Hitler

by Peter Longerich

  The directive makes it clear that the conquest of an empire providing living space in the East, regarded by most scholars as the ‘core’ of Hitler’s policy, did not represent his final goal. From his point of view, it was only the prerequisite for a continuation of the war against Britain and its possessions on three continents. By occupying the western and eastern entries to the Mediterranean, by establishing bases in North-West Africa and on the Arabian peninsula, as well as by having the option of attacking India, the Axis powers would have been in a position militarily to seal off continental Europe, initially from Britain (although it was hoped that Britain would soon be forced to make peace), and then from the United States. Protected from the possibility of intervention by outside powers, the Axis powers could then reorder the whole of the continent, including British possessions in North Africa and the Near East, and possibly Central Asia as well. That was the vision that Hitler was pursuing in 1941.

  Had Hitler actually defeated the Soviet Union in 1941, these goals might well have been feasible. What was megalomaniacal was not so much the idea of establishing Wehrmacht bases as far away as Senegal, the Azores, Iraq, or Afghanistan, but rather the notion that the Soviet Union could be defeated in a matter of a few months.

  During the final weeks before Barbarossa, Hitler evidently sought to secure the loyalty of his allies, although he was very reticent about informing them of his plans for the war. On 2 June, he once again met Mussolini at the Brenner. To Mussolini’s annoyance,124 the meeting, which was also attended by Ribbentrop, was arranged by Hitler at extremely short notice. The ‘Führer’ expatiated on every conceivable military and political aspect of the war, but, on the subject of his intentions vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, according to the interpreter, Schmidt, he did not ‘utter a single syllable’; on the contrary, the aim of the meeting was, not least, to divert attention from his war plans.125 He also appears to have left the Croatian head of state, Pavelic´, whom he met at the Berghof on 6 June, in the dark about the impending war.126 At this point Croatia’s entry into the Tripartite Pact had already been agreed and was completed in Venice on 15 June.127

  On 7 June, Hitler received King Boris of Bulgaria at the Berghof in the presence of Ribbentrop,128 and, on 12 June at the Führer building in Munich he met the Romanian head of state, General Antonescu, whom he informed of his plan to attack the Soviet Union, although without revealing the details.129 He justified it on the grounds that, by maintaining large troop concentrations on their common border, Stalin was pinning down large Wehrmacht units, preventing them from being used to win the war. While he considered a direct attack by the Soviet Union on Germany unlikely, he would be obliged to intervene in the much more probable event of a Soviet attack on Finland or Romania. The treaty the Soviet Union had made with Yugoslavia in April underlined the Soviet leadership’s anti-German attitude. He could no longer tolerate the risk of an attack, and so had determined to engage in military action. Tempted by Hitler’s offer of the prospect of territorial ‘compensation’, Antonescu declared that, in the event of a military conflict, Romania would be willing to fight alongside Germany from the very first day. A few days later, on 18 June, Hitler informed Antonescu that the behaviour of the Soviet Union, ‘above all its preparations to attack, which are being stepped up daily, will compel me shortly to commit the German Wehrmacht in order to remove this threat to Europe once and for all’.130

  On 14 June, eight days before the planned attack, he held a final military briefing.131 On the following day, he summoned his Propaganda Minister to the Reich Chancellery in order to spell out to him in detail his reasons for the war with the Soviet Union, which he reckoned would last for four months. According to Hitler, Moscow wanted ‘to keep out of the war until Europe was exhausted and had bled to death. Then Stalin would act, bolshevize Europe, and come into his own.’ But, looked at from a global perspective, it was also necessary to expand the war: ‘Tokyo would never get involved in a war with the United States so long as Russia is still a presence in its rear. So this is another reason why Russia must be eliminated.’ Russia ‘would attack us if we became weak, and then we would be faced with a two-front war, which we shall avoid with this preventive action. It’s only then that our rear will be secure.’

