In the meantime it had been impossible to halt the Soviet advance on the northern flank of Army Group South at the interface with Army Group Centre.73 In January the Red Army reached the former Polish–Soviet border. A situation began to emerge there that had the potential to determine the fate of the whole of Army Group South, the northern flank of which was now positioned more than 500 kilometres further west than the units on the most southerly sector of the front.74 A further Red Army offensive in February forced Army Group A to abandon the second position on the Dnieper still held by the Wehrmacht, the Nikopol bridgehead in the south of the front. Thus any hope of restoring a connection with the German troops cut off in the Crimea had become illusory.75
As a result of their offensive against Nevel and Gorodok between October and December 1943 the Red Army had, in addition, succeeded in driving a wedge in the front line between Army Groups Centre and North. In January it moved its main attack further to the north and compelled Army Group North to pull back its front from Leningrad and Novgorod to the Baltic. For Hitler this was reason enough to dismiss the commander-in-chief of Army Group North, Field-Marshal von Küchler, and appoint Colonel General Walter Model as his successor.76
The new year also brought further setbacks on the southern front in Italy. In mid-January the Battle of Monte Cassino began; the Allied attack was boosted by a landing behind the German front line in the Anzio area and the Allies were now only forty kilometres from Rome.77 Speaking to Goebbels, Hitler blamed the military leaders for not managing to destroy the bridgehead at Anzio, in his view a clear sign ‘that he . . . has to do everything himself’. Yet the German forces lacked the strength to attempt what he wanted, namely to mount a large-scale attack on the bridgehead.78
Meanwhile, the Allied landing in the West that Hitler was expecting from February onwards began to dominate his thoughts. In his view it would be decisive for the outcome of the war.79 Yet in discussions with his military staff Hitler seemed very uncertain about where the ‘invasion’ would take place.80 On the more than 5,000 kilometres of coastline between Norway and the Bay of Biscay, on the French Mediterranean coast, or, as a ‘dummy invasion’, in Spain or Portugal? On 4 March he announced to his generals that he considered Normandy and Brittany to be the most threatened areas.81 He held to this view in the following months.82 In spite of this, the bulk of the German defences were concentrated on the Pas de Calais.83
A sizeable fighting force had been assembled to fend off an Allied landing in western Europe. By 6 June 1944 it had grown to around sixty divisions, even though many of them had already fought in the East and so were battle-weary.84 Hitler’s hopes were focused on deploying the bulk of these troops, up to forty divisions, in an offensive in the East, once the Allied landing had been repelled. Uncertainty about where the landing would take place and the Western Allies’ air superiority made it impossible, however, to concentrate these forces in the right place at the right time in order to push the Allied troops quickly back into the sea and shift the main war effort back to the threatened East. Even the ideological ‘orientation’ of the officer corps and Hitler’s insistence on the primacy of his political leadership in the war could do nothing to change that.
The invisible ‘Führer’: Repercussions for the regime
While Hitler concentrated his efforts on regaining the initiative in the war by preventing an Allied landing in the West, and was working to bolster his primacy via-á-vis the Wehrmacht and strengthen it ideologically, his ‘charisma’, already seriously damaged in 1942, was rapidly losing its power. A crucial factor was that during the winter of 1943/44 the Reich was facing an ever-increasing threat from the air. The air raids, against which there was no defence and which were not being halted by ‘retaliation’, however much it was invoked, became the most significant burden affecting the ‘home front’. Between November 1943 and March 1944 the RAF mounted its long-expected bomber offensive against Berlin. The first four raids in November alone killed 4,000 people and destroyed 9,000 buildings.85 Hitler consoled Goebbels, the Gauleiter of Berlin, with the words: ‘Berlin would never be able to claim for itself the moral right to lead the Reich in the future, if other cities in the Reich had suffered much more than the capital itself.’86 This message gave little comfort, however, to those who had been bombed out.
