Hitler

by Peter Longerich

On 3 February, the radio finally announced the loss of the city. According to the SD reports, the news produced ‘deep shock’; people were saying openly that this represented a turning point in the war.72

  Immediately after the fall of Stalingrad, on 5 and 6 February, a meeting of Gauleiters and Reichsleiters took place in Posen, focusing mainly on the topic of ‘total war mobilization’.73 The following day, Hitler summoned the Party elite to Führer headquarters where, in a two-hour speech, he tried to convince them of his confidence in victory, thereby simultaneously implying that victory was now by no means inevitable. He blamed the situation on the eastern front on the ‘total failure’ of the allies, ‘first the Romanians, then the Italians, and then the Hungarians’. At the same time, after a long-winded statement, he reached the surprising conclusion ‘that basically the crisis could be regarded as having been overcome’. Goebbels summed up Hitler’s comments in his diary: the enemy had ‘an advantage in that they were held together by international Jewry. The Jews operated as a driving force in all the enemy states, and we have nothing comparable to set against it. This means that we must eliminate the Jews not only from Germany but from the whole of Europe.’ The speech implied a final confrontation. According to Hitler’s statement to the Gauleiters, in the event of the Reich collapsing, this would ‘also mean the ending of his life’. And, ‘If the German people proved to be so weak, they would deserve nothing more than to be wiped out by a stronger people. Then one could have no sympathy for them’. He added, however, that he considered ‘such a development as completely out of the question’.74

  Goebbels’s total war

  Hitler’s renewed public silence during this, the most serious, crisis of his regime – his last broadcast on the radio had been on 8 November – had serious repercussions. The whole system of the Führer state, which was geared to continuing demonstrations of public support for the ‘Führer’s’ policies, risked losing its charismatic focus and running out of steam. There was a dearth of occasions on which to organize the usual official demonstrations of mass support for Hitler’s policies, and this gap was inevitably registered by the official reports on the national mood as a leadership crisis. Thus, during the second half of the war, maintaining the façade of the Führer state without the ‘Führer’ became a key problem for the regime. One way of alleviating this situation was to move other leading politicians, namely the propaganda chief, Goebbels, further into the limelight, and thus somehow preserve the charisma through his performing a kind of deputy’s role in the name of the ‘Führer’. The masses were no longer to applaud Hitler’s ‘successes’, but instead, through their positive ‘bearing’, express their unbroken trust in his leadership potential, which his closest confidants publicly confirmed. Moreover, the critical situation provided the opportunity to declare the war a life-and-death struggle, and demand the continued loyalty of the masses with the slogan ‘victory or death’. In addition, repression and the Party’s tight control over everyday life ensured that the regime and the military machine continued to function even without a ‘Führer’ in the public eye. The regime had in any case never been dependent on the support of the majority of the population.

  Goebbels took advantage of his opportunity to continue urging support for total war.75 He had already used the celebration of 30 January to advocate his own programme, telling his audience in the Sportpalast that ‘from the length and breadth of our nation we’re hearing a call for the most total commitment and effort, in the broadest sense of the words, in this war’.76 He interpreted the huge applause, usual on these big occasions, as an endorsement of further efforts to secure radical war policies in the domestic sphere.77

  His aim was to overcome the widespread depression among the population through increased ‘mobilization’ for the war, to transform the public image of the Third Reich so that it reflected a tough, realistic attitude to the war, and, at the same time, to strengthen, or rather restore, the regime’s authority. This scenario of total commitment to the war could allow no scope for ‘fluctuations in mood’.