  Thus, Hitler described the attack on the Soviet Union as a ‘preventive action’, not because he felt threatened by an immediate attack from this quarter, but because he was afraid that, at a later date, Stalin could exploit Germany’s potential weakness after a lengthy war in the West. This threat had to be prevented. Finally, the Soviet Union had to be attacked, in order, as Hitler put it, ‘to free up people’. So long as the Soviet Union existed, Germany would be compelled to maintain 150 divisions, whose personnel ‘are urgently needed for our war economy’, in order to carry out the ‘armaments, U-boat, and aircraft programmes, so that the United States can no longer threaten us’. Hitler was reiterating that in his view the successful continuation of the war against Britain and its empire depended on the defeat of the Soviet Union, as, with the European continent dominated by Germany and sealed off from intervention by the United States, Britain would be deprived of any hope of successfully defending itself. ‘If Russia were defeated, then we could demobilize whole cohorts and build, rearm, and prepare. Only then can we begin a major Luftwaffe offensive against England. An invasion is, in any case, barely feasible. And that means we need to find other means of achieving victory.’ Finally, Hitler reached the core of his argument: it did not matter ‘whether we are in the right or in the wrong, we have to win. . . . We’ve in any case got so much to answer for, that we really must win, otherwise our whole nation, and we at the head of it, would be wiped out, with all that we hold dear.’132

  34

  Operation Barbarossa

  Late in the evening of 21 June, Hitler summoned Goebbels, who had spent the day looking after a completely unsuspecting delegation led by his Italian colleague, Pavolini. Goebbels left his guests to their own devices and hurried to the Reich Chancellery. Here, he and Hitler walked up and down for three hours in the drawing room while the ‘Führer’ informed him about the latest arrangements for the attack on the Soviet Union, which had been planned for months. The time of attack was fixed for 3.00 a.m. They both agreed that, for propaganda purposes, they should claim ‘that Russia’s ambiguous attitude has hitherto prevented us from defeating England’. At 2.30 a.m., Hitler dismissed Goebbels, who now informed his colleagues, whom he had summoned to the Propaganda Ministry, about the forthcoming attack. In the early morning, Goebbels read out a proclamation, drafted by Hitler, over the radio. It was introduced by an excerpt from ‘Les Préludes’ by Franz Liszt, which he had just agreed with Hitler should be the music played before special announcements from this new theatre of war.1

  In this proclamation Hitler gave a lengthy review of German–Soviet relations, providing an elaborate justification for his decision to make an alliance with Stalin in August 1939. He claimed that there had been increasing signs that the Soviet Union wanted to use the agreement to strengthen its position at the expense of Germany. He cited the Soviet claim to Lithuania in September 1939, the attack on Finland, as well as the occupation of the Baltic States in June 1940. He, of course, kept quiet about the fact that all these ‘violations’ corresponded to the ‘demarcation of spheres of influence’ agreed with Stalin in 1939. He knew that the Soviet Union had no interest in revealing the secret agreement that had been reached at the time, in which the two dictators had cold-bloodedly overridden the sovereignty of a total of six states.2 Above all, according to Hitler, it had become increasingly clear that the Soviet Union was secretly cooperating with Britain. Thus, by mobilizing large numbers of troops in 1940, it had tied up large German forces in the East, with the result that Germany had been unable to achieve a final military victory over Britain. Continuing his catalogue of the Soviet Union’s sins, he claimed that, with some difficulty, he had managed to prevent the Soviet Union from absorbing Romania by agre
eing to the latter’s cession of Bessarabia; in reality, he had already ordered Ribbentrop to agree to this annexation in 1939.

  At the Berlin meeting with Molotov in December 1940, Hitler continued, the former had clearly revealed Soviet ambitions in Romania, Finland, Bulgaria, and the Bosphorus. He wisely concealed the fact that, during these meetings, he himself had offered the Soviet Union the opportunity of helping itself to parts of the ‘bankrupt’ British Empire, if it cooperated with Germany. Both the Romanian coup of January 1941 and the Yugoslav putsch in March had, according to Hitler, been engineered by Moscow with far-reaching intentions. For it was only the victory of the Axis powers in the Balkans that had prevented Germany from becoming bogged down in months-long campaigns in the Balkans during the summer. This would have allowed the Soviets to complete the mobilization of their armies, increasing their readiness for war. Then, together with Britain, and supported by supplies from the United States, they would have been able to throttle and crush the German Reich and Italy. This was not a description of the imminent Soviet attack that he later repeatedly alleged as his justification for war, but rather of a Soviet strategy of attrition, forcing Germany to maintain increasingly large forces in eastern and south-eastern Europe. The massive Soviet mobilization and the allegedly repeated frontier violations had now made it necessary ‘to confront this plot by the Jewish-Anglo-Saxon warmongers and the equally Jewish rulers in the Bolshevik headquarters in Moscow’.3

