David Irving WAR and The War Path ‘Two books in English stand out from the vast literature of the Second World War: Chester Wilmot’s The Strugglejor Europe, published in 1952, and David Irving’s Hitler’sWar JOHN keegan, Times Literary Supplement FOCAL POINT Twenty years still to go: Wealthy benefactor Lotte Bechstein took this snapshot of Adolf Hitler, then 36, at the balustrade of the villa that became the Berghof after his releasefrom Landsberg prison in 1925 (author’s collection) A Doctor quotes Hitler on Biographers, in August 194.4 A foreigner, said Hitler, ‘probablyfinds it easier to pass judgment on a statesman, provided he is familiar with the country, its people, its language, and its archives. ‘“Presumably,” I said, “Chamier didn’t know the Kaiser personally, as he was still relatively young. But his book not only shows a precise knowledge of the archives and papers, but relies on what are after all many personal items, like the Kaiser’s letters and written memoranda of conversations with friends and enemies.” “‘Hitler then said that for some time now he has gone over to having all impor¬ tant discussions and military conferences recordedfor posterity by shorthand writers. And perhaps one day after he is dead and buried an objective Englishman will come and give him the same kind of impartial treatment. The present generation neither can nor will.’” —The Diary of Dr Erwin Giesing, on a discussion with Hitler about t he Kaiser’s English biographer J. D. Chamier (author’s collection) David Irving is the son of a Royal Navy commander. Imperfectly educated at London’s Imperial College of Science & Technology and at University College, he subsequently spent a year in Germany working in a steel mill and perfecting his fluency in the language. Among his thirty books (including three in German), the best-known include Hitler’s War; The Trail of the Fox: The Life of Field Marshal Rommel; Accident, the Death of General Sikorski;The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe; Goring: a Biography, and Nuremberg, the Last Battle. He has translated several works by other authors including the autobiographies by Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, General Reinhard Gehlen, and Nikki Lauda. He lives near Grosvenor Square, London, and has raised five daughters. In 1963 he published The Destruction of Dresden. This became a best-seller in many countries. In 1996 he issued a revised edition, Apocalypse 19453 as well as his important biography, Goebbels. Mastermind of the Third Reich. A second volume of Churchill’s War appeared in 2001 and he is now completing the third. His works are available as free downloads on our Internet website at www. fpp.co.uk/books. for Josephine Irving IN MEMORIAM 1963 - 1999 COPYRIGHT © 2 00 2 Parforce (UK) Ltd All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, or transmitted save with written permission of the author in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 19^6 (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. Hitler’s War was first published by The Viking Press (New York) and Hodder & Stoughton (London) in 1977; The War Path was published by The Viking Press and Michael Joseph Ltd in 1979. Macmillan Ltd continued to publish these volumes until 1991. We published a revised edition of both volumes in 1991. Hitler’s War and The War Path has been extensively revised and expanded on the basis of materials available since then. The volume is also available as a free download from our website at www.fpp.co.uk/books. Focal Point Publications Duke Street, London wik ^pe British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library isbn 1 872 197 108 Printed and bound in Great Britain by The Bath Press Contents Introduction vii Prologue: The Nugget i Part I: Approach to Absolute Power Dictator by Consent 13 Triumph of the Will 3 3 ‘One Day, the World’ 43 First Lady 43 Goddess of Fortune 67 ‘Green’ 83 The Other Side of Hitler 94 Whetting the Blade 103 Munich 113 One Step Along a Long Path 13 1 Part II: Toward the Promised Land In Hitler’s Chancellery 143 Fifty 169 Extreme Unction 1 81 The Major Solution 187 Pact with the Devil 199 Entr’acte: His First Silesian War 214 Part III: Hitler’s War Begins ‘White’ 223 Overtures 237 Incidents 2 49 Clearing the Decks 2 61 ‘We Must Destroy Them Too! ’ 2 71 Horsd’CEuvre 281 Part IV: ‘War of Liberation’ The Warlord at the Western Front 294 The Big Decision 309 The Dilemma 323 Molotov 334 The ‘Barbarossa’ Directive 344 Let Europe Hold its Breath 343 Behind the Door 363 A Bitter Victory 373 Hess and Bormann 383 Pricking the Bubble 399 PartV: Crusade into Russia The Country Poacher 411 Kiev 424 Cold Harvest 443 A Test of Endurance 461 Hitler Takes Command 473 Hitler’s Word is Law 484 ‘Blue’ 301 The Black Spot for Haider 411 Africa and Stalingrad ^ 2 3 Part VI: Total War Trauma and Tragedy 439 Retreat 4^3 Silence of the Tomb 567 Clutching at Straws j 7 9 Correcting the Front Line 493 ‘Axis’ 607 Feelers to Stalin 623 ‘And So It Will Be, Mein Fuhrer!’ 634 Trouble from Providence 649 The Most Reviled 663 Part VII: The Worms Turn Man with a Yellow Leather Briefcase 68 1 ‘Do You Recognise My Voice?’ 697 He Who Rides aTi ger 714 Rommel Gets a Choice 73 1 On the Brink of a Volcano 747 Part VIII: EndkampJ The Gamble 767 Waiting for a Telegram 779 Hitler Goes to Ground 794 ‘Eclipse’ 811 Abbreviations 840 Notes and sources 843 Introduction t V) historians is granted a talent that even the gods are denied — to alter what has already happened!’ ^ I bore this scornful saying in mind when I embarked on this study of Adolf Hitler’s twelve years of absolute power. I saw myself as a stone cleaner — less concerned with architectural appraisal than with scrubbing years of grime and discoloration from t lie facade of a silent and forbidding monument. I set out to describe events from behind the Fiihrer’s desk, seeing each episode through his eyes. The technique necessarily narrows die field of view, but it does help to explain decisions diat are odierwise inexplicable. Nobody that I knew of had attempted this before, but it seemed worth the effort: after all, Hitler’s war left forty million dead and caused all of Europe and half of Asia to be wasted by fire and explosives; it destroyed Hitler’s ‘Third Reich,’ bankrupted Britain and lost her the Empire, and it brought lasting disorder to the world’s affairs; it saw die entrenchment of communism in one continent, and its emergence in another. In earlier books I had relied on die primary records of the period rather dian published literature, which contained too many pitfalls for die historian. I naively supposed that the same primary sources technique could widiin five years be applied to a study of Hitler. In fact it would be diirteen years before die first volume, Hitler’s War, was published in 1977 and twenty years later I was still indexing and adding to my documentary files. I remember, in 19 6 £, driving down to Tilbury Docks to collect a crate of microfilms ordered from the U.S. government for diis study; the liner diat brought the crate has long been scrapped, the dockyard itself levelled to die ground. I suppose I took it all at a far too leisurely pace. I hope however diat this biography, now updated and revised, will outlive its rivals, and that more and more future writers find themselves compelled to consult it for vii Hitler’s War via materials that are contained in none of the others. Travelling around the world I have found t hat it has split die community of academic historians from top to bottom, particularly in the controversy around ‘the Holocaust.’ In Australia alone, students from tire universities of New South Wales and Western Australia have told me that there they are penalised for citing Hitler’s War; at the universities ofWollongong and Canberra students are disciplined if they don’t. The biography was required reading for officers at military academies from Sandhurst to West Point, New York, and Carlisle, Penn¬ sylvania, until special-interest groups applied pressure to the commanding officers of those seats of learning; in its time it attracted critical praise from the experts behind the Iron Curtain and from the denizens of the Far Right. Not everybody was content. As the author of this work I have had my home smashed into by thugs, my family terrorised, my name smeared, my printers firebombed, and myself arrested and deported by tiny, democratic Austria — an illegal act, t heir courts decided, for which t he ministerial culprits were punished; at the behest of disaffected academics and influential citizens, in subsequent years, I was deported from Canada (in 1992), and refused entry to Australia, New Zealand, Italy, South Africa, and other civilised countries around the world (in 1993). In my absence, internationally affiliated groups circulated letters to librarians, pleading for this book to be taken off their shelves. From time to time copies of these letters were shown to me. A journalist for Time magazine dining witli me in New York in 1988 remarked, ‘Before coming over I read the clippings files on you. Until Hitler’s War you couldn’t put a foot wrong, you were the darling of the media; but after it . . .’ I offer no apology for having revised tlie existing picture of the man. I have tried to accord to him the kind of hearing that he would have got in an English court of law — where the normal rules of evidence apply, but also where a measure of insight is appropriate. There have been sceptics who questioned whether the heavy reliance on — inevitably angled — private sources is any better as a method of investigation than the more traditional quarries of information. My reply is that we certainly cannot deny the value of private sources altogether. As the Washington Post noted in its review of the first edition in 1977, ‘British historians have always been more objective toward Hitler than either German or American writers.’ Introduction IX my conclusions on completing the manuscript startled even me. Hitler was a far less omnipotent Fulirer than had been believed, and his grip on his subordinates had weakened with each passing year. Three episodes — the aftermath of the Ernst Rohm affair of June 30, 1934, the Dollfuss assassination a month later, and the anti-Jewish outrages of November 1938 — show how his powers had been pre-empted by men to whom he felt himself in one way or another indebted. While my Hitler’s central and guiding pre¬ war ambition always remains constant, his methods and tactics were profoundly opportunistic. Hitler firmly believed in grasping at fleeting opportunities. ‘There is but one moment when the Goddess of Fortune wafts by,’ he lectured his adjutants in 1938, ‘and if you don’t grab her then by the hem you won’t get a second chance!'The manner in which he seized upon the double scandal in January 1938 to divest himself of the over conservative army Commander in Chief,Werner von Fritsch, and to become his own Supreme Commander too, is a good example. His geographical ambitions remained unchanged. He had no ambitions against Britain or her Empire at all, and all the captured records solidly bear this out. He had certainly built the wrong air force and the wrong navy for a sustained campaign against the British Isles; and subtle indications, like his instructions to Fritz Todt (page 21) to erect huge monuments on the Reich’s western frontiers, suggest that for Hitler these frontiers were of a lasting nature. There is equally solid proof of his plans to invade the east — his secret speech of February 1933 (page 23^), his memorandum of August 1936 (pages 40—41), his June 1937 instructions for the expansion of Pillau as a Baltic naval base (page <, o), and his remarks to Mussolini in May 1938 (page 88), that‘Germany will step out along the ancient Teutonic path, toward the east.’ Not until later that month, it turns out (page 92), did Hitler finally resign himself to the likelihood t hat Britain and France would probably not stand aside. These last pre-war years saw Hitler’s intensive reliance on psychological warfare techniques. The principle was not new: Napoleon himself had defined it thus: ‘The reputation of one’s arms in war is everything, and equivalent to real forces.’ By using the records of the propaganda ministry and various editorial offices I have tried to illustrate how advanced the Nazis were in these ‘cold war’ techniques. Related to this theme is my emphasis on Hitler’s foreign Intelligence sources. The Nazis’ wiretapping and code breaking agency, t lie Forschungsamt, which destroyed all its records in 19453 holds the key to many of his successes. The agency eavesdropped on foreign X Hitler’s War diplomats in Berlin and — even more significantly — it fed to Hitler hour by hour transcripts of the lurid and incautious telephone conversations conducted between an embattled Prague and the Czech diplomats in London and Paris during September 1938 (pages 118—126). From t lie time of Munich until the outbreak of war with Britain Hitler could follow virtually hourly how his enemies were reacting to each Nazi ploy, and he rightly deduced by August 22, 1939, that while the western powers might well formally declare war they would not actually fight — not at first, that is. The war years saw Hitler as a powerful and relentless military commander, t lie inspiration behind great victories like the Battle of France in May 1940 and the Battle of Kharkov in May 1942; even Marshal Zhukov later privately admitted that Hitler’s summer 1941 strategy — rather than the general staffs frontal assault on Moscow — was unquestionably right. At the same time however Hitler became a lax and indecisive political leader, who allowed affairs of state to stagnate. Though often brutal and insensitive, he lacked the ability to be rut 111 css where it mattered most. He refused to bomb London itself until Mr. Churchill forced the decision on him in late August 1940. He was reluctant to impose the test of total mobilisation on the German ‘master race’ until it was too late to matter, so that with munitions factories crying out for manpower, idle German housewives were still employing half a million domestic servants to dust their homes and polish their furniture. Hitler’s military irresolution sometimes showed through, for example in his panicky vacillation at times of crisis like the battle for Narvik in 1940. He took ineffectual measures against his enemies inside Germany for too long, and seems to have been unable to act effectively against strong opposition at t he very heart of his High Command. In fact he suffered incompetent ministers and generals far longer than t lie Allied leaders did. He failed to unite the feuding factions of Party andWehrmacht for the common cause, and he proved incapable of stifling t he corrosive hatred of the War Department (OKH) for the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW). I believe that I show in t his book t hat the more hermetically Hitler locked himself away behind the barbed wire and minefields of his remote military headquarters, die more his Germany became a Fuhrer Staat without a Fiihrer. Domestic policy was controlled by whoever was most powerful in each sector — by Hermann Goring as head of the powerful economics agency, the Four Year Plan; by Hans Lammers as chief of t he Reich chancellery; or by Martin Bormann, the Nazi Party boss; or by Heinrich Himmler, minister of the interior and Reichsfuhrer of the evil famed SS. Introduction xi hitler was a problem, a puzzle to even his most intimate advisers. Joachim von Ribbentrop, his foreign minister, wrote in his Nuremberg prison cell in 1945: I got to know Adolf Hitler more closely in 1933. If I am asked to day however whether I knew him well — how he tbought as a politician and statesman, what kind of man he was — t lien I’m bound to confess that I know only very little about him; really, nothing at all. The fact is that although I went through so much together with him, in all the years of working with him I never came closer to him than on the first day we met, either personally or otherwise. The sheer complexity of that character is evident from a comparison of his brutality in some respects with his almost maudlin sentimentality and stubborn adherence to military conventions that others had long abandoned. We find him cold bloodedly ordering a hundred hostages executed for every German occupation soldier killed; dictating t he massacre of Italian officers who had turned their weapons against German troops in 1943; ordering the liquidation of Red Army commissars, Allied commando troops, and captured Allied aircrews; in 1942 he announced that die male populations of Stalingrad and Leningrad were to be exterminated. He justified all t liese orders by die expediencies of war.Yet die same Hitler indignantly exclaimed, in die last week of his life, that Soviet tanks were flying the Nazi swastika as a ruse during street fighting in Berlin, and he flatly forbade his Wehrmacht to violate flag rules. He had opposed every suggestion for the use of poison gases, as that would violate the Geneva Protocol; at that time Germany alone had manufactured the potentially war winning ledial nerve gases Sarin andTabun. In an age in which the governments of die democracies attempted, engineered, or condoned the assassinations, successfully or otherwise, of die inconvenient* — from General Sikorski, Admiral Darlan, Field Marshal Rommel, and King Boris of Bulgaria to Fidel Castro, Patrice Lumumba, and Salvador Allende — we learn diat Hitler, die world’s most unscrupulous dictator, not only never resorted to the assassination of foreign opponents but flatly forbade his Abwehr to attempt it. In particular he rejected Admiral Canaris’s plans to assassinate die Red Army General Staff. * The CIA documents on planned assassinations and assassination techniques can now be viewed on the George Washington University website, at www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv. Hitler’s War xii The biggest problem in dealing analytically with Hitler is the aversion to him deliberately created by years of intense wartime propaganda and emotive post-war historiography. I came to the subject with almost neutral feelings. My own impression of the war was limited to snapshot memories — 1940 summer picnics around t he wreckage of a Heinkel bomber in the local Bluebell Woods; the infernal organ note of die V 1 flying bombs passing overhead; convoys of drab army trucks rumbling past our country gate; counting die gaps in die American bomber squadrons straggling back each day from Germany; waving to die troopships sailing in June 1944 from Southsea beach to Normandy; and of course, VE day itself, widi the bonhres and beating of die family gong. Our knowledge of the Germans ‘responsible’ for all diis was not profound. In Everybody’s magazine, long defunct, I recall ‘Ferrier’s World Searchlight’ with its weekly caricatures of a clubfooted dwarf called Goebbels and the other comic Nazi heroes. The caricatures have bedevilled die writing of modern history ever since. Confronted by die phenomenon of Hitler himself, historians cannot grasp diat he was a walking, talking human weighing some 154 pounds widi greying hair, largely false teeth, and chronic digestive ailments. He is to them the Devil incarnate: he has to be, because of the sacrifices diat we made in destroying him. The caricaturing process became respectable at the Nuremberg war crimes trials. History has been plagued since then by the prosecution teams’ methods of selecting exhibits and by die subsequent publication of diem in neatly printed and indexed volumes and die incineration of any document that might have hindered die prosecution effort. At Nuremberg die blame for what happened was shifted from general to minister, from minister to Party official, and from all of diem invariably to Hitler. Under the system of ‘licensed’ publishers and newspapers established by die victors in post-war Germany the legends prospered. No story was too absurd to gain credence in die history books and memoirs. Among these creative writers die German General Staff take pride of place. Without Hitler few of them would have risen above colonel. They owed him dieir jobs, dieir medals, their estates and endowments, and not infrequently dieir victories too. After die war those who survived — which was sometimes because they had been dismissed and dius removed from die hazards of die battlefield — contrived to divert the blame for final defeat. In the hies of Nuremberg prosecutor Justice Robert H. Jackson I found a note warning about the tactics that General Franz Haider, die former chief Introduction xiii of General Staff, proposed to adopt: ‘I just wanted to call your attention to tire CSDIC intercepts of Haider’s conversations with other generals. He is extremely frank on what he thinks should be suppressed or distorted and in particular is very sensitive to the suggestion that the German General Staff was involved in anything, especially planning for war.’ Fortunately this embarrassed offsetting between conscience and memory was more than once recorded for posterity by the hidden microphones of tire CSDIC (Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre).Thus the cavalry general Rothkirch, the III Corps commander, captured at Bitburg on March 6, 1945, was overheard three days later describing how he had personally liquidated Jews in a small town nearVitebsk, Russia, and how he had been warned not to disturb mass graves near Minsk as these were about to be exhumed and incinerated so as to destroy all traces. ‘I have decided,’ he told fellow prisoners, ‘to twist every statement I make so that the officer corps is white washed — relentlessly, relentlessly!’ * And when General Heinz Guderian and the arrogant, supercilious General Leo Geyr von Schweppen- burg were asked by their American captors to write their own history of tire war, they first sought Field MarshalWilhelm Leeb’s permission as senior officer at the Seventh Army’s CSDIC. Again hidden microphones recorded their talk: leeb: Well, I can only give you my personal opinion. . . .You will have to weigh your answers carefully when they pertain to objectives, causes, and the progress of operations, in order to see where they may impinge on the interests of our Fatherland. On the one hand we have to admit that the Americans know the course of operations quite accurately; they even know which units were employed on our side. However they are not quite so familiar with our motives. And there is one point where it would be advisable to proceed with caution, so that we do not become tire laughingstock of the world. I do not know what your relations were with Hitler, but I do know his military capacity. . . . You will have to consider your answers a bit carefully when approached on this subject so that you say nothing that might embarrass our Fatherland. . . . geyr von schweppenburg: The types of madness known to psychologists cannot be compared with the one the Fuhrer suffered from. * CSDIC (UK) report SRGG. 1133, March 9, 1943, in Public Record Office, London, file WO. 208 /4169. XIV Hitler’s War He was a madman surrounded by serfs. I do not think we should express ourselves quite as strongly as that in our statements. Mention of this fact will have to be made, however, in order to exonerate a few persons. After agonising over which German generals, if any, advocated war in 1939 , Leeb suggested: ‘The question is now whether we should not just admit openly everything we know.’ geyr: Any objective observer will admit that National Socialism did raise the social status of the worker, and in some respects even his standard of living. leeb: This is one of the great achievements of National Socialism. The excesses of National Socialism were in the first and final analysis due to the Fiihrer’s personality. guderian: The fundamental principles were fine. leeb: That is true. In writing tIds biography I therefore adopted strict criteria in selecting my source material. I have used not only the military records and archives; I have burrowed deep into die contemporary writings of his closest personal staff, seeking clues to the real truth in diaries and private letters written to wives and friends. For t lie few autobiographical works I have used I preferred to rely on their original manuscripts rather than die printed texts, as in the early post-war years apprehensive publishers (especially die ‘licensed’ ones in Germany) made drastic changes in them — for example in the memoirs of Karl Wilhelm Krause, Hitler’s manservant. Thus I relied on die original handwritten memoirs ofWalter Schellenberg, Himmler’s Intelligence chief, rather than on the mutilated and ghost-written version subsequently published by Andre Deutsch. I would go so far as to warn against several works hitherto accepted as ‘standard’ sources on Hitler — particularly diose by Konrad Heiden, die Abwehr/OSS double agent Hans Bernd Gisevius, Erich Kordt, and Hitler’s dismissed adjutant FritzWiedemann. (The latter unashamedly explained in a private 1940 letter to a friend, ‘It makes no difference if exaggerations and even falsehoods do creep in.’) Professor Carl Jakob Burckliardt’s ‘diary’ quoted in his memoir, Meine Danzigei Mission 1937—1939, is impossible to reconcile with Hitler’s actual movements; while Hermann Rauschning’s Introduction xv Conversations with Hitler (Zurich, 1940) has bedevilled analysis of Hitler’s policies ever since it was published by the evil propagandist Emery Reves (Imre Revesz) along with a host of other fables. Rauschning, a former Nazi Danzig politician, met Hitler on only a couple of formal occasions. It was being republished inVienna as recently as 1973, ah hough even the otherwise uncritical West German historian Professor Eberhard Jackel — who carelessly included 78 forgeries in a serious volume of Hitler’s manuscripts, and t lien dismissed tliis poisonous injection as making up less than 3 percent of die total volume! — emphasised in a learned article in Geschichte inWissenschaft und Unterricht (No. 11, 1977) that Rauschning’s volume has no claim to credibility at all. Reves was also publisher of that other famous ‘source’ on early Nazi history, FritzThyssen’s ‘memoirs,’ I Paid Hitler (London, 1943). Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., has pointed out in a paper in Vierteljahrshft fur Zeitgeschichte (No. 3, 1971) that the luckless Thyssen never even saw eight of the book’s nineteen chapters, while die rest were drafted in French! The list of such spurious volumes is endless. The anonymous ‘memoirs’ of the late Christa Schroeder, Hitler Privat (Diisseldorf, 1949), were penned by Albert Zoller, a French army liaison officer to die U.S. Sevendi Army. Martin Bormann’s alleged notes on Hitler’s final bunker conversations, published widi an introduction by Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper in 1961 as TheTestament of Adolf Hitler and — regrettably — published by Albrecht Knaus Verlag in German as Hitlers PolitischesTestament: Die Bormann-Diktate (Hamburg, 1981), are in my view quite spurious: a copy of die partly typed, partly handwritten original is in my possession, and diis leaves no doubt. Historians are however quite incorrigible, and will quote any apparently primary source no matter how convincingly its false pedigree is exposed. Albert Speer’s memoirs Inside the Third Reich made him a personal fortune after die West Berlin firm of Propylaen published the book in 1969. The volume earned him wide respect for his disavowal of Hitler. Some critics were however puzzled that the American edition differed substantially from die German original Erinnerungen and die British edition. I learned die truth from die horse’s mouth, being one of the first writers to interview Speer after his release from Spandau prison in 1966.The former Reichsminister spent an afternoon reading out loud to me from his draft memoirs. The book subsequently published was very different, having been written, he explained, by my own in house editor at the Ullstein publishing house (Annette Engel nee Etienne), by their chief editor Wolf Jobst Siedler, and by historian Joachim Fest, editor of the prestigious Frankfurter Allgemeine XVI Hitler’s War Zeitung. Miss Etienne confirmed this. When I challenged Speer in private at a Frankfurt publishing dinner in October 1979 to publish his original memoirs, he replied rat her wistfully t hat he wished he could: ‘That would be impossible. That manuscript was quite out of keeping with the modern nuances. Even the captions to tire chapters would have caused difficulties.’ A courageous Berlin author, Matthias Schmidt, later published a book* exposing the Speer legend and the ‘memoirs’; but it is the latter volume which the lazy gentlemen of my profession have in their libraries, not Schmidt’s, thus proving the opening words of this introduction to be true. It was symptomatic of Speer’s truthfulness to history that while he was in Spandau he paid for the entire wartime diaries of his office ( Dienststelle) to be retyped omitting the more unfortunate passages, and donated these faked documents to the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz. My comparison of the 1943 volume, housed in tlie original in British Cabinet Office archives, with the Bundesarchiv copy made this plain, and Matthias Schmidt also reveals t he forgery. In fact I have been startled by the number of such ‘diaries’ which close scrutiny proves to have been faked or tampered with — invariably to Hitler’s disadvantage. Two different men claimed to possess the entire diaries ofVice Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the legendary Abwehr chief hanged by Hitler in April 194^. The first, Klaus Benzing, produced ‘documents of the post-war German Intelligence Service (BND)’ and original papers‘signed by Canaris’ in his support; the second, the German High Court judge Fabian von Schlabrendorff, announced that his set of the diaries had recently been returned by Generaksimo Francisco Franco to the West German govern¬ ment. Forensic tests on the paper and ink of a ‘Canaris document’ supplied by the first man, conducted for me by the Fondon laboratory of Hehner & Cox Ftd., proved them to be forgeries. An interview with Franco’s chef de bureau — his brother in law Don Felipe Polo Valdes — in Madrid disposed of the German judge’s equally improbable claim. Similarly t he Eva Braun diaries published by t he him actor Fuis Trenker were largely forged from t he memoirs written decades earlier by Countess Irma Farisch-Wallersee; the forgery was established by the Munich courts in October 1948. Eva Braun’s genuine diaries and voluminous intimate correspondence with Hitler were acquired by tire CIC team of Colonel Robert A. Gutierrez, based in Stuttgart Backnang in the summer of 1945; * Matthias Schmidt, Albert Speer :The End of a Myth (New York, 1984). Introduction xvii after a brief sifting by Frau Ursula Gohler on their behalf, these papers have not been seen since. I visited Gutierrez twice in New Mexico — he subsequently released Eva Braun’s wedding dress and silver flatware (which he admitted having retained) to my researcher colleague Willi Korte, but he has not conceded an inch over thr missing papers and diaries. The oft quoted diaries of Himmler’s and Ribbentrop’s Berlin masseur Felix Kersten are equally fictitious — as for example die ‘twenty six page medical dossier on Hitler’ described in chapter xxiii (pp. 16^-17 1 of die English edition) shows when compared widi the genuine diaries of Hitler’s doctor, Theo Morell, which I found and published in 1983. The genuine Kersten diaries which Professor Hugh Trevor Roper saw in Sweden were never published, perhaps because of the political dynamite diey contained on Sweden’s elite including publisher Albert Bonnier, alleged to have offered Himmler the addresses of every Jew in Sweden in return for concessions in die event of a Nazi invasion. Similarly die ‘diaries’ published by Rudolf Sender in Goebbels — the Man Next to Hitler (London, 1947) are phoney too, as die entry for January 1 2, 19453 proves; it has Hitler as Goebbels’s guest in Berlin, when the Fiihrer was in fact still fighting the Battle of the Bulge from his headquarters in western Germany. There are too obvious anachronisms in Count Galeazzo Ciano’s extensively quoted ‘diaries’: for example Marshal Rodolfo Graziani’s ‘complaints about Rommel’ on December 12,1940 — two full months before Rommel was appointed to Italy’s North Africa dieatre! In fact Ciano spent die months after his dismissal in February 1943 rewriting and ‘improving’ die diaries himself, which makes them readable but useless for the purposes of history. Ribbentrop warned about the forgery in his prison memoirs — he claimed to have seen Ciano’s real diaries in September 1943 — and die Nazi interpreter Eugen Dollmann described in