Hitler

by Brendan Simms

  In the racial theatre, Hitler continued his relentless campaign against ‘world Jewry’ and other elements. By the winter of 1944, the deportation and murder of most of the Hungarian and Slovak Jews had been completed. In the field of ‘positive’ eugenics, Hitler remained preoccupied with the racial qualities of the British and the lost Germans on the other side of the Atlantic. A few days before the start of his great offensive in the west, he expressed his respect for the ‘toughness and tenacity’ of the British, and lamented once again to the generals that the ‘American continent’ had ‘become British rather than German’.129

  One of the most pressing tasks facing Hitler was the recruitment of more manpower to replace the huge losses of the summer and autumn of 1944. By September 1944, it was clear that the traditional methods were not enough to meet the shortfall. The Wehrmacht proposed to fill the gaps through the establishment of regional militias based on the old Prussian Landsturm model. Hitler was extremely reluctant to countenance such a step, partly because he feared the establishment of regional–and perhaps separatist–armies behind the lines.130 The fear of another ‘stab in the back’ loomed large. On 16 August Bormann sent a copy of the original Landsturm Ordinance of April 1813 to the Nazi Party leadership with Hitler’s request that they read it. Not long after, the Führer gave various Gauleiter permission to run the local defence efforts. Over the next few weeks Bormann then persuaded him to establish a new militia on a national basis.131 This Volkssturm would be made up of ‘all men fit to bear arms’ between the ages of sixteen and sixty to defend the ‘soil of the homeland’. It was to be under the control of the NSDAP, rather than the Wehrmacht, and it was to be deployed according to the orders of Himmler as the commander of the Reserve Army. The very name of the new organization–a Volkssturm, rather than a regional Landsturm–reflected Hitler’s continuing preoccupation with the threat of regionalism.

  The main mobilization front, though, remained production. Hitler was desperate to replace the equipment lost in Normandy and–to a lesser extent–in Belorussia and south-eastern Europe during the summer. The Wehrmacht was also extremely short of fuel.132 Hitler was determined to equip the armies in the west for the forthcoming offensive. His main competitor had always been Anglo-America, and the proportion of the war effort–between 70 and 80 per cent by late 1944133–devoted to fighting the Western Allies increased with every passing month. In mid October Hitler conferred with Speer about British (including Canadian and Australian) and American aircraft production. The armaments minister could report steep increases on the German side, but though his statistics on the comparative picture were hopelessly optimistic, even Speer had to concede that Germany was playing catch-up, since with the exception of the automobile industry it had possessed, unlike the United States, ‘no mass production’ before the war.134

  There were still shortages of every kind of weapon in the Wehrmacht itself, making the equipment of the new Volkssturm formations highly problematic. Hitler stressed that the militia would be useless without weapons, and ordered that they be equipped with the redundant defensive weapons of obsolete and grounded Luftwaffe bombers. The unwitting symbolism of this move was exceeded only by the bathos of the Volkssturm initiation ceremony on 19 November 1944 when the borrowed small arms carried by the new levies had to be returned after the parade. Hitler was entirely clear that the Waffen-SS and regular army should receive priority for deliveries. His general view of the military quality of the Volkssturm units was low, and he intervened on a number of occasions to remove weapons from them in order to equip Wehrmacht troops. He also insisted that armaments production took priority over recruitment, and approved Speer’s exemptions for Volkssturm draftees doing important factory work.135 For Hitler, National Socialist élan was good, but firepower was better.

  All these measures meant that Hitler acquired a whole slew of new disputes to adjudicate. Bormann battled Himmler for control of the Volkssturm, Speer over the recruitment of armament workers and Ley over the construction of fortifications.136 Rosenberg continued his steady descent.137 In each case, Hitler–be it the Volkssturm or the establishment of a Generalkommissar for the west138–took the main decisions, even if he sometimes admitted that the logically right choice could not be made for reasons of personnel. The apparent winner of these battles was Bormann, who continued his yeast-like ascent in the antechamber of power around Hitler. In political terms, however, the real rising star was Karl Dönitz, to whose advice Hitler increasingly deferred, and whose standing had increased exponentially in the course of the year.139 This partly resulted from the fact that after the missile offensive had fizzled out, the expected new U-boats represented Hitler’s only credible hope of delivering a powerful blow against the Anglo-Americans. It also reflected Hitler’s sense that Dönitz was a sincere National Socialist, whose Kriegsmarine–unlike the imperial fleet during the First World War–was imbued with a fanatical fighting spirit.