Shortly after this Hitler appointed Goebbels to head the ‘Reich Inspection of Civilian Air War Measures’ with the role of scrutinizing ‘all local measures taken to prepare for, prevent, and alleviate air war damage’ and of mobilizing suitable local personnel.87 Goebbels’s task was to maintain morale in cities affected by bombing by getting the Party involved and employing a mixture of supervision and propaganda.88 In allocating him this task, Hitler had transferred to Goebbels yet one more part of his, now almost invisible, domestic leadership role. For his own part, he preferred to maintain silence on the consequences of the bombing war and to avoid the affected areas as far as possible.
In the second half of the war a wide range of developments led to a dissolution of the inner cohesiveness of German society: the bombing with its catastrophic effects; the evacuation of millions of actual or potential bombing victims to ‘bomb-safe’ areas; the years-long separation of many families as a result of the ‘deployment’ of millions of Germans to work far from their homes and of men being called up for military service; the growing problems caused by food shortages and the black market that sprang up as a result; the well-known privileges and corruption of the Party big wigs; the rigorous measures taken to suppress everyday contact with the millions of people deported to Germany as forced labour; the regime’s battle with the emergence of unconventional opposition among young people. The concrete conditions of life in wartime produced in the majority of the population something like a caricature of the Nazi ‘national community’ that was far from developing into a united fighting community battling for its survival. The regime’s attempt to mobilize people’s last reserves of resistance, persuading them to adopt the slogan ‘Victory or Downfall’ by reminding them that Germany’s crimes were widely known had already proved unconvincing in 1943. Although the apparatus of repression and the local Party’s continuing close control of everyday life ensured that wartime society still functioned and the mass of the population obediently fulfilled their obligations, the idea that this was one ‘nation’ united behind the ‘Führer’ could no longer be maintained, not even as a façade.89 The Führer propaganda of 1942 had frequently used Hitler’s actual successes to boost the impression of his leadership qualities; however, these images had been exhausted by 1944 at the latest. As the war situation grew ever more critical, Hitler’s absence from the public sphere posed a serious and growing problem of domestic political leadership. During 1944 he was rarely seen or heard in public.
Figure 14. The regime tried to preserve some experience of normality amid the destruction, and the public responded. If, as here in the winter of 1943/44, queues formed outside places of entertainment such as the Tauentzienpalast in Berlin the regime was able to use them in propaganda as evidence of ‘the will to endure’.
Source: bpk / Hanns Hubmann
Goebbels concluded from reports he received from the Reich Propaganda Offices that Hitler’s speech on 30 January 1944, which had been broadcast on the radio, had ‘not quite had the desired impact’.90 A speech he made on 24 February to ‘old fighters’ to mark the founding of the Party was judged by Goebbels to be unsuitable for a wider audience ‘because of a series of psychological slips’;91 on 8 November the previous year he had just about managed to salvage the recording of a Hitler speech for a radio broadcast by making a few cuts, but this time he gave up.
In April Hitler admitted to Goebbels that he felt his ‘health was not good enough’ to permit him to ‘speak with total assurance at a public rally’.92 He had in fact fallen ill a number of times in the previous weeks and was now becoming positively frail. He had impaired vision in his right eye, the result of bleeding in the vitreous body,
and was diagnosed with high blood pressure and progressive arteriosclerosis of the coronary blood vessels. For some time his movements had looked significantly restricted. He dragged his left leg, his left arm had a serious tremor, and his posture was becoming increasingly stooped.93 These are clear symptoms of advanced Parkinson’s disease, although it had not been recognized as such. The cocktail of medicines, tonics, and stimulants that his personal physician, Theodor Morell, provided him with every day assumed bizarre proportions.94 In spite of the tense military situation, his worsening condition made Hitler withdraw to the Obersalzberg between mid-March and mid-July 1944 to recover. His already rare public appearances reduced still further. He would make only one more