his memoirs how die fraud was actually admitted to him by a British officer at a prison camp.The OSS files on diis are in die Allen W. Dulles papers (unfortunately still closed) at the Mudd Library, Princeton University; but even the most superficial examination of die handwritten original volumes reveals die extent to which Ciano (or odiers) doctored diem and interpolated material — yet historians of die highest repute have quoted them widiout question as diev have Ciano’s so called ‘Lisbon Papers,’ aldiough die latter too bear all the hallmarks of subsequent editing. (They have all been retyped on the same typewriter although ostensibly originating over die six years 1936—42.) xvHi Hitler’s War Some diaries have been amended in relatively harmless ways: the Luftwaffe Chief of Staff Karl Koller’s real shorthand diary often bears no resemblance to the version he published as Der letzte Monat (Mannheim, 1949). And Helmuth Greiner, keeper of the official OKW operations staff war diary until 1943, seized the opportunity in 1945, when asked by the Americans to retranscribe his original notes for the lost volumes from August 1942 to March 1943, to excise passages which reflected unfavourably on fellow prisoners like General Adolf Heusinger — or too favourably on Hitler; and no doubt to curry favour with the Americans, he added lengthy paragraphs charged with pungent criticism of Hitler’s conduct of the war which I found to be missing from his original handwritten notes. This tendency — to pillory Hitler after the war — was also strongly evident in the ‘diaries’ of the late General Gerhard Engel, who served as his army adjutant from March 1938 to October 1943. Historiographical evidence alone — e.g., comparison with the 1940 private diaries of Reichsminister FritzTodt or the wife of General Rudolf Schmundt, or witli the records of Field Marshal von Manstein’s Army Group Don at the time of Stalingrad — indicates that whatever they are, they are not contemporaneous diaries; tests on the age of the paper confirmed it. Regrettably, the well known Institut fur Zeitgeschichte in Munich nonetheless published them in a volume, Heeresadjutantbei Hitler 1938—1943 (Stuttgart, 1974), rather feebly drawing attention to inconsistencies in the ‘diaries’ in a short introduction. With die brilliant exception of Hugh Trevor Roper (now Lord Dacre), whose book The Last Days of Hitler was based on the records of the era and is therefore virtually unassailable even today, each successive biographer repeated or embraced die legends created by his predecessors, or at best consulted only the most readily available works of reference themselves. In the 1960s and 1970s a wave of weak, repetitive, and unrevealing Hitler biographies had washed dirough die bookstores.The most widely publicised was that written by a German television personality and historian, Joachim Fest; but he later told a questioner diat he had not even visited die magnificent National Archives in Washington, which houses by far the largest collection of records relating to recent European history. Stylistically, Fest’s German was good; but the old legends were trotted out afresh, polished to an impressive gleam of authority. The same Berlin company also published my Hitler biography shortly after, under the title Hitler und seine Feldherren; their chief editor, Siedler, found many of my arguments distasteful, even dangerous, and without Introduction xix informing me suppressed or even reversed them. In their printed text Hitler had not told Himmler (on November 30, 1941) that there was to be ‘no liquidation’ of a consignment of Jews from Berlin; he had told him not to use tlie word ‘liquidate’ publicly in connection with their extermination programme.Thus history is falsified! For t his and similar reasons I prohibited further printing of the book, two days after its appearance in Germany, and litigated for ten years to regain the right to publish it in its original form.To explain their actions, the Berlin publishers argued that my manuscript expressed some views that were ‘an affront to established historical opinion’ in their country. My idle predecessors had gratefully lamented that most of the documents had been destroyed. They had not — they survived in embarrassing super abundance. The official papers of Luftwaffe Field Marshal Erhard Milch, Goring’s deputy, were captured by the British and total over 60,000 pages; t lie entire war diary of the German naval staff, of immense value far beyond purely naval matters, survived; it took many months to read the 69 volumes of main text, some over 900 pages long, in Washington and to examine the most promising of the 3,800 microfilm records of German naval records held in Washington. After the first edition of this book appeared in Berlin in 1974 further volumes of the diaries of Joseph Goebbels were released in the West; I had some qualms that they might reveal some of my more dangerous hypotheses to have been hollow. (Neither those first volumes, nor the missing Goebbels diaries first exploited by me in the Moscow archives in 1992, nor die rest of them, have yielded any evidence diat I was wrong.) Many sources of prime importance are still missing. That diplomatic historians never once bothered in thirty years to visit the widow of Joachim von Ribbentrop’s state-secretary Ernst von Weizsacker, father of the subsequent West German president, was a baffling mystery to me. Had diey looked for die widow ofWalther Hewel, Ribbentrop’s liaison officer to Hitler, they would have learned about his diaries too. And who are diese over-emotional historians of the Jewish tragedy who, until I did so, never troubled themselves even to open a readily available hie of the SS chief Heinrich Himmler’s own handwritten telephone notes, or to read his memoranda for his secret meetings with Adolf Hitler? Alas, apart from pocket diaries for 1934 and 1939, of which I have donated copies to die Bundesarchiv, the diaries of Himmler have largely vanished — partly carried off as trophies to Moscow, from where most of die pages for 1941—42 have XX Hitler’s War only recently been retrieved,* and partly removed toTel Aviv, Israel; Chaim Rosenthal, a former attache at the Israeli Consulate in New York, obtained some Himmler diaries by the most questionable means and donated them to the University of Tel Aviv in 1982, but following extensive litigation against Rosenthal — now non grata in the U.S.A. — the university returned the volumes to him. Other diaries are also sorely missed.Those of former Gestapo executive Werner Best were last seen in the Royal Danish Archives in Copenhagen in 194/;; those of Karl Wolff were last seen at Nuremberg. The diaries of Hans Lammers, Wilhelm Bruckner, and Karl Bodenschatz vanished into American or French hands; those of Professor Theo Morell vanished too, to turn up miraculously in my presence in Washington in 1981 (I published a full edited transcript two years later). Nicolaus von Below’s are probably in Moscow. Alfred Rosenberg’s remaining unpublished diaries were illicitly held by t he late Dr. Robert M. W. Kempner, an American lawyer based in Frankfurt; his papers, salvaged in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, are now the object of an unseemly dispute between Jewish archives and his family. The rest of Milch’s diaries, of which I obtained and placed on microfilm some five thousand pages in 1967, have vanished, as have General Alfred Jodi’s diaries covering the years 1940 to 1943; they were looted along with his private property by the British 1 ith Armoured Division at Flensburg in May 1944. Only a brief fragment of Benito Mussolini’s diary survives: the SS copied the originals and returned them to him in January 1944, but both die originals and the copy placed in Ribbentrop’s files are missing now. The important diaries of Rudolf Schmundt were, unhappily, burned at his request by his fellow adjutant Admiral Karl Jesco von Puttkamer in April 1944, along with Puttkamer’s own diaries. The Hoover Institution, Stanford, California, holds the diary of SS Obergruppenfuhrer Friedrich Wilhelm Kruger — another item wilfully overlooked by West Germany’s historians. My search for sources t hat might throw light on Hitler’s character was sometimes successful, sometimes not. Weeks of searching with a proton magnetometer — a kind of supersensitive mine detector — in a forest in East Germany failed to unearth a glass jar containing stenograms of Goebbels’s very last diaries, although at times, according to the map in my possession, * Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/4.2, ed. Peter Witte, with foreword by Uwe Lohalm and Wolfgang Scheffler (Hamburg, 1999). No praise is too high for this edition. Introduction xxi we must have stood right over it. In writing this biography however I did obtain a significant number of authentic, little known diaries of the people around Hitler, including an unpublished segment of Jodi’s diary; the official diary kept for OKW chief Wilhelm Keitel by his adjutant Wolf Eberhard, and Eberhard’s own diary for the years 1936 through 1939; the diary of Nikolaus von Vormann, army liaison officer to Hitler during August and September 1939; and the diaries kept by Martin Bormann and by Hitler’s personal adjutant MaxWunsche relating to Hitler’s movements. In addition I have used die unpublished diaries of Fedor von Bock, Erhard Milch, Erich von Manstein, Wilhelm Leeb, Erwin Lahousen, and Eduard Wagner — whose widow allowed me to copy some two diousand pages of his private letters. Christa Schroeder, one of Hitler’s private secretaries, made available exclusively to me her important contemporary papers. Julius Schaub’s family let me copy all his manuscripts about his twenty years as Hitler’s senior aide, as did Wilhelm Bruckner’s son. I am die first biographer to have used die private papers of Staatssekretar Herbert Backe and his minister, Richard Walter Darre, and the diaries, notebooks, and papers of Fritz Todt. The British government kindly made available to me precious fragments of die diary of Admiral Canaris. Scattered across Germany and America I found the shorthand and typed pages of Erwin Rommel’s diaries, and the elusive diaries and notebooks that Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring had kept from his childhood on. Among the most revealing documents used in diis biography are die manuscripts written by Generaloberst (Colonel-General) Werner Freiherr von Fritsch in 1938 and 1939; these I obtained from a Soviet source. Jutta Freifrau von Richdiofen allowed me access to die voluminous unpublished diaries of her husband, die late field marshal. In short, every member of Hitler’s staff or High Command whom I located seemed to have carefully hoarded diaries or papers which were eventually produced for my exploitation here.They were mostly in German, but the research papers on the fringe of my work came in a Babel of odier languages: Italian, Russian, French, Spanish, Hungarian, Romanian, and