Hitler

by Peter Longerich

  On 8 December, Hitler met Alfieri, who explained to him at length the precarious situation of the Italian army, which, in the meantime, had gone on to the defensive in Albania. Hitler advised Alfieri ‘immediately to create order at the front by using barbaric methods such as shooting generals and colonels . . . and decimating the troops’. In addition, he promised to provide German transport aircraft, but regretted being unable to intervene with troops until March.72

  On 10 December, in his Directive No. 19, Hitler acted on his failure to persuade France to join the anti-British bloc. He ordered the ‘rapid occupation’ of the hitherto unoccupied part of France in the event of the French colonies beginning to ‘defect’.73 He interpreted the dismissal of the French Prime Minister, Laval, on 13 December, as a clear rejection by France of a policy of cooperation with Germany. On receiving Laval’s successor, Admiral Darlan, in his special train during a brief visit to German occupation troops on 24 December, the ‘Führer’ bluntly rejected Darlan’s request for a continuation of the policy of cooperation with France.74

  On 13 December, Hitler signed Directive No. 20 concerning Operation ‘Marita’, involving the occupation of Greece during the coming spring, which he had promised Mussolini;75 but the grandiose Mediterranean strategy, of which the operation had originally been a part, the plan to exclude Britain from the Mediterranean all the way from Gibraltar to Suez, had failed.

  How serious then was Hitler about the idea of a continental bloc? Was he at any point really prepared to abandon the attack on the Soviet Union that he had conceived in the summer of 1940, a war that had been in his mind since the mid-1920s as a solution to Germany’s ‘problem of a lack of space’?

  It appears that the outlines of a plan for a continental bloc had simply represented one option for Hitler, which he tried out temporarily, possibly as an ‘intermediate solution in world politics’.76 He thought it necessary just in case the Soviet Union, seeing the alliance between Germany, Italy, and Japan, should seek an accommodation with Britain. In fact, as it became clear that the continental bloc had no future, Hitler was confirmed in his goal of engaging in a final confrontation with the Soviet Union. For Halder, Hitler’s comment on 13 December that ‘the question of future hegemony in Europe will be decided in the war with Russia’ contained the quintessence of his views.77 This war was no longer planned, in the first instance, to force Britain to make peace and to boost Japan in the Far East against the United States; now, this war had become in Hitler’s mind a war of annihilation and a war to achieve living space.

  On 16 December, he signed his Directive No. 21 to defeat the Soviet Union. The preparations for ‘Case Barbarossa’ were to be completed by 15 May 1941.

  33

  The Expansion of the War

  On 8 and 9 January Hitler held lengthy discussions at the Berghof with Jodl, Keitel, Brauchitsch, and other army, navy, and Luftwaffe chiefs.1 He stated that ‘it’s not yet clear how Russia will respond to Germany’s planned action in Bulgaria. Russia needs Bulgaria for any move towards the Bosphorus. Britain is being kept going by its hope that the United States and Russia will intervene.’ Britain was trying ‘to get Russia to move against us.’ Stalin should be ‘seen as an ice-cold extortionist’, but also as a ‘smart guy; he won’t openly go against Germany, but we must assume that in tricky situations he will increasingly make difficulties for us’. Entry into the war by the United States and the Soviet Union would represent ‘a very serious challenge to our conduct of the war’; this danger had to be eliminated from the start. ‘Once the threat from Russia has been removed we can continue the war with England under quite manageable conditions; the collapse of Russia will be a great relief to Japan and an increased threat to the United States.’ Up until now, Hitler continued, he had always acted on the principle of destroying the most important enemy positions in order to be able to move on. ‘So we must now crush Russia.’2