  Moreover, despite all the stress of military leadership and government, Hitler was still in full command of his senses and physically robust enough to rule decisively. To be sure, he frequently bewailed his poor health in front of the generals and spoke of his desire for release, even through death.140 On the very last day of August 1944, Hitler complained that he had he not been to the theatre, or a concert or a film, for five years on account of the war, and said that his death would be ‘for [him] personally a liberation from worries’, sleepless nights and ‘severe nervous problems’. In December 1944, he told his personal doctor, Theo Morell, of pains brought on by the military and political situation; interestingly, it was the July plot, the air war over the Reich and the forthcoming offensive in the west which most exercised him, rather than the eastern front.141 It is also true that Hitler was forced to issue an order forbidding participants at discussions from carrying out ‘individual discussions’,142 which he found deeply distracting. We should not read into this measure any implication that he was losing control over his audience. It was simply an overdue response to the age-old German habit of conducting loud and lengthy parallel private conversations during meetings in full view and hearing of the principal speaker.

  One way or the other, by early December 1944, Hitler had pulled off an astonishing rally. Unlike the autumn of 1943, there was no sustained internal crisis of the regime. Hitler’s standing was largely unchallenged, among both the elite and the population as a whole, despite his virtual public absence. The Führer’s charisma had become routinized, and the basis of his legitimacy almost traditional. Some of those who had engaged in treasonable activities, such as Field Marshal von Kluge, found themselves unable, even in the face of death, entirely to let go of their faith. Militarily, all the fronts had been stabilized, at least for now, partly because of increased German resistance, and partly because the Allied advance in the autumn had been so rapid that it had outrun their supply lines.143

  On 16 December 1944, Hitler launched his major offensive in the Ardennes, the same wooded and rugged terrain in which he had achieved his great breakthrough over four years earlier. He achieved complete strategic and tactical surprise. Thanks to the bad weather, on which the German planners relied, the Allied aircraft were initially unable to react effectively. German tanks pushed deep into the American lines, creating a huge ‘bulge’, creating consternation in Washington and London. Hitler followed progress closely, frequently intervening in the course of operations.144 Thousands of Americans were taken prisoner. There was never much likelihood, though, of Hitler reaching his objective of Antwerp, or of splitting the US from the British forces. Even had he got there, the German spearheads would have been dependent on a long and vulnerable supply line. The lunge for Antwerp was a poorly thought-out parody of the original race to the sea in 1940. As it was, Hitler’s armoured formations were plagued from the start by a shortage of fuel, and while his men captured many American vehicles, too few were able to drive them, a poignant reflection of the continuing relative backwardness of the Third Reich. The lack
of trucks forced Hitler to rely on some 50,000 horses for his mobility, yet another example of the technological gulf that separated him from the Anglo-Americans.145

  Soon, the offensive became bogged down. The Americans put up a fierce resistance at Bastogne. When the skies cleared, Allied aircraft soon devastated the German columns. Hitler’s soldiers, who had been told to salute each other with the ‘German greeting’, wagged that they were more likely to use the ‘German glance’, looking out for enemy aeroplanes. Short of fuel, the panzer spearheads were reduced to scavenging for petrol in the desolate landscape. The Germans never even reached the Meuse, let alone Antwerp. In late December 1944, Hitler switched focus to northern Alsace in Operation Nordwind.146 The Führer spoke of his determination to ‘smash [the Americans] piece for piece, to exterminate them division by division’.147 Once again, his motive was primarily political. Hitler told the generals that he hoped to show ‘Aryan’ Americans the futility of continuing the war. ‘The criticism [of the war] at home,’ he claimed, ‘is huge.’148 It was no use. The Alsatian offensive too ran aground. Early in the New Year, it was clear that Hitler’s entire western strategy had failed.149