Czech. Some cryptic references to Hitler and Ribbentrop in die Hewel diaries defied all my puny code breaking efforts, and then proved to have been written in Indonesian! All of these records I have now donated to die Institute of Contemporary History in Munich, where they are available as die Audior’s collection to odier writers. SecondWorldWar researchers will find microfilms of all die xxii Hitler’s War materials that I collected while researching this and other books available from Microform Academic Publishers Ltd., Main Street, East Ardsley, Wakefield, Yorkshire, WF3 2AT, England (e-mail: info@microform.co.uk; phone +44 1924—823 700, fax 1924—871 004). OF the now available collections of records four are worthy of note — the formerly Top Secret CSDIC-series interrogation reports in Class WO208 at the Public Records Office, Kew, London; the coded radio messages of the SS and German police units, intercepted and decoded by the British at Bletchley Park, and now archived in the same place as Classes HW1, HW 3, and HW 16; tlie ‘Adolf Hitler Collection,’ housed in three file boxes at the Seeley G. Mudd Library, Princeton University, New Jersey; and some five hundred pages of Joachim von Ribbentrop’s pre ministerial letters and memoranda to Hitler, 1933 - 36, found in the ruins of the Reich chancellery and now in the Louis Lochner papers at the Hoover Institution’s archives, Stanford, California. The ‘Hitler Collection’ was purloined by Private Eric Hamm of the U.S. Army’s war crimes branch from Hitler’s residence in Munich, and eventually sold by a Chicago auction house. It reflects Hitler’s career well — archive photographs of his sketches and paintings, ambassadors’ dispatches, reports on the shooting of‘professional criminals’ while ‘resisting arrest,’ a 1923 hotel registration filled out by Hitler (who entered himself as ‘stateless’), documents on the Spanish civil war, Rohm’s preparations for die 1923 beer hall putsch, an instruction by Martin Bormann that Hitler had agreed to cover bills run up by the peripatetic Princess Hohenlohe but would pay no more, extensive documentation on the Party’s relations widi the Church; on December 20, 1940, Pierre Laval wrote to Hitler ‘desiring from the bottom of my heart that my country shall not suffer,’ and assuring him: ‘The policy of collaboration with Germany is supported by the vast majority of the French.’ Hjalmar Schacht several times protested to Hitler about the economic damage caused by anti-Jewish strictures; on August 24, 1933, he wrote that Robert Ley’s instruction diatWoolworth & Co. was not to buy from Jewish suppliers would result in die company’s head office cancelling ten million marks of orders from Germany annually: ‘It is not clear to me, and never has been, how I am supposed to bring in foreign currency in the face of such policies.’ On March 30, 1936, Schacht asked Hitler to receive a certain American silk manufacturer who had been requested by President Roosevelt to ‘convey personal greetings to die Fiihrer.’ Introduction xxiii On June 20, 1938, Count Helldorff, police chief of Berlin, sent to Hitler a report on organised anti Jewish razzias in Berlin. Later that year t lie police sent to Hitler a hie on t he Jewish assassin Herschel Grynszpan, confirming that his parents had been dumped back over the Polish border at Neu Bentschen on October 29 — a few days before he gunned down a German diplomat in Paris — pursuant to t lie Reich’s drive against Polish Jews who had settled in Germany. In February 1939 Hitler endorsed the refusal of his embassy in Washington to pay Danegeld to Kurt Liidecke, a former Nazi who had invited the Party publishing house or some other Reich agency to buy up all rights in his scurrilous memoirs to prevent their publication. The same hie shows Hitler acting to stop the Nazi heavyweight Max Schmeling staging a return hght against the Negro Joe Louis. (‘As you know,’ Julius Schaub wrote to the sports minister on March 2, 1939, ‘the F ii It re r was against the hght in the hrst place.’) Most enigmatic of these documents is one evidently originated by die Gestapo after 1940, typed on the special ‘Fuhrer typewriter,’ reporting ugly rumours about Hitler’s ancestry — ‘that die Fuhrer was an illegitimate child, adoptive son of Alois, that t lie Fuhrer’s mother’s name was Schickl¬ gruber* before the adoption and that the Schicklgruber line has produced a string of idiots.’ Among the latter was a tax official, Joseph Veit, deceased in 1904 in Klagenfurt, Austria. One of his sons had committed suicide, a daughter had died in an asylum, a surviving daughter was half mad, and a third daughter was feebleminded.The Gestapo established that die family of Konrad Pracher of Graz had a dossier of photographs and certificates on all this. Himmler had them seized ‘to prevent their misuse.’ The Ribbentrop hies reflect his tortuous relations as ‘ambassador extraordinary’ with Hitler and his rivals. He had established his influence by making good contacts with Englishmen of influence — among them not only industrialists like E. W. D. Tennant and newspaper barons like Lord Rothermere, Lord Astor, and Lord Camrose, but also die Cabinet ministers of the day, including Lord Hailsham, Lord Lloyd, Lord Londonderry, and * In fact Hitler’s father was the illegitimate son of Maria Anna Schicklgruber. Nazi newspapers were repeatedly, e.g., on December 16, 1939, forbidden to speculate on his ancestry. Werner Maser states in Die Friihgeschichte der NSDAP (Bonn, 196^) that on August 4, 1942, Heinrich Himmler instructed the Gestapo to investigate the Fuhrer’s parentage; their bland findings were graded merely geheim (secret). The document quoted above is, however, stamped with the highest classification, Geheime Reichssache. XXIV Hitler’s War young Anthony Eden, in whom Ribbentrop saw the rising star of the Conservative party.The hies contain records of Ribbentrop’s meetings widi Stanley Baldwin and Ramsay MacDonald in 1933 and 1934.They also reflect die tenuous links established between Sir Oswald Mosley and his lieutenants widi the Nazi Party leadership in Berlin. Typical of die many handwritten letters from Ribbentrop to Hitler was one dated January 6, 1934, thanking him for the show of confidence betokened by his new appointment to Reichsleiter — ‘Not only does this clearly define my status in the Party, removing any doubts as to your views on me and my activities, but die appointment also gives me a different position vis a vis the foreign ministry both externally and internally.’ He signed it ‘your trusty Ribbentrop.’ nothing created such agony when this biography was first published as my analysis of Hitler’s role in the Jewish tragedy. Pure vitriol spilled from the pens of my critics, but I see no reason to revise my central hypodiesis, which is based on the records of the day: diat Hitler grasped quite early on that antisemitism would be a powerful vote catching force in Germany; that he had no compunction against riding that evil steed right up to the portals of the chancellery in 1933; but that once inside and in power, he dismounted and paid only lip service to that part of his Party creed. The Nazi gangsters under him continued to ride to hounds, however, even when Hitler dictated differently, e.g., in November 1938. As for the concentration camps he comfortably left that dark side of the Nazi rule to Himmler. He never visited one; those senior officials and foreigners who did obtain privileged access to Dachau, like Ernst Udet or General Erhard Milch or British Members of Parliament in 1933 and 1934 were favourably impressed (but those were early days). Himmler is known to have visited Auschwitz in 1941 and 1942. Hitler never did. The scale of Germany’s Jewish problem is revealed by an unpublished manuscript by Hitler’s predecessor as chancellor, Dr. Heinrich Bruning. Writing in American exile in 1943 he stated diat after the inflation there was only one major German bank not controlled by Jews, some of them ‘utterly corrupt.’ In 1931 he had brought die banks under government supervision, and had had to keep die government’s findings of dishonesty in the banks secret ‘for fear of provoking antisemitic riots.’ Bruning blamed foreign correspondents for exaggerating die ‘occasional ill treatment of Jews’ at die beginning of the Nazi regime: Introduction xxv In the spring of 1933 foreign correspondents reported that the River Spree [in Berlin] was covered with the corpses of murdered Jews. At that time hardly any Jews except for leaders of die Communist party . . . had been attacked. . . . If,’he pointedly added,‘the Jews had been treated so badly from the beginning of the regime, it could not be explained that so very few of them left the country before 1938.’ In 1948 Briining would write to t lie editors of Life forbidding them to publish an August 193 7 letter he had written toWinston Churchill revealing that ‘from October 1928 the two largest regular contributors to die Nazi Party were die general managers of two of die largest Berlin banks, both of Jewish faith, and one of diem die leader of Zionism in Germany.’* I had approached the Nazi maltreatment of die Jews from die traditional viewpoint prevailing in the 1960s. Supposing Hitler was a capable statesman and a gifted commander, die argument ran, how does one explain his ‘murder of six million Jews’? If this book were simply a history of the rise and fall of Hitler’s Reich it would be legitimate to conclude: ‘Hitler killed the Jews.’ He after all had created the atmosphere of hatred with his speeches in die 1930s; he and Himmler had created die SS; his speeches, though never explicit, left the clear impression diat ‘liquidate’ was what he meant. For a full length war biography of Hitler, I felt that a more analytical approach to the key questions was necessary. Remarkably, I found that Hitler’s own role in die ‘Final Solution’ had never been examined. German historians, otherwise die epitome of painstaking essaying, had developed monumental blind spots when Hitler himself cropped up: bald statements were made without a shadow of evidence in support. British and American historians willingly conformed. Others quoted them. For thirty years our knowledge of Hitler’s part in die atrocity had rested on inter historian incest. Many people, particularly in Germany and Austria, had an interest in propagating the version that die order of one madman originated the entire tragedy. Precisely when diis order was given was, admittedly, left vague. Every document actually linking Hitler widi die treatment of German Jews takes the form of an embargo, from the 1923 beer hall putsch (when * Briining’s 1943 manuscript is in the Dorothy Thompson collection of the George Arents Research Library, Syracuse University, New York. His letter to Daniel Longwell, editor of Life, dated February 7, 1948, is in Longwell’s papers in the Butler Library, Columbia University, New York. XXV1 Hitler’s War he purportedly disciplined a Nazi squad lieutenant for having looted a Jewish delicatessen) right through to 1943 and 1944. In t lie newly discovered Goebbels diaries we find that Hitler lectured t he gauleiters in September [934 that ‘above all’ there were to be no excesses against the Jews and no persecution of‘non-Aryans.’ Goebbels tried to talk him out of this soft line, but noted: ‘Jewish problem not resolved even now. We debated it for a long time but the Fiihrer still can’t make his mind up.’ And what are we to make of the edict issued ‘to all Gau directorates for immediate action’ by Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess, during t lie Night of Broken Glass in November 1938, ordering an immediate stop to arson attacks on Jewish premises ‘on orders from tlie very highest level’? Every other historian has shut his eyes and hoped that this horrid, inconvenient document would somehow go away. It has been joined by others, like the extraordinary note dictated by Staatssekretar Franz Schlegelberger in the Reich Ministry of Justice in the spring of 1942: ‘Reich Minister Lammers,’ this states, ‘informed me that the f iihrer has repeatedly pronounced tint he wants the solution of the Jewish Question put off until after the war is over.’ Whatever way one reads this document, it is incompatible with the notion that Hitler had ordered an urgent liquidation programme. (The document’s original is in justice ministry lile R22/32 in tlie archives at Koblenz.) Goring himself is on record as stressing at a Berlin conference on July 6, 1942, how much Hitler deprecated the harassment of Jewish scientists, for example: I have discussed this with the Fiihrer himself now; we have been able to use one Jew two years longer in Vienna, and another in photographic research, because they have certain things that we need and that can be of the utmost benefit to us at the present. It would be utter madness for us to say now: ‘He’ll have to go. He was a magnificent researcher, a fantastic brain, but his wife is Jewish, and he can’t be allowed to stay at the University,’ etc. The Fiihrer has made similar exceptions in the arts all the way down to operetta level; he is all the more likely to make exceptions where really great projects or researchers are concerned.* Of course from 19 3 9 on Hitler uttered several harsh statements in public; * First session of the newly formed Reich Research Council, July 6, 19425 a stenographic record is in the Milch documents, vol. ^8, pp. 3640 ff. Introduction xxv n but on many occasions in 1942 and 1943 he made — in private — statements which are incompatible with the notion that he knew that an all-out liquidation programme had begun. In October 1943, even as Himmler was disclosing to privileged audiences of SS generals and gauleiters that Europe’s Jews had been systematically murdered, Hitler was still forbidding liquidations — e.g., of the Italian Jews in Rome — and ordering their internment instead. (This order his SS also disobeyed.) In July 1944, overriding Himmler’s objections, he ordered that Jews be bartered for foreign currency or supplies; there is some evidence that like contemporary terrorists he saw these captives as a potential asset, a means whereby he could blackmail his enemies. Wholly in keeping with his character, when Hitler was confronted with t he facts he took no action to rebuke t he guilty; he would not dismiss Himmler as Reichsfuhrer SS until die last day of his life. It is plausible to impute to him that not uncommon characteristic of heads of state who are over-reliant on powerful advisers: a conscious desire ‘not to know.’The proof of t his is however beyond t he powers of an historian. For the want of hard evidence — and in 1977 I offered a t housand pounds to any person who could produce even one wartime document showing explicitly that Hitler knew, for example, of Auschwitz — my critics resorted to arguments ranging from die subtle to die sledgehammer (in one instance, liter ally). They postulated die existence of Fiihrer orders widiout die slightest written evidence of dieir existence. John Toland, Pulitzer prize winning author of a Hitler biography published in the United States, appealed emotionally in Der Spiegel for historians to refute my hypodiesis, and diey tried by fair means and foul. Perplexed by Himmler’s handwritten note about a phone conversation widi Heydrich from Hitler’s bunker on Novem¬ ber 30, 1941 —‘Arrest[ofJ Dr. Jekelius. Alleged son Molotov. Consignment [Transport] of Jews from Berlin. No liquidation.’ — diese wizards of modern history scoffed that probably Molotov’s son was believed to be aboard a trainload of Jews from Berlin concealed as ‘Dr. Jekelius’ and was on no account to be liquidated. In fact Molotov had no son; Dr. Jekelius was probably Erwin Jekelius, t lie Viennese neurologist involved in die Eudianasia programme;* and die trainload of Jews from Berlin had diat morning arrived * Cf. Benno Miiller Hill, TodlicheWissenschaft. Die Aussonderung von Juden , Zigeunern und Geisteskranken 1933 - 43 (Rowohlt, Hamburg), p. 107. The editors of Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers, 1941/4.2 (Christians Verlag, Hamburg, 1999), p.207, have belatedly come to the same conclusion. — We reproduce relevant documents on page 4.55. xxviii Hitler’s War at Riga and had already been liquidated by the local SS commander by the time t hat Himmler scribbled down what seems clearly to have been Hitler’s injunction.* Why else communicate by telephone with Heydrich ‘from die bunker’ at die Wolf’s Lair unless Hitler himself was behind it? So far the conformist historians have been unable to help Mr. Toland, apart from suggesting that the project was so secret that only oral orders were issued. Why however should Hitler have become so squeamish in this instance, while he had shown no compunction about signing a blanket order for die liquidation of tens of diousands of fellow Germans (Philipp Boulder’s T-4 euthanasia programme); his insistence on the execution of hostages on a one hundred to one basis, his orders for die liquidation of enemy prisoners (die Commando Order), of Allied airmen (the Lynch Order), and Russian functionaries (the Commissar Order) are documented all the way from die Fiihrer’s headquarters right down die line to the executioners. Most of my critics relied on weak and unprofessional evidence. For example, diey offered alternative and often specious translations of words in Hitler’s speeches (apparently the Final Solution was too secret for him to sign an order, but simultaneously not so secret diat he could not brag about it in public speeches); and quotations from isolated documents diat have however long been discarded by serious historians as worthless or fakes, like the Gerstein Reportf or die ‘Bunker conversations’ mentioned earlier. Of explicit, written, wartime evidence, die kind of evidence diat could hang a man, diey have produced not one line.Thus, in his otherwise fastidious * See page 4.55. The most spine chilling account of the plundering and methodical mass murder of these Jews at Riga in November 1 941 is in CSDIC (UK) report srgg. i 1^8 (in file wo. 208/4169 of the Public Record Office): the 5^4-year-old Major General Walther Bruns, an eye-witness, describes it to fellow generals in British captivity in a German prison camp on April 2^,194^, unaware that hidden microphones are recording every word. Of particular significance: his qualms about bringing what he had seen to the Fiihrer’s attention, and the latter’s orders that such public massacres were to stop forthwith. With HM Stationery Office permission, I shall shortly publish a volume of these extraordinarily revealing CSDIC transcripts, j* On which see the dissertation by Henri Roques: ‘Les “confessions” de Kurt Gerstein. Etude comparative des differentes versions,’ submitted at the University of Nantes, France, in June 1985c This reveals the extent to which conformist historians had been deceived by the various versions of the ‘report.’ Such was the outcry aroused that Roques was stripped of his doctoral degree. I have ensured that his 372 page thesis is freely available in the Author’s collection at the Institute of Contemporary History, Munich. Introduction xxix analysis of Hitler and the Final Solution (London, 1983) Professor Gerald Fleming relied on war crimes trial testimonies, which are anything but safe; reviewing that book, Professor Gordon Craig concluded that even Fleming had failed to refute my hypothesis. Professor Martin Broszat, director of the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich, crudely assailed my biography in a 37 page review in the institute’s journal, then refused space for a reply. Unfamiliar witli my sources, and unaware that I had in several cases used original hies which he and other historians had read only in English translation, he accused me of distorting and even inventing quotations.* Amidst such libels and calumnies, which are easily uttered, Broszat was, however, forced to concede: ‘David Irving has perceived one tiling correctly when he writes that in his view the killing of the Jews was partly a Verlegenheitslosung , “the way out of an awkward dilemma.’” Broszat’s corollary, that there was no central Hitler Order for what happened, caused an uproar among the world’s historians, a Historikerstreit which is not politically limited to Left versus Right. My own conclusion went one logical stage further: that in wartime, dictatorships are funda¬ mentally weak — die dictator himself, however alert, is unable to oversee all die functions of his executives acting within die confines of his far flung empire; and in this particular case, I concluded, die burden of guilt for the bloody and mindless massacres of the Jews rests on a large number of Germans (and non Germans), many of them alive today, and not just on one ‘mad dictator,’ whose order had to be obeyed widiout question. 