  During a two-day meeting with Mussolini in Salzburg and at the Berghof, which began on 19 January, Hitler tried to coordinate the military efforts of the two allies more closely or, to put it more precisely, to integrate Italy’s hitherto ‘parallel war’ into an overall war strategy determined by Germany.3 At the first meeting, Hitler held the floor as usual. To begin with, he dealt mainly with France and the position of the Axis powers in the Mediterranean. On the second day, he gave a comprehensive address to a larger group – apart from Mussolini, Ciano, and Ribbentrop, there were numerous German and Italian generals present – in which he went into military details. He described Russia as a serious threat to his future policies, as it pinned down substantial German military resources. ‘So long as Stalin is alive, there is probably no danger; he is clever and cautious. But when he is no longer there, the Jews, of whom there are a number in the second and third echelons of the regime, can once again rise to the top.’ As far as the situation in the West was concerned, Hitler stated that he would launch an attack on Britain only when ‘success was completely assured’, as, given the huge military resources involved, if such an operation failed, it could not be repeated.4 Mussolini left the meeting with the impression that Hitler had given up the idea of an invasion.5 The Italians learnt nothing about the preparations for the attack on the Soviet Union.

  In January, Hitler also decided to have another go at persuading Franco to enter the war.6 Ribbentrop took on the task and the German ambassador in Madrid had repeated audiences with Franco, giving him a virtual ultimatum to do what had so long been expected of him. In a letter to the ‘dear Caudillo’ Hitler had bluntly threatened that Spain would ‘never be able to gain such good friends as it now has in Germany and Italy’.7 Franco evaded these peremptory demands, however, though without definitively refusing to enter the war.8

  In the meantime, the army leadership remained distinctly sceptical about the prospect of war with the Soviet Union. In a note about a meeting with the commander-in-chief of the army on 28 January 1941 Halder recorded his own opinion of ‘Barbarossa’: ‘The purpose isn’t clear. We won’t strike at the English that way. It won’t significantly improve our economic potential. Risk in the West shouldn’t be underestimated.’ The collapse of Italy following the loss of its African colonies could not be ruled out, so that a new southern front might emerge.9 When meeting them at a lunch, Brauchitsch too expressed doubts about the overall political and military situation to Halder and the Army Group commanders, Leeb, Bock, Witzleben, and Rundstedt.

  On 1 February, at a meeting with Hitler, Bock told him that, while they could no doubt defeat the Russians, it was questionable whether they would be able to force them to make peace. Hitler responded by saying ‘that if the occupation of the Ukraine and the fall of Moscow and Leningrad did not bring about peace’, then they would simply have to go on to Ekaterinburg (the Soviet city in the Urals).10 However, on 3 February, Halder gave a detailed outline of the military plans for Barbarossa and Marita (the operation against Yugoslavia and Greece) to Hitler, Brauchitsch, and other military chiefs at the Berghof without expressing any basic concerns. Hitler then approved Halder’s plans, emphasizing once more the significance of the thrusts towards the Baltic states and the Ukraine. This was where the war would be decided, he said, and not on the central front. The attack was still planned for the middle of May.11

  At this meeting Hitler also decided to give the Italians in Libya more support than hitherto. He was influenced by the conquest of the port of Tobruk by British forces on 22 January. Since September, the British had taken 130,000 Italian prisoners, and there was a danger of Italy suffering a total defeat in North Africa.12 All German and Italian forces in North Africa – after initial hesitation, Hitler had sent a panzer unit of 8,000 men in January13 – were to be subordinated to a general command under German leadership. Hitler appointed General Erich Rommel, who had distinguished himself as an unconventional commander of a panzer division in the campaign in Western Europe, to head up this command.14

  Hitler’s ‘warning’ and the radicalization o
f anti-Jewish policy

  Hitler’s speech in the Sportpalast on 30 January 1941 to mark the anniversary of the ‘seizure of power’ revealed his far-reaching goals for the war against the Soviet Union. On the one hand, there was the ‘settling of accounts’ with Britain, whose political and economic elites he made the object of his mockery and scorn.15 On the other, the ‘Führer’ made it clear that the, in his view, close association between the conduct of the war and anti-Jewish policy was acquiring entirely new dimensions with the preparations for Barbarossa. Hitler referred to the ‘warning’ he had given exactly two years before ‘that, if the rest of the world were to be plunged into a general war, the whole of Jewry will have played out its role in Europe!’ Now he added, ‘they may now be laughing about it, just as they used to laugh at my prophecies. The coming months and years will show that here too I’ve been right’. ‘Nation after nation’ was becoming convinced by the ‘racial expertise’ of the Nazis, and he was convinced that this would help establish ‘the front against the international Jewish exploitation and corruption of nations’. However, Hitler erroneously gave the date of his previous ‘prophecy’ as 1 September 1939, in other words claiming it was issued during the Reichstag speech marking the outbreak of the Second World War. With this ‘error’, which was possibly deliberate, he was in effect underlining his association of the war with the violent persecution of the Jews.