  However, strong opposition to the total mobilization of the home front emerged within the leadership, in particular in connection with the planned shutting down of businesses and plants, and with the systematic implementation of female labour conscription.78 Moreover, the opponents of tough measures on the home front, among them Göring, Lammers, and Sauckel, could even appeal to Hitler, who was only halfheartedly backing the campaign for total war. Thus, for example, Hitler took the view that they should proceed cautiously with the policy of closing down businesses not essential to the war effort in order to avoid causing unnecessary unemployment.79 At the beginning of February, he also objected to the drafting into the Wehrmacht of a group of 3,500 men from the cultural sphere, hitherto exempted, for fear of its negative impact on film, music, and the theatre. Just at this very moment, Hitler told his propaganda minister, ‘when we are calling on our people to make increased efforts and big sacrifices’ we must have ‘at least something left more or less intact . . . to prevent the nation from succumbing to a grey hopelessness’. Theatre, concerts, and film were to remain completely out of bounds.80

  However, Goebbels was determined, ‘through using a certain degree of intimidation’ by the Party, to get to grips with those who ‘have kept trying in various way to avoid taking part in the war’.81 On 14 February, in the weekly Das Reich, he insisted: ‘The people know the hard truth and are now demanding that we draw the hard conclusions. . . . In other words, total war in every sphere is the order of the day.’82

  Finally, on 18 February, after extensive preparations by the propaganda ministry, Goebbels gave his notorious speech on total war in the Sportpalast before an audience carefully selected by the Party.83 At this point, the regime had conceded the ‘planned withdrawal’ from Rostov and Voroshilovgrad, and the Red Army had advanced into the Donbas area, capturing Kharkov. Goebbels used the slogan, which he had introduced to the public a few days before, declaring total war to be ‘the order of the day’ and that ‘in this fateful struggle’ it was time to put aside ‘bourgeois scruples’. Goebbels spoke to his audience as the representatives of the German people. He portrayed the carefully organized and staged public applause as plebiscitary approval for his policies: ‘I can, therefore, assure you that the leadership’s measures are in full agreement with the wishes of the German people at home and at the front. . . . It’s time to get the slackers moving.’

  The event culminated in ten rhetorical questions, to which the audience responded with a collective shout of ‘yes’. The message was that the nation not only agreed with total war, but was actually demanding it: ‘Do you want total war? If necessary do you want a war more total, more radical than anything we can begin to imagine today . . .? Do you approve, if necessary, the most radical measures against a small group of shirkers and black-marketeers? Do you agree that those who harm the war effort should lose their heads?’84

  Goebbels was pleased to note that, at a party he had given on the same evening for leading Nazis, those present had ‘expressed the view that this rally had represented a kind of peaceful coup d’état’. Total war was ‘now being supported by the people’.85 However, when it became apparent, during the next few days, that neither the SD reports nor the reports of his own propaganda machine were recording the impression of a nation committed to total war, he refused to accept this evidence.86

  Hitler deliberately declined to comment. On 24 February, he ordered Gauleiter Adolf Wagner to issue a proclamation on the occasion of a celebration of the anniversary of the Party’s foundation in Munich, appealing in the first instance to the ‘fanaticism’ of the old Party comrades. Apart from once again referring to his being chosen by ‘destiny’, and repeating his announcement of the ‘extermination of the European Jews’, he simply made a vague statement that the German people would now be making a huge and exceptional effort. He put more emphasis on the announcement that the occupied territories would
be ‘forced to become more involved in this fateful struggle’, that ‘foreign lives would not be spared’, and that, together with their allies, they would ‘carry out an unparalleled mobilization of European spiritual and material values’. That effectively summed up Hitler’s alternative programme to total war on the home front. During the coming months, it was to become clear that he was not in the least prepared to make any political compromises in this attempt to mobilize resources from outside Germany.87

  Hitler’s total war

  At the end of February 1943, a thaw began, and the Soviet winter offensive came to a standstill. On 10 March, Hitler flew to Manstein’s headquarters in Saporoshe.88 In this southern sector of the front the situation had significantly improved during recent weeks. Manstein’s 4th Panzer Army was closing in on Kharkov.89 During his visit, Hitler emphasized how important the possession of the Donbas was. If this region were lost for good ‘then we would be unable to sustain our own war production’. Because of its manganese reserves the loss of Nikopol would even mean the end of the war.90

  On 10 March, Hitler returned to his headquarters in Vinnitsa and received Rommel, who had just flown in from Tunis.91 With defeat looming, Hitler relieved him of his command in North Africa and, against his wishes, sent him to take a lengthy cure. Hitler wanted above all to avoid damaging Rommel’s image as the most successful field-m

  arshal in the Wehrmacht by involving him in a defeat. Rommel had to remain untarnished to be able to command future operations.