speech during 1944 that was broadcast on the radio, and that was immediately after the assassination attempt of 20 July. He now never appeared at major events.95 The very fact that he was no longer a presence as ‘Führer’ in the public sphere was bound to have a seriously negative effect on his political effectiveness, quite apart from the issue of how far his physical frailty had a direct influence on his behaviour or his objectives. What is altogether evident, however, is that his physical decline went hand in hand with the growing rigidity with which he responded to the collapse of his authority. This rigidity was evident in his unbending insistence on ‘holding on, whatever the cost’ (which included his deliberate tactic of prolonging his regime by extending the mass murder of the Jews).96
From the second half of 1943 onwards an alliance was emerging between four top functionaries who were prepared by means of a network of agreements to compensate at least partially for Hitler’s personal decline and that of his regime and thus finally to put an end to Göring’s role as Hitler’s deputy. During the winter crisis of 1942/43 the Committee of Three, composed of the ‘Chancellery bosses’, Lammers, Keitel, and Bormann, had attempted to take over this function, while Goebbels, with the partial support of Speer, had opposed their dominance. During the summer of 1943, however, this Committee of Three had ceased to exist. Once Himmler had taken over as Interior Minister (in addition to his many other offices), Speer had further consolidated his position in armaments, Goebbels, in the virtual absence of Hitler, was appearing ever more frequently as the most important public face of the regime, and Bormann had managed to supplant Lammers as the real coordinator and manager in Hitler’s immediate entourage, a loose alliance of these four men, all with multiple responsibilities, began to form. The aim of this ‘Gang of Four’ was to gain control of all the functions within the Reich that were important for the continuation of the war and thus take over the leadership of the ‘home front’, given that Hitler was no longer capable of doing so effectively. The emergence of this alliance was, however, repeatedly overshadowed by rivalries, suspicion, and animosities.
Whereas Speer’s relationship with Bormann and Himmler (with whom he had joined forces in the autumn of 1943 to oppose the Gauleiters) was always strained and he was forced in the early months of 1944 to put up with significant, if only temporary, damage to his position, his relationship with Goebbels worked relatively well, as was shown the previous year when the efforts to bring about ‘total war’ were stepped up.97 For his part, Goebbels stated that he had an ‘excellent personal and comradely relationship’ with Himmler.98 He had, as he put it, ‘developed a good personal and working relationship’ with Bormann; he valued him, he said, because he had been ‘very useful’ to him ‘by speaking to the Führer directly about a huge number of issues’.99 Bormann had complained to him many times that Himmler ‘took charge of too many things’,100 a clear reference to the rivalry that existed between these two prominent figures. Goebbels was forced, however, to admit that Bormann was right in his opinion. It would not be until the summer of 1944, after further massive military setbacks, that the ‘Gang of Four’ was capable of taking coordinated action.
Crumbling alliances
While Hitler was awaiting the Allied landing in the West in the spring of 1944 and hoping that a defensive victory would bring him a decisive turn in the war situation, he was forced to focus on further military setbacks on the eastern front. His ally Hungary, which was in serious danger from the Red Army’s advance, was threatening to break away. On 12 February Horthy requested that Hitler allow him to pull back his divisions positioned on the eastern front to the Carpathian border.101
Hitler told Goebbels on 3 March that he would now set about ‘resolving the Hungarian question’. The Hungarians engaged in ‘treachery the whole time’. He was therefore determined to depose the government in Budapest, take Horthy, whom he had long mistrusted,102 into custody, and try to instal a regime using the former Prime Minister Imrédy. If the Hungarian army were disarmed, it would be possible ‘to tackle the issue of the Hungarian aristocracy and above all the Jews of Budapest’, for while ‘the Jews are still in Budapest it is impossible to do anything with this city and with the country and in particular with public opinion’. Another factor was the prospect of significant amounts of plunder: the Hungarian army’s equipment, the country’s oil reserves, ‘not to mention their food stocks’.