  The Führer was in no doubt as to the cause of his defeat in the Ardennes. It was the same crushing Allied material superiority which was costing him the war as a whole. This was why, he explained to the generals, Germany could not stand on the defensive. With every passing day, Hitler continued, especially as they made the French and Belgian ports operational, the ‘deployment of material’ by the Western Allies would increase. They would bring to bear their superiority in ‘ammunition and equipment’, enabling them to implement a ‘tactic which we got to know at Aachen’. This involved the tanks ‘shooting individual bunkers to bits’ and then the occupation of a completely devastated terrain by relatively small infantry forces. ‘The human losses,’ he continued, ‘will not be as large for him as they will be over time for us.’ Meanwhile, Hitler went on, the Anglo-Americans ‘will demolish slowly but surely all of our rail connections’ and deprive the Wehrmacht of more and more ‘transport capacity’. The ‘effects on the front,’ he predicted, would be seen in ‘a reduction in the supply of ammunition, fuel, weapons, equipment, motor vehicles and so on.’ 150 It was a playbook he, and the Wehrmacht, now knew only too well.

  In mid January 1945, Hitler left Adlerhorst and returned to Berlin. He did not install himself, as originally planned, in the army headquarters at Zossen. Hitler feared that the barrack complex there was too vulnerable to Allied air attack. Instead, Hitler took up residence again in the Wilhelmstrasse at the heart of Berlin, where he spent most of the rest of the war. His position was much worse than it had been at the end of the previous summer. Militarily, much of the conflict was already being waged on German territory. Economically, Allied bombing and the loss of raw materials and factories in the former Nazi empire had created a dire situation. In early January 1945, Speer gave Hitler a detailed briefing with graphs and tables on the disastrous state of the transport system, which was running at about 50 per cent of capacity with severe consequences for the armaments industry. Not long after, he warned Hitler that munitions production had fallen so catastrophically that he could not promise to keep the many fronts supplied.151 Politically, the Führer was completely isolated. More and more countries were joining the United Nations coalition against him. Hitler’s allies–as he claimed once again in his New Year address152–had all left the Reich in the lurch. For this reason, he did not see his translator, Paul Schmidt, again.153 There was nobody left to lie to except the Germans themselves, and for them no translation was needed.

  Despite these setbacks, the main outlines of Hitler’s strategy remained unchanged. He still hoped to turn the tide militarily, or at least force a negotiated peace through a tenacious defence. He insisted on the construction of extensive fortifications, at least in the west;154 the Ostwall remained largely on paper and the christening of more than a dozen towns there as ‘fortresses’ was largely symbolic. In both cases, Hitler generally refused to allow withdrawals. This was not because he lacked imagination for a flexible defence, but because he was under no illusions about the superiority of Allied equipment. Once they left the relative security of their bunkers, Hitler feared, German troops risked being caught in the open and would soon lose heart.155 Hitler also retained his belief in the ‘new weapons’ which would enable him to deliver devastating effect against the Western Allies. In early January 1945, he reiterated his belief that the ME 262 should be used as a bomber, alongside its deployment as a fighter against the Anglo-American air fleets. These moves were accompanied by the usual measures, which were now more like exhortations, for increased human mobilization.156 So far, so familiar.

  There was, however, a new note in Hitler’s rhetoric which reflected a fundamental change in strategy. He still had a concrete plan for victory, but he realized that defeat was now more likely.157 In fact, Hitler had often believed that success was doubtful, but that without the attempt, failure was certain. He had also long been convinced that defeat could be the spur to national renewal. Hitler frequently quoted Clausewitz’s remarks on the subject. In order to live on, however, a nation would have to go down fighting in a struggle which through heroism and sacrifice bore within it the seeds of its rebirth. A disgraced people, by contrast, would never rise again. Hitler was therefore determined to ‘choreograph’ his own defeat.158 This also marked a decisive moment in his temporal vision. He had begun as a mere drummer, convinced that he was paving the way for the messiah. Then he became the Führer, increasingly convinced that he could not merely seize power in Germany, but also roll out his programme within his own lifetime. Now he reverted to his earlier timeframe, in which the exemplary end of the Third Reich, and his own death, would serve as the inspiration for the renewal of the German people. As Hitler’s time on earth ran out, racial time expanded once more.