  On 13 March, Hitler flew to Rastenburg. He stopped off in Smolensk on the way in order to visit the headquarters of Army Group Centre, where he met Field-Marshal von Kluge. He was not aware that a group of officers led by the chief of staff of the army group, Colonel Henning von Tresckow, had determined to get rid of him; we shall return to this conspiracy in detail.92 In any event, Tresckow succeeded in placing a bomb on Hitler’s aeroplane; however, the detonator failed and the plane landed without incident in Rastenburg.

  The following day, Kharkov was recaptured by Manstein’s forces and, from around the middle of March onwards, the situation on the eastern front appeared more or less stable from the German point of view.93 This development gradually had a positive effect on the reports on the popular ‘mood’. During March, it appeared to have become increasingly ‘firm’ and, during April, improved still further.94 However, these reports were reflecting not so much the population’s improved morale, but, above all, the fact that Goebbels was continuing to alter the criteria for the reports by emphasizing that it was not a matter of temporary fluctuations in mood but about people’s ‘bearing’.95 Above all, the propaganda minister ensured that the ‘Reports from the Reich’ prepared by the SD, which for a long time he had considered too critical, were stopped. In June 1943, these SD reports were replaced by ‘Reports on Domestic Matters’, which went to a smaller group of recipients.96

  On 21 March, Hitler gave a ten-minute speech, the first for over four months, in the Berlin Zeughaus to mark Heroes’ Memorial Day, and, to everyone’s relief, the feared British air raid did not happen.97 In his speech, which contained violent anti-Semitic abuse, Hitler emphasized the difficulties of the recent campaign, but appeared confident of victory. He gave the total number of German war dead as 542,000, a number that, although it was probably fairly accurate,98 according to Goebbels, was ‘generally regarded by the German people as too low’.99 There could hardly have been a clearer sign of the decline in respect for the ‘Führer’.100

  Hitler then went on to visit a special exhibition in the Zeughaus of weapons that had been captured on the eastern front. He was accompanied by a Colonel Freiherr von Gersdorff, who was working with the conspirators round Tresckow. They had decided to make another attempt to kill Hitler with a bomb, and Gersdorff activated the detonator, which had a ten-minute timer. However, the ‘Führer’ went through the exhibition at the double as if he sensed the danger, and Gersdorff only just managed to deactivate the detonator in time.101

  Since the situation on the eastern front had stabilized, Hitler was increasingly unwilling to support radical plans for the implementation of total war. While not changing course in principle, he ensured that many of the measures that had been taken came to nothing. This was true of a considerable number of plans to amalgamate or close down government departments, which he suspected were intended to preempt decisions about a future reorganization of the administration.102 For Hitler believed that to a certain extent the opacity characteristic of the administrative structure of the Third Reich was something worth maintaining. Indeed, the idea of one day being confronted with an administrative machine rationally organized at every level, with simple and transparent decision-making procedures, contradicted his policy of divide et impera. Moreover, with a distinctly populist instinct, he objected to interference in people’s everyday lives aimed at restricting the elevated life-style of the so-called ‘better off’ or at removing the small pleasures enjoyed by the mass of the population. Thus, through an intervention with Hitler, Lammers succeeded in getting women with children exempted from labour conscription, even in cases where they had child care.103 That affected, above all, families who could afford nursemaids. Hitler was also unwilling to adopt Goebbels’s proposal to close down all horse racing – in Goebbels’s eyes a manifestation of an elite life-style that was no longer appropriate in wartime.