  Ribbentrop summoned the Soviet ambassador to the Foreign Ministry for 4.00 a.m., in order to inform him officially of the start of hostilities, shortly before the official proclamation, but an hour after the war had actually begun.4 Half an hour later, Schulenburg, the German ambassador in Moscow, met Molotov to hand over the official German note.5 His previous visit to the Soviet Foreign Minister had been only a few hours earlier. On the evening of 21 June, Molotov had invited him in order to find out the reasons for Germany’s possible ‘dissatisfaction’ with Soviet policy; there were, he said, even rumours of war flying about. Schulenburg, who only found out about the attack on the morning of 22 June, replied that he was unable to answer the question.6 Hitler informed his main ally about the ‘toughest decision of my life’ in a letter that a German diplomat delivered to Ciano at 3.00 a.m.7 Despite his annoyance, Mussolini, who was informed of the contents of the letter by Ciano in a telephone call to his holiday resort, Riccione, decided to declare war on the Soviet Union as well. In the meantime, he had become so dependent on his German ally that he had little choice other than to take this risky step.8

  At a conference within the ministry on 23 June, Goebbels told his most important colleagues the essential reasons for the expansion of the war that were to be emphasized in propaganda. In the first place, as Hitler had pointed out in his proclamation, the military potential of the Soviet Union in Germany’s rear prevented Germany from ‘mounting a major offensive against England’. Secondly, the attack provided the opportunity of acquiring a huge ‘increase in supplies of petrol, petroleum, and grain’. This was, however, such a blatant admission of plunder as a motive, that even Goebbels thought it was ‘more suitable for word-of-mouth propaganda than for the media’. Thirdly, the fundamental ‘conflict with Russia’ could not be avoided, as ‘in a Europe that had been pacified for decades, Bolshevism [could] not exist side by side with National Socialism’. Given this premise, it was better to have ‘the confrontation now’ rather than wait until the Soviet Union had completely rearmed.9 These comments reflected the statements Hitler had made to Goebbels on 15 June, although with the important difference that he made no reference to continuing the war against the United States.

  It was not until July that Goebbels changed the propaganda line in accordance with new instructions from Hitler. The attack, according to Hitler’s new justification for it,10 had occurred in order to preempt an imminent Soviet invasion. The Wehrmacht’s initial major military successes suggested something quite different, however, namely that, in summer 1941, the Red Army was in no fit state for a war.11

  Initial military operations and conflicts

  From 23 June 1941 onwards, Hitler stayed in his East Prussian headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair. This was a series of secluded bunkers and barracks in a remote and thickly wooded area near the small town of Rastenburg. From here he directed the war in the East.12 The Wehrmacht entered the ‘Eastern Campaign’ with over three million soldiers, 600,000 motor vehicles, 3,350 tanks, over 7,000 guns, and 3,900 aircraft. In addition, the Romanian, Finnish, and Hungarian allies had, between them, some 500,000 men, although with a relatively limited amount of heavy weaponry. This force was confronted on the Soviet Union’s western border by around three million members of the Red Army, which was far superior to the aggressors in tanks, artillery, and aircraft, but was not combat ready.13

  The German offensive was carried out by three Army Groups with, initially, seven armies and four panzer groups. Two of the panzer groups, in which the army’s panzer divisions and motorized units were concentrated, in other words the spearheads of the German offensive, were assigned to Army Group Centre, while one each was attached to the Army Groups North and South. This arrangement corresponded to Hitler’s Barbarossa directive of December 1940, according to which the main thrust was initially to be in the centre, in order to destroy the enemy forces in White Russia; after that, the panzer units were intended to move north and, together with Army Group North, defeat the enemy in the Baltic region. Although the army had implemented this directive in its deployment arrangements in January 1941,14 since the summer of 1940, Halder, the Chief of the General Staff, had been working on another plan. He wanted to win the war through a thrust by Army Group Centre towards Moscow and, having failed to get his way, hoped that, after the major successes that were anticipated in the initial phase of the campaign, he would still be able to win Hitler over to his point of view.15 This basic conflict between Hitler and Halder was to determine the first stage of the war in the East. It now became clear that, whereas during the war in the West, Hitler had intervened only sporadically in military operations, he was now insisting on running them on a daily basis.