In addition, Hitler was convinced that the ‘removal of the threat from Hungary’ would have a positive effect on the Bulgarians, who would then ‘buck up their ideas’. The occupation of Hungary would also give the Romanians hope that closer relations with Germany would sooner or later help them to secure their territorial demands vis-à-vis Hungary. When Hitler raised the matter of Hungary’s unreliability with Antonescu at a meeting at the end of February, Antonescu strongly advocated intervening against his neighbour, agreeing to supply a much greater number of troops for their joint war against the Soviet Union once the ‘Hungarian threat’ was dealt with.103
By mid-March the issue of his ally Hungary became acute. On 14 March Hitler informed Goebbels that he had brought forward the move against Hungary ‘because the Hungarians had smelt a rat’.104 On 18 March Hitler met Horthy and high-ranking representatives of his regime at Schloss Klessheim and heaped reproaches on them, such as that the Hungarian government was involved in negotiations with the Western Allies and the Soviets and intended to get out of the war. Almost a million Jews could move about freely there, he said, which the Germans inevitably regarded as a threat to the eastern and Balkan fronts. There was a risk of another Badoglio emerging. The occupation of the country would therefore begin that very night. When Horthy refused to give his written consent, Hitler announced he would go ahead regardless. Horthy then threatened to resign, to which Hitler responded that in that case he could not guarantee the safety of Horthy’s family. Horthy made to abandon the meeting and could be prevented only by false air raid warnings being put out. In the end Horthy gave in to the occupation and promised not to resist.105
On 19 March, very early in the morning, German troops crossed the border.106 Contrary to Hitler’s expectation, Imrédy was not prepared to form a new government and so the Hungarian ambassador in Berlin, Sztójay, was made the new Prime Minister. Edmund Veesenmayer was installed as the new German governor and given the title of Ambassador and Plenipotentiary of the Greater German Reich in Hungary.107
Stand firm, whatever the cost
At the beginning of March the Soviet offensive had begun both on the northern flank and on the completely overstretched southern flank of Army Group South.108 To stop it Hitler pinned his hopes on holding out at all costs. By doing so he hoped to bridge the relatively short interval that, according to his plan, the army in the East would still have to hold out until the landings in the West were decisively pushed back. To this end he had issued Führer Order 11, which laid down that ‘strongholds’ were in future to form the backbone of the German defence. A ‘specially selected, tough soldier’, if possible a general, was to take over command in each instance and be responsible ‘on his honour as a soldier for the fulfilment of his mission to the end’; if overwhelmed by an enemy attack he was to allow himself to be encircled, pinning down as much of the enemy’s forces as possible and thereby creating the cond
itions for ‘successful counter-operations’. ‘Strongholds’ were to be surrendered only with Hitler’s express permission.109
In the area of the 4th Panzer Army the city of Tarnopol, which was being directly attacked by Soviet troops, had been declared a stronghold on 9 March, a decision Hitler would not budge from, in spite of protests from Army Group South that the city was too difficult to defend. On 23 March it was surrounded. The 4,600 men defending it held out for four weeks but by then they were completely worn down. In the end only fifty-five men escaped from the pocket.110 A little further south the Red Army succeeded in encircling the entire 1st Panzer Army by the end of March. Clearly seeing that the army was in danger of being cut off, at a conference on the Obersalzberg on 19 March, Manstein, along with Kleist, commander-in-chief of Army Group A, demanded that the army group be pulled back to the Dniestr, so as to free up troops for Army Group South. Hitler, however, refused.
Manstein’s stay at the Berghof took place in the context of a curious event. On 19 March Hitler received the field-marshals and senior commanders; the military elite presented him with a declaration distancing themselves from the propaganda activities against his regime carried on by General von Seydlitz and his League of German Officers based in Moscow, while at the same time pledging unconditional loyalty to their supreme commander. As has already been mentioned, Hitler and the army leadership saw the Seydlitz propaganda as extremely dangerous; in particular, a series of personal letters from Seydlitz to high-ranking commanding officers in the East had alarmed Hitler, prompting him to raise doubts about the loyalty of the officer corps.111 The declaration, which was written by Schmundt in consultation with Goebbels,112 was designed to rectify this situation. In fact, it was something of an impertinence towards the most senior officers to hold them collectively responsible for Seydlitz’s actions, even though they had taken an oath of ‘unconditional obedience’ to Hitler. The ceremony was a visible expression of the subordination Hitler required of his commanding officers to his ideologically based absolute claim to leadership. A situation such as the one that had occurred when Hitler had last made a speech to his generals and Manstein had interjected a comment was never to happen again.113 It was very evident that Hitler was extremely pleased with this demonstration; as far as he was concerned there was complete harmony that day between him and his generals.114 Schmundt for his part quickly set about making the entire officer corps aware of the declaration through a special decree.115
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