  Hitler told Goebbels in March that they should ‘not be small-minded in the matter of total war measures and above all make sure not to put women’s backs up’. They should be allowed to go on having beauty treatments, for example. For, after all, ‘it wasn’t a bad thing for women to make themselves look nice for men, and the National Socialist programme does not ban either make-up or dying one’s hair’.104 He was also not prepared to reprimand members of the political leadership who broke the rationing regulations. At the beginning of 1943, the Berlin police discovered extensive profiteering by the owner of a delicatessen, who illegally provided prominent figures such as the Reich Interior Minister, Frick, the Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop, the Education Minister, Rust, and the Agriculture Minister, Darré, with expensive and strictly rationed foodstuffs.105 Hitler, however, did not wish to make it a ‘matter of state’.106 Instead, he ensured that the case was dealt with without any damage to the prominent individuals involved. During the course of the spring and summer, Goebbels and the other advocates of a tougher domestic policy finally gave up their efforts.107 This was prompted, on the one hand, by Hitler’s lack of enthusiasm for pushing total war too far while the military situation had stabilized, and, on the other by the failure of Goebbels’s attempt, during March and April 1943, in cooperation with Göring and Speer, to revive the Ministerial Council for the Defence of the Reich and thereby emasculate the Committee of Three.108

  Hitler’s was a different kind of total war. ‘Most of our contemporaries’, Goebbels reported Hitler as saying in March 1943, ‘don’t understand that the wars of the twentieth century are racial wars, and that, in the case of racial wars, it’s always a matter of survival or destruction; in other words we must be clear about the fact that this war will also end like that’.109 Hitler’s decision of September 1942 to remove all the Jews from armaments production was followed, on 27 February 1943, by mass arrests throughout the Reich. In Berlin alone, in the course of this so-called Factory Action, the SS Leibstandarte arrested around 7,000 people at their workplaces or in their homes. During March, over 13,000 people, some of them highly qualified workers, were deported from the Reich to Auschwitz.110 At this point, there were only 31,897 Jews officially still living in the Reich, of whom more than 18,515 were in Berlin.111 From now onwards, there were only a few more deportations.112

  Goebbels’s diary entries record how Hitler responded to the change in the war situation by pursuing the surviving minority with vicious hatred. On 8 and 14 March, he reaffirmed to Goebbels that they ‘must get the Jews out of Berlin as quickly as possible’.113 On 20 March, he remarked how ‘happy’ he w
as that ‘most of the Jews have been evacuated from Berlin’, noting with satisfaction ‘that the war has enabled us to find a solution to a whole number of problems that under normal circumstances we would never have been able to solve’. A few days later, Hitler was ‘extremely put out’ to discover that there were still 17,000 Jews in so-called mixed marriages living in Berlin, and, as Goebbels had learnt, had ‘instructed Frick to facilitate the divorce of such marriages, and to authorize a divorce even if just one party expresses the wish for it’.

  In Hitler’s view the increase in the war effort demanded by the regime’s functionaries should not take the form of petty restrictions on people’s everyday lives, and pledges to occupied or allied European neighbours were also inopportune. Thus, as has already been mentioned,114 at the beginning of 1943, he ignored proposals by Ribbentrop and Goebbels for a ‘European’ initiative in the sense of general pledges for the post-war period, as well as the ‘Proclamation to the East’, which Goebbels had proposed in February 1943. The idea of promising the inhabitants of the occupied eastern territories religious freedom and a certain level of participation in the ‘New Europe’ would only be seen as signs of German softness and weakness.115 Hitler was much more concerned to portray the war as a life-and-death struggle against the Jewish ‘enemy of the world’. Thus, during the spring, he directed the energies unleashed by the shock of Stalingrad away from the reform of the home front towards the ‘racial war’. And it was not only German Jews who were affected. In February, the mass graves of Polish officers who had been shot in 1940 by Soviet ‘agencies’ were discovered in Katyn near Minsk,116 and Hitler gave Goebbels permission to exploit the topic in his propaganda. For him the most important point was ‘that in the process the Jewish question will once more become a big issue’.117 During the following days, Hitler, who had been informed about the state of the European ‘Final Solution’ in a report by the SS statistician, Richard Korherr,118 paid great attention to the propaganda treatment of the Katyn incident and kept demanding an intensification of anti-Semitic propaganda.119