasked with securing the oil-fields and making them operational again. Hitler was given an immediate report on the situation and was briefed on progress at regular intervals.142 The capture of the Donets mines and some of the first Caucasian oil-fields came at an opportune moment, because the shortage of energy was becoming acute back in the Reich. Very shortly after the capture of Maykop, Hitler attended an emergency meeting with Speer, Sauckel, Kehrl and various industrial magnates on the ‘coal crisis’. ‘If due to the shortage of coking coal the output of the steel industry cannot be raised as planned,’ he warned his stunned interlocutors, ‘then the war is lost.’143
Despite these concerns, Hitler’s spirits rose as the advance continued in mid August 1942. The Lebensraum and resource objectives of the Russian campaign appeared on the verge of realization. Africa and much of Asia appeared within his grasp; the world seemed to open up before him.144 He was thinking hard about ways to strike at the United States itself. Hitler had not originally planned to expand this far, but the global nature of the hostile coalition meant that for a brief moment in the midsummer of 1942, only the world was enough to give him the security he craved. Yet even at this pinnacle of his power, as autumn loomed, and the decisive blow eluded him, the Führer was beginning to draw back. His strategy, he explained to Raeder on 26 August 1942, was to crush Russia and thereby secure a ‘blockade-proof and defensible Lebensraum from which the war could be waged [against the Anglo-Americans] for many more years’. This would enable the Führer to determine the ‘outcome and length’ of the broader war, which he defined as the ‘battle against the Anglo-Saxon seapowers’, in order to make them ‘ready for peace’.145 In other words, victory in Russia would pave the way not for world domination but for a negotiated peace with Anglo-America.
Even at the height of his power, Hitler remained an anxious man, and with good reason. The Japanese advance in the Pacific crashed to a halt after their shattering defeat at Midway in early June. On 16 August 1942, the USAAF launched its first raid on Europe, against the marshalling yards at Rouen. Three days after that, a substantial raiding force of Canadians landed at Dieppe, and although it suffered heavy casualties, the operation shook Hitler.146 Soon after, Rommel’s offensive in North Africa ran out of steam at El Alamein, about 100 kilometres west of Alexandria. The sea routes were now dominated by the British, who had by now sunk a large percentage of the Italian merchant fleet. Hitler simply did not have the supplies, forces or ability to get these across the Mediterranean to help him. The Führer was also unhappy with the recent progress in Russia. He had noticed that most Russian troops had escaped the encirclement south of the Don and melted away south or east to fight another day. Hitler was particularly concerned about the situation in the Caucasus, where the spearhead was too far to the east. He ordered that priority for fuel and resources be given to the right flank attacking the Black Sea ports. This is why he was so infuriated by the scaling of Mount Elbrus by his mountain troops, which he considered a colossal distraction. It was the low-lying coastal strip, not the high ground, which interested him.147 If necessary, the Luftwaffe could temporarily supply the attacking forces. One way or the other, the Wehrmacht would have to secure the Black Sea ports, or else the offensive towards Baku would grind to a halt.
In early September 1942, Hitler’s unease turned to alarm.148 On 7 September, he sent Jodl to meet the commanders in the Caucasus. They agreed that the forces in the mountains should not swing towards the sea, as Hitler wanted, but hold the passes and release troops for the force advancing from the north down the coast towards the Black Sea port of Tuapse. The Führer’s attempts to get his way proved fruitless. Hitler’s reaction was stark. He went into a prolonged ‘sulk’, refusing to take meals with the army leadership for about a month; he also insisted that all future discussion be recorded in full to prevent a recurrence.149 The commander of Army Group A was summarily sacked on 10 September.
Hitler took over direct command, temporarily, the only time Hitler exercised formal direct operational command during the war. In practice, he intervene
d little in the day-to-day operations of the Army Group, or at least no more than he would have done anyway;150 his main aim was to ensure the strategic compliance of the Wehrmacht. The same day as Hitler deprived List of his command, he issued a formal order to Army Group A. Firstly, 17 Army was instructed ‘to press on immediately to Tuapse in order to capture the Black Sea coast’ and to pave the way for a further attack as far south as Suchumi. Secondly, Hitler announced his intention–‘depending on developments at Stalingrad’–to switch ‘fast units’ from there at the end of the month to support 1st Panzer Army in its push on Grozny.151 The advance continued, but at a steadily diminishing speed. On 18 September, Hitler erupted in a long diatribe at Vinnytsia.152 He considered sacking Jodl, but then changed his mind. Not long after, on 24 September 1942, the chief of the general staff, Franz Halder, was given his marching orders. ‘He told me when I took my leave,’ Halder later recalled, ‘that my constant know-all attitude had used up half of his nerves.’153 He was replaced by Kurt Zeitzler. One way or the other, whoever was to blame, it was clear that the oil-fields at Baku would not be reached that year.
In consequence, sometime between the beginning of September and mid October, Hitler decided to go over to the strategic defensive in Russia. On 8 September 1942, Army Groups Centre and North were told to hold their positions at all costs, partly to avoid the loss of ‘irreplaceable equipment’ and partly to avoid jeopardizing ‘neighbouring sectors’.154 Explicitly making a comparison with the ‘great defensive battles of the [First] World War’, which he deemed much tougher than those of the eastern front, Hitler issued his ‘slogan’, which was ‘dig and dig again, especially while the soil is still soft’. On 14 October, Hitler also in effect called time on Operation Blue in the south. He declared the current campaign to be largely ‘completed’. Hitler promised to resume operations in the following year. In the meantime, he demanded that there should be no ‘retreats or operational withdrawals’ in the face of enemy attacks. Detailed instructions were provided on the construction of trenches and fortifications.155 The language was unmistakable. The war in the east would no longer be one of manoeuvre but of attrition.
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