  In fact, Hitler’s anti-Semitic tirade of 30 January 1941 represented, above all, a reference to the deportation of the Jews, which he had recently ordered and was now under way. At the beginning of November 1940, he had instructed that over 150,000 Poles and Jews were to be deported from the annexed eastern territories into the General Government.16 In view of the strong objections of Governor General Frank to further ‘resettlement’,17 Hitler had announced that ‘later on we’ll get rid of the Jews from this territory as well’.18 To start with, however, Frank had to accept more Jews. At the beginning of December, Hitler had given the Gauleiter, Schirach, the permission he had been requesting since autumn 1940 to begin deporting the Viennese Jews.19 During February and March 1941, 5,000 Jews were to be deported from Vienna to the General Government as the first stage in the planned removal of 60,000 Jews.20

  However, in the meantime, the RSHA had begun to prepare a much more comprehensive project, which was intended to provide Frank with the ‘relief’ promised by Hitler in his November announcement. During the final weeks of 1940, Hitler had assigned Heydrich the task of working out an overall plan for the deportation of all Jews from the area controlled by Germany at the end of the war. Heydrich submitted this plan, which has not survived, to Hitler at the beginning of January 1941. It involved deporting to the conquered parts of the Soviet Union all the Jews living in the areas that would be dominated by Germany after the successful conclusion of Barbarossa.21 There are various indications that suggest the regime continued to pursue these ideas until the late summer of 1941.22 Given the various announcements by Hitler about ‘annihilating’ the Jews and the regime’s increasingly brutal Jewish policy, it is clear that, after the conclusion of the deportation programme, there was no plan to settle these people in the Soviet Union in adequate living conditions. Everything points to the fact that, at the beginning of 1941, the regime was preparing in the long term to annihilate the European Jews through forced deportation to the east. Hitler had no more of a clue about how this was to happen than did his ‘Jewish experts’.

  Final preparations for the war in the Balkans

  Yugoslavia and Bulgaria had to be won for the Axis before the attack on Greece could take place. From December onwards, the Wehrmacht began to establish its own bases in Bulgaria,23 and the Bulgarian government gradually came round to dropping its objections to joining the Tripartite Pact.24 As a reward, Germany offered to secure Bulgaria access to the Aegean at the expense of Greece.25 On 13 February, Hitler issued orders for the Wehrmacht to march through the country, combined with instructions for the German troops to mount an ‘offensive in the direction of Istanbul’ in the event of the Turks beginning hostilities against Bulgaria in response to Germany’s intervention.26 However, this threat was minimized as a result of the Bulgarian–Turkish Non-Aggression Declaration of 17 November, signed under strong German pressure.27

  After Bulgaria’s ceremonial accession to the Tripartite Pact on 1 March, Hitler took immediate action. The very next day, German troops marched into Bulgaria ‘to deal with measures taken by Britain in south-east Europe, of which we have become aware’ as the official German announcement put it.28 In the course of the accession celebrations on 1 March, Ribbentrop had given the Bulgarian Prime Minister a note confirming that ‘as part of the rearrangement of the borders in the Balkans, the Axis powers are prepared [to give] Bulgaria access to the Aegean’.29 That afternoon, during a meeting with Ciano and Ribbentrop concerning an official reception for the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Bogdan Filoff, Hitler had confirmed that ‘all the continental states would gradually be brought together to form an anti-English bloc’.30 The next goal was to bring Yugoslavia into the pact,31 and Germany was already working on it. On 14 November, at the Berghof, Hitler had informed the Yugoslav Prime Minister, Dragiša Cvetkovic´ and the Foreign Minister, Aleksandar Cincar-Markovic´, that the Soviet Union had promised Bulgaria ‘a generous grant of territory in Macedonia’ at the expense of Yugoslavia, ‘in order to provide it with access to the Aegean’. Yugoslavia must ‘in its own interest . . . take part in the new order envisaged by Germany and Italy by immediately joining the Tripartite Pact’.32 Hitler made the same demand of the Yugoslav Prince Regent, Paul, whom he received at the Berghof on 4 and 5 March. As a reward, Hitler promised Paul access to the Aegean at the expense of Greece, in fact the annexation of Saloniki, which Mussolini had agreed, on 22 November 1940, to give up. If Yugoslavia did not seize the chance, ‘then it would risk, in the end, finding a third power blocking its path to the Aegean’. He had, after all, already promised Bulgaria access to the Aegean.33