  By the end of June, with two pincer movements, first near Bialystock and then near Minsk, Army Group Centre had succeeded in surrounding and then destroying or taking prisoner substantial Soviet forces. In the meantime, Army Group North had advanced rapidly through Lithuania and Latvia: Dünaburg (Daugavpils) and Riga were captured by the end of June. Army Group South, which had been weakened by the withdrawal of the 12th Army to Greece, at first only attacked on its northern flank, making slow progress because of relatively strong resistance from the Red Army.16 While Halder was pressing for Army Group Centre to continue the rapid advance towards Smolensk and thus in the direction of Moscow, Hitler hesitated, wanting to clear the pocket between Bialystock and Minsk completely and protect the flanks of the panzer units. This resulted in differences over the planning of operations, leading to quite absurd situations. Thus, in accordance with Hitler’s wishes, the commander-in-chief of the army ordered Army Group Centre merely to secure the strategically important city of Brobujsk, whereas Halder was hoping that Guderian’s panzer group, deployed there, would take the initiative to capture the city, and then advance to the river Dnieper, which was only about 50 kilometres away. ‘We must hope’, Halder noted on 29 June, ‘that the mid-level commanders will do the right thing on their own initiative without having received specific orders, which we are unable to give them because of the Führer’s instruction to the C-in-C Army.’17

  Thus Halder was aiming to bypass the Supreme Commander’s directives by issuing broadly framed orders and hinting at what he wanted. He relied on the commanders at the front intuitively acting in tune with the basic intentions of the general staff. When, a few days later, Hitler wanted to intervene once again in the conduct of operations, Halder noted critically that resolving matters of detail should be left to army and corps commanders. However, ‘people at the top don’t understand th
e need to place their trust in the people on the ground, though that is one of the most valuable features of our style of leadership. This is because they’re unaware of the value of the education and training that our leadership corps has gone through together.’18

  In the end, during July, this conflict came out into the open, as both continued to pursue their different approaches. Halder remained committed to capturing Moscow, whereas Hitler considered Leningrad and Kiev to be the more important goals. Hitler was concerned, on the one hand, to destroy the Soviet Union’s main military forces,19 and, on the other with economic issues affecting the war. Leningrad had to be captured in order to prevent the Soviet fleet from blocking Germany’s access to iron ore through the Baltic, while in the Ukraine he wanted to seize the Donets basin, a centre of Soviet heavy industry, and cut off oil supplies from the Caucasus. On 30 June, he told Halder that, to begin with, he wanted ‘to make a clean sweep’ in the north with panzer units and that he reckoned that ‘Moscow could wait until August and then be taken with infantry units’.20 Halder responded on the same day by getting Brauchitsch to sign off a memorandum setting out the opposite point of view, namely that a rapid thrust towards Moscow would prove decisive in ending the war. 21 Essentially, this dispute during the summer of 1941 involved the deployment of the panzer groups 2 and 3, which Halder wanted to continue to use in Army Group Centre’s advance on Moscow, whereas Hitler intended to deploy them to support the operations of Army Groups North and South. In any case, in early July, both Hitler and Halder believed that the war in the East had already been won.22

  On 4 July, Hitler was still preoccupied with the question of the future deployment of the panzer units, without being able to reach a decision: ‘It will be the most difficult decision of this campaign’.23 After a presentation by Halder and Brauchitsch, on 8 July he decided that Army Group Centre should carry out another pincer movement in order to clear the way for the advance on Moscow. However, the two panzer units should then remain behind so that they could take on tasks in the north and south. Leningrad and Moscow should be ‘razed to the ground, to prevent people from continuing to live there whom we would then have to feed during the winter’. That would be the task of the Luftwaffe.24