  Hitler’s defiance in the last months of the Third Reich should therefore not be understood as mere nihilism or a narcissistic desire to build his funeral pyre ever higher for some kind of Wagnerian Götterdämmerung. Hitler despised macho posturing and he never endorsed a death wish, or pointless bravado in the face of danger. This emerged quite clearly in a somewhat comic exchange with his military leadership in January 1945. When Hermann Fegelein praised SS General Paul Hausser as a man who said that ‘the highest service that I can deliver is to die in the front line before the enemy’, Hitler was brusque. ‘I don’t want that at all,’ he responded, ‘that is no kind of wisdom.’ Fegelein retorted that Hausser was in the habit of walking tall through artillery fire and upbraiding his adjutants for taking cover and ‘being so sensitive’. Hitler wasn’t having this either. ‘I would also take cover [in that situation],’ he replied. ‘I only ever knew one general [in the First World War] who did not take cover,’ Hitler added, ‘but he couldn’t hear [the artillery fire].’159 Hitler, in other words, was not interested in gallant deaths per se, but in the delivery of military or political effect.

  In the course of January 1945, the storm on Germany itself began in earnest. There was a brief lull in the west after the Americans had cleared the Wehrmacht and SS out of the Ardennes by the middle of the month. There was no let-up, though, in the air. New Year’s Day was marked by massive bombing raids on German industry, airfields and the transport network.160 The following night brought huge RAF attacks on Ludwigshafen and Nuremberg, with nearly 1,800 people killed there. A day after that, USAAF hit installations at Aschaffenburg in western Germany. Then the RAF struck at Hanover in strength, and again at Munich. The USAAF raided Rastatt and Hamm, where some of the largest marshalling yards in the Reich were located. The Luftwaffe was increasingly unable to intervene, despite a huge paper strength in personnel and machines. Hitler was outraged by what was now an Allied aerial safari. ‘He has no losses at all,’ he stormed to his generals on 10 January, ‘it is as if he were just on parade, in bright sunshine!’ Soon, Hitler continued bitterly, the enemy ‘won’t
need any fighters any more’. Luftwaffe interceptors were being swarmed by Allied escorts before they had a chance to reach the bombers. ‘This a rabbit [hare] shoot,’ he lamented.161

  On 12 January, the Red Army attacked at Baranow, a day later in East Prussia, and the following day it launched a huge offensive on the Vistula.162 Within twenty-four hours a bridgehead was established on the river north of Warsaw; the OKW reported a deep ‘breach’.163 Shortly after, the Wehrmacht evacuated Warsaw, and a day later Cracow, the seat of Hans Frank’s General Government. Hitler sought to shore up the line by putting Himmler in charge of a new Heeresgruppe Weichsel. He defined this task as ‘organizing national defence behind the entire eastern front’.164 The main purpose behind this exercise was probably motivational and narratival: to stiffen the ranks ideologically, and to place the SS at the heart of the final resistance effort for the sake of posterity. Militarily, the decision made no difference. The Red Army was now breaking through all along the front. On 22 January, it reached the Oder to the north and south of Breslau. Bromberg fell on 23 January, and Posen was encircled on 27 January. That same day, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz; most of the extermination camps had now been abandoned. By late January the Russians had captured the ruins of the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s longtime headquarters at Rastenburg. Hitler, who had denuded the eastern front to support the offensive in the Ardennes, was powerless to stop the rout.

  The Russian surge was not just a military disaster, but also a political nightmare. The evacuation of the civilian population, which Hitler had been avoiding since the autumn of the previous year, could no longer be put off. On 23 January 1945, mass evacuations from East Prussia began, apparently without a direct order from the Führer. Hitler, in fact, insisted on priority still being given to the prosecution of the war and the needs of the war economy. He told Dönitz, who was organizing the shipping to embark refugees from East Prussia, that ‘the remaining coal reserves must be kept back for military purposes and may not be used for the evacuation of refugees’. When Memel was abandoned, Hitler’s main concern was the removal of the ‘heavy equipment’ and the destruction of the harbour facilities, rather than rescue of the civilian population.165 A week later, Hitler gave instruction that refugees should be decanted to Denmark in order to ease the situation in the Reich, but stressed again that this should only happen ‘without affecting the current troop and supply transports’.166