  After a certain amount of hesitation, Yugoslavia finally agreed to join the Tripartite Pact on 25 March. Before the ceremony took place, Germany made a number of demands. Among other things, Ribbentrop made it clear to the pro-British prince regent that he might ‘not be there in six months’ time if he didn’t follow our advice’.34 Despite these attempts at intimidation, on the Prince Regent’s return to Belgrade, the Yugoslav government insisted on a number of guarantees: of the country’s territorial integrity; of the agreement not to call on Yugoslavia for military support; and of the promise to provide access to the Aegean through the granting of Saloniki, to all of which both Hitler and Mussolini agreed.35

  Joining the Tripartite Pact was a highly contentious issue in Yugoslavia. Two days after the signing, the Cvetkovic´ government was overthrown by a military coup organized by pro-British officers. King Peter II, who was a minor, ascended the throne in place of the Prince Regent, Paul.36 At midday on 27 March, at a hurriedly convened meeting of the military leadership in the Reich Chancellery, which Ribbentrop also joined later, Hitler announced that he was determined ‘to crush Yugoslavia militarily and as a state with merciless severity’ in a ‘lightning operation’.37 Yugoslavia was an ‘uncertain factor’ for the attacks on Greece and the Soviet Union. In addition, however, to Hitler’s disappointment and anger at this sudden development, which he considered a blow to his prestige, and which posed a threat to his further military plans,38 he had an old and deep-seated hostility to Serbia and Slovenia. They had never been ‘pro-German’. As a result of the nationalities problem and the existence of ‘a camarilla of officers who were prone to carry out coups, their governments had never been secure’. However, in view of this new operation, the attack on the Soviet Union would have to be postponed by up to four weeks. Hitler gave his approval in principle to a plan for a Balkan campaign that Halder had hurriedly sketched, and Brauchitsch was able to reassure the ‘Führer’ that the attack on Greece could still go ahead on 1 April as inte
nded.39

  As far as Greece was concerned, during the course of the month, Hitler had given way to the demands of the Luftwaffe and the navy and decided to occupy the mainland down to the Peloponnese (and possibly also the peninsula itself ). As this would require stronger forces, he had intervened in the planning for Barbarossa, removing the whole of the 12th Army from the southern sector of the invasion, and deploying it to the Balkans, where it was to remain. As a result, the southern flank of the German invasion of the Soviet Union was significantly weakened.40

  On 27 March, in his Directive No. 25, Hitler announced his intention ‘to destroy the Yugoslav forces and to detach the southernmost part of Yugoslavia from the rest of the country, in order to use it as a base for the continuation of the German–Italian offensive against Greece’.41 On the same day, he summoned the ambassadors of Hungary and Romania to the Reich Chancellery to demand that their governments take part in the war against Yugoslavia.42 He offered both envoys the prospect of territorial gains.43 The following day ambassador Döme Sztójay returned, bringing with him Horthy’s agreement.44 During the next few days, the issue of military intervention provoked a government crisis in Budapest, culminating in the suicide of the Prime Minister, Pál Teleki. Under Teleki’s successor, Lászl Bárdossy, Hungary continued to support Germany, although with the stipulation that it could intervene only when the dissolution of Yugoslavia offered a pretext for doing so.45 Bulgaria decided not to join in the war.46