1 also found it necessary to set very different historical accents on die doctrinaire foreign policies which Hitler enforced — from his apparent unwillingness to humiliate Britain when she lay prostrate in 1940, to his damaging and emotional hatred of die Serbs, his illogical and over loyal admiration of Benito Mussolini, and his irrational mixtures of emotions toward Joseph Stalin. Being a modern English historian diere was a certain morbid fascination * ‘Hitler and the Genesis of the Final Solution, an Assessment of David Irving’s Thesis/ Vierteljahrshefte Jur Zeitgeschichte , No. 2^, 1977, pp. 739—7 S', republished without correction in Aspects oj theThird Reich (ed. H. W. Koch, Macmillan, New York, 198^) pp. 390—429, and in YadVashem Studies , No. 13, 1979, pp. 73—12^, and yet again, still uncorrected, in Nach Hitler: der schwierige Umgang mit unserer Geschichte (Oldenburg, 1988); and extensively quoted by Charles W. Sydnor in ‘The Selling of Adolf Hitler/ in Central European History, No. 12, 1979, pp. 169—99,402—^. XXX Hitler’s War for me in inquiring how far Adolf Hitler really was bent on the destruction of Britain and her Empire — a major raison d’etre for our ruinous fight, which in 1940 imperceptibly replaced the more implausible reason proffered in August 1939, die rescue of Poland from outside oppression. Since in the chapters that follow evidence extracted again and again from the most intimate sources — like Hitler’s private conversations with his women secretaries in June 1940 — indicates that he originally had neidier the intention nor die desire to harm Britain or destroy die Empire, surely British readers at least must ask diemselves: what, then, were we really fighting for? Given that the British people bankrupted themselves (by December 1940) and lost dieir Empire in defeating Hitler, was die Fiihrer right after all when he noted diat Britain’s attitude was essentially one of ‘Apres moi le deluge — if only we can get rid of the hated National Socialist Germany’? Unburdened by ideological idealism, die Duke ofWindsor suspected in July 1940 diat die war was continuing solely in order to allow certain British statesmen (he meant Mr. Churchill and his friends) to save face, even if it meant dragging their country and Empire into financial ruin. Others pragmatically argued that there could be no compromise with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Did Britain’s leaders in fact believe this, however? Dr. Bernd Martin of Freiburg University has revealed die extent to which secret negotiations on peace continued between Britain and Germany in October 1939 and long after — negotiations on which, curiously, Mr. Churchill’s files have officially been sealed until the twenty first century, and the Cabinet records blanked out. Similar negotiations were carried on in June 1940, when even Mr. Churchill showed himself momentarily willing in Cabinet meetings to deal widi Hitler if the price was right. Of course, in assessing the real value of such negotiations and of Hitler’s publicly stated intentions it is salutary to know that on June 2, 1941, he admitted to Waldier Hewel: ‘For myself personally I would never tell a lie; but there is no falsehood I would not perpetrate for Germany’s sake!’ Nevertheless one wonders how much suffering might have been spared if both sides had pursued the negotiations — might all that happened after 1940, die saturation bombing, die population movements, die epidemics, even die Holocaust itself, have been avoided? Great are the questions, yet modern historiography has chosen to ignore die possibility, calling it heresy. The facts revealed here concerning Hitler’s recorded actions, motivations, and opinions should provide a basis for fresh debate. Americans will find much that is new about the mondis leading up to Pearl Harbor. The French Introduction xxxi will find additional evidence t hat Hitler’s treatment of their defeated nation was more influenced by memories of France’s treatment of Germany after WorldWar I than by his respect for Mussolini’s desires. Russians can try to visualise the prospect that could conceivably have unfolded if Stalin had accepted Hitler’s offer in November 1940 of inclusion in the Axis Pact; or if, having achieved his ‘second Brest Litovsk’ peace treaty (as momentarily proposed on June 28,1941), Stalin had accepted Hitler’s condition that he rebuild Soviet military power only beyond the Urals; or if Hitler had taken seriously Stalin’s alleged peace offer of September 1944. What is the result of these twenty years’ toiling in t he archives? Hitler will remain an enigma, however hard we burrow. Even his intimates realised t hat they hardly knew him. I have already quoted Ribbentrop’s puzzlement; but General Alfred Jodi, his closest strategic adviser, also wrote in his Nuremberg cell on March 10, 1946: Then however I ask myself, did you ever really know this man at whose side you led such a thorny and ascetic existence? Did he perhaps just trifle wit h your idealism too, abusing it for dark purposes which he kept hidden deep within himself? Dare you claim to know a man, if he has not opened up the deepest recesses of his heart to you — in sorrow as well as in ecstasy? To this very day I do not know what he thought or knew or really wanted. I only knew my own thoughts and suspicions. And if, now that die shrouds fall away from a sculpture we fondly hoped would be a work of art, only to reveal nothing but a degenerate gargoyle — then let future historians argue among diemselves whether it was like that from die start, or changed with circumstances. I keep making the same mistake: I blame his humble origins. Then however I remember how many peasants’ sons have been blessed by History with the name,The Great. ‘Hitler the Great’? No, contemporary History is unlikely to swallow such an epithet. From die first day that he ‘seized power,’ January 30, 1933, Hitler knew that only sudden death awaited him if he failed to restore pride and empire to post Versailles Germany. His close friend and adjutant Julius Schaub recorded Hitler’s jubilant boast to his staff on diat evening, as die last celebrating guests left the Berlin chancellery building: ‘No power on earth will get me out of this building alive!’ History saw this prophecy fulfilled, as the handful of remaining Nazi xxxii Hitler’s War Party faithfuls trooped uneasily into his underground study on April 30, 1943, surveyed his still warm remains — slouched on a couch, with blood trickling from the sagging lower jaw, and a gunshot wound in the right temple — and sniffed the bitter almonds smell hanging in the air. Wrapped in a grey army blanket, he was carried up to the shell blasted chancellery garden. Gasoline was slopped over him in a reeking crater and ignited while his staff hurriedly saluted and backed down into t he shelter. Thus ended t he six years of Hitler’s War. We shall now see how they began. David Irving London, January 1976 and January 1989 A Note on the Millennium Edition the millennium edition of Hitler’s War brings the narrative up to date with the latest documents discovered, primarily in American and former Soviet archives, since the 1991 edition was published. I was in 199 2 the first author permitted by t lie Moscow authorities to exploit the microfiched diaries of Dr. Joseph Goebbels, which contain further vital information about Hitler’s role in die Rohm Purge, the Kristallnacht of i 93 8 , die Final Solution, and other matters of high historical importance. From a Californian source I obtained die original Gestapo interrogations of Rudolf Hess’s staff, conducted in die first few days after his flight to Scotland.The British secret service has now released to die public domain the intercepts of top secret messages sent in code by Himmler and other SS commanders. These are just a few examples of the new materials woven into the fabric of this story. I am glad to say I have not had to revise my views as originally expressed: I was always confident diat if one adheres to original documents, one will not stray far from Real History. The new archival material has however made it possible to refine the narrative, and to upgrade the documentary basis of my former assertions. David Irving London, January 12, 2002 Prologue: The Nugget H ow can we ever learn what Hitler’s real ambitions were? One of the men closest to him, who served him as air force adjutant from 1937 to the very end, has emphasised that even when we read of some startling outburst from Hitler to his henchmen, and we feel we are getting closer to the truth, we must always ask ourselves: was that the real Hitler, or was even that just an image that he wished to impose on tint particular audience of the moment? Was he just seeking to jolt his com¬ placent satraps out of a dangerous lethargy? So we must go prospecting deep down into the bedrock of history before we can locate the black nug¬ get of ambition of which the last six years of his life were just the violent expression. Excellent sources survive, even before Mein Kampf. The confidential po¬ lice reports on twenty of Hitler’s early speeches, delivered in smoky, crowded halls in the revolutionary Soviet Munich of 1919 and 1920, pro¬ vide a series of glimpses at the outer shell of his beliefs. Here Adolf Hitler, just turned thirty years of age, expressed no grand geopolitical ideas. His agitation pivoted on the terms dictated to Berlin’s ‘craven and corrupt’ representatives at Versailles; he tried to convince his audience that defeat in die World War had been inflicted on diem not by their enemies abroad, but by the revolutionaries within — the Jew-ridden politicians in Berlin. Stripped of dieir demagogic element, the speeches are significant only for Hitler’s ceaseless reiteration that a Germany disarmed was prey to die lawless demands of her predatory neighbours. He demanded that Germany become a nation widiout class differences, in which manual labourer and intellectual each respected die contribution of die other. On one occasion, in April 1920, he even proclaimed, ‘We need a dictator who is a genius, if we are to arise again.’ 1 2 PROLOGUE His targets were not modest even then: he was going to restore the German Reich, extending from Memel in the east to Strasbourg in the west, and from Konigsberg to Bratislava. In another secret speech, deliv¬ ered to an audience in Salzburg — evidently on August 7 or 8, 1920 — Hitler roused his Austrian compatriots widi the same two ideals: ‘Firstly, Deutschland iiber alles in derWelt. And secondly, our German domain extends as far as the German tongue is spoken.’ This Salzburg speech, of which only one faded, fragile, and hitherto unpublished shorthand transcript has survived, comes closest to revealing his early mind and attitudes: This is the first demand that we must raise and do raise: that our people be set free, that these chains be burst asunder, and that Germany be once again captain of her soul and master of her destinies, together with all those who want to join Germany. (Applause). The fulfilment of this first demand will t lien open up the way for all the other reforms. And here is one thing that perhaps distinguishes us from you as far as our program is concerned, although it is very much in die spirit of things: our attitude to the Jewish problem. For us, diis is not a problem we can turn a blind eye to — one to be solved by small concessions. For us, it is a problem of whether our na¬ tion can ever recover its healdi, whether die Jewish spirit can ever really be eradicated. Don’t be misled into diinking you can fight a disease widi- out killing the carrier, widiout destroying the bacillus. Don’t think you can fight racial tuberculosis without taking care to rid die nation of the carrier of that racial tuberculosis. This Jewish contamination will not subside, this poisoning of the nation will not end, until the carrier him¬ self, die Jew, has been banished from our midst. (Applause). Oratory like that went down well. Hitler however soon found that it was not the language diat the mobs wanted to hear. He called for die hang¬ ing of war profiteers, and he identified them as Jews. On August 13, 1920, the police reports show, he devoted a speech for the first time solely to the Jews. He accused them of responsibility for the war and of profiteering. The Nazi Party, he declared, must open a crusade against the Jews. ‘We do not want to whip up a pogrom atmosphere,’ he warned. ‘We must however be fired with a remorseless determination to grasp diis evil at its roots and to The Nugget 3 exterminate it, root and branch.’A few weeks later he stated explicitly, ‘We cannot skirt around the Jewish problem. It has got to be solved.’ between 1920 and his seizure of power in 1933, the events need only be sketched in. It will be useful to reproduce here, however, part of a hitherto unpublished record of a secret meeting between Hitler and two of his Par¬ ty’s financial backers, Prince Wrede and Consul General Scharrer, in die plush Regina Palace hotel in Munich, on December 21, 1922. The latter brought a stenographer with him, who took a note of Hitler’s remarks as he mapped out his political views and intentions, which were often expressed with a startling frankness. ‘I know for a fact that if Bolshevism got the upper hand in Germany,’ he said, ‘I should either be hanging from the nearest lamppost or locked up in some cellar or other. So the question for me is not whether or not I want to undertake this or that, but whether or not we succeed in preventing a Bol¬ shevik take-over. I myself have the blind faith that our movement will win through. We began three and a half years ago with six men,’ he said. ‘Today I can say with confidence that our cause will prevail.’ By their recent prohibitions against the Nazi Party, he continued, the different provincial governments had only helped further the spread of his movement, far beyond the borders of Bavaria. The Communists were, however, digging in around Hamburg, in north¬ ern Germany. ‘I do not believe,’ he admitted, ‘that we shall be able to put together anything significant in the north in time, before die catastrophe occurs. If some incident should now trigger die major conflict, tlien we shall lose the north, it will be beyond salvation.The most we shall be able to do from down here is to organise a counter stroke. All talk about nationalist organisations in the north is pure bluff. . . They have no suitably forceful personality. The cities which ought to be the centres of organisation are in die hands of our political enemies.’ After examining the feebleness of die Soldiers’ Councils (‘I am con¬ vinced that Bolshevism in Munich is an Utopia,’ he said), Hitler continued: ‘There is no reason for us to resort to force in Bavaria, as our strengdi is growing from day to day anyway. Every week sees an increment of one or two Hundertschaften [brigades of Nazi stormtroopers], and an increase of several thousand members. So long as our strength is growing we shall have no cause to opt for the path of violence.’ He would resort to force, he said confidentially, only if he felt that the Party could expand no further and 4 PROLOGUE that ‘we shall have nothing further to gain by holding back.’ He hoped that when that time came the Bavarian army would supply him with the weap¬ ons. ‘I have seventeen Hundertschaften,’ he bragged. ‘ With t he help of these I can sweep anything off the streets that I don’t like the look of.’ He re¬ minded his two wealthy listeners of how, wit h only i, 800 Fascists, Mussolini had smashed the Italian general strike. ‘If I throw in these men of mine, as a dynamic and coherent force, at t he critical moment, t lie re is nothing I won’t be able to suppress.’ Hitler then set out how he envisaged the new German state developing: ‘First tliere will be civil war, with a lengthy struggle for power. The Euro¬ pean countries that have an interest in Germany’s rebirth will back us — above all Britain. France, on the other hand, will be on t he side of the Bolsheviks, as she has the greatest interest in keeping Germany destabilised as long as possible so as to have a free hand for herself in the Rhineland and the Ruhr.’ Hitler expected Britain to back a future German government — pro¬ vided it generated the requisite impression of reliability — because Germany’s destruction would lead to a French hegemony in Europe, and Britain would find herself relegated to the position of a ‘third-rate world power.’ He expected Italy to share the British — and American — interest in stop¬ ping the spread of Bolshevism. ‘We have to keep Italy’s interest in this alive, and we must not put her nose out of joint by making propaganda for our union [Zusammenschlup] widi German-speaking Austria, or the regaining of the [Italian] South Tyrol. I have not,’ Hitler emphasised, developing this theme, ‘the slightest time for those who want our foreign policy shackled to the liberation of the South Tyrol. . . We should find ourselves on bad terms with Italy; and remember, if fighting began [with France] we should not get any coal and raw materials by any other route than via Italy. I have not the slightest intention of shedding German blood for t he South Tyrol. We shall have no trouble persuading Germans to fight on die Rhine, but never for Merano or Bolzano. . . For die time being,’ he stressed, ‘diere must be no collision with the Latin peoples.’ And dien he said: ‘I believe that we shall be on the march against France before two or diree decades are out.’ His remarks about Britain were characterised by benevolence, but he did not expect her to permit Germany to rise above second place. ‘However well inclined Britain may be toward us she will never again allow us to become a great power — not now that she has had a taste of our The Nugget 5 talents, that is of our scientific prowess before the World War [1914—18] and of our military prowess during it. ... As soon as stability has returned to Germany, more or less, we shall have to undo all die damage that has been done. We can pursue either a global strategy [ Weltpolitik] or a Continental strategy. A prerequisite for a global strategy is a broad base here on the Continent. If we go for a global strategy, then we shall always collide with Britain. We could have pursued a global strategy before die World War but dien we should have struck an alliance with Russia. If however Britain had ended up in ruins Germany would not have profited thereby: Russia would have gained India...’Therefore, Hitler concluded, ‘It will prob¬ ably be better to adopt a Continental strategy. We should have allied ourselves in ’99 with Britain. Then we could have defeated Russia and had a free hand against France. With Germany master in her own house on the Continent, tilings would never have come to a war with Britain.’ Turning to the Soviet Union, he addressed these remarkable words to his privileged little audience: ‘The present national [Bolshevik] government in Russia is a danger to us. As soon as die Russians can, diey slit the throats of diose who have helped diem to attain power.That’s why it will be vital to splinter die Russian empire and to divide up her territories and soil, to be settled by German settlers and tilled by die German plough. Then ... if we were on good terms widi Britain we could solve die French problem with¬ out interference from Britain.’ Widiout using the word itself as yet, he addressed the question of Ger¬ many’s Lebensraum: ‘First,’ he said, ‘we must see to it that we get elbow room — diat is our top priority. . . Only then can our government again begin working in the national interest toward a nationalist war. This would certainly be brought to a victorious conclusion. We can take steps to see diat the necessary secrets are kept. Before the World War the secrets of diings like the 4 2-centimetre mortar and die flame-dirower were rigor¬ ously kept.’ While he believed die British to be too ‘canny’ to guarantee Germany outright, he expected their support in the long run against France, provided each country defined its mutual interests. Addressing die growing financial crisis in Germany, Hitler told die prince and the consul general: ‘I believe that the Reichsmark’s decline in value will be halted on the day they stop printing money. The government however 6 PROLOGUE just keeps printing masses of fresh paper money to camouflage its own bank¬ ruptcy. . . Everywhere in government agencies where there used to be just one man there are now three or four. That’s got to stop. Only a brutal government can make any headway against this paradise for parasites and hangers-on — a dictator to whom personal popularity means nothing.’ Ger¬ many needed a new Bismarck, said Hitler. He himself would make short shrift of his enemies if he came to power: ‘The dictator can reckon with a general strike the moment he makes his appearance,’ he explained. ‘This general strike will give him the ideal op¬ portunity to purge the government agencies. Anybody who refuses to work on tire terms that the dictator lays down finds himself bred. Only the best men get hired. The men who got into tlie government agencies because of the party they belonged to will be out on their ears.’ He repeated that he believed that tire German people needed ‘a monarch-like idol’ — but not some mild-mannered king, so much as a ‘full-blooded and ruthless ruler,’ a dictator who would rule with an iron hand, like Oliver Cromwell. There was no such man among tlicit' present Royal pretenders. ‘When, after years of this iron rule, die people yearn for moderate leadership — then is the time for a mild and benevolent monarch whom diey can idolise. It is some¬ thing like training a dog: first it is given to a tough handler, and then, when it has been put dirough die hoops, it is turned over to a friendly owner whom it will serve with all the greater loyalty and devotion.’ Thus spoke Adolf Hitler, aged thirty-three, in December 192 2. Touch¬ ing upon religion, he said simply that Christianity was die only possible ethical foundation for Germany, and that religious strife was die worst mis¬ fortune diat could befall her. On the law, he said: ‘I consider the properly sworn professional judge to be the only acceptable arbiter for a legal sys¬ tem’ — he opposed lay courts and judges of any hue. The Jewish Question obviously preoccupied him, as he dwelt on this lastly and at length in this remarkable discourse. He admired Frederick die Great’s solution: ‘He eliminated [ausgeschaltet] die Jews from anywhere they were bound to have a noxious effect, but continued to employ diem where use could be made of them. In our political life,’ Hitler continued, ‘the Jews are unquestionably noxious.They are mediodically poisoning our people. I always used to regard antisemitism as inhumane, but now my own experi¬ ences have converted me into die most fanatical enemy of Judaism: apropos of which, I combat Jewry not as a religion, but as a race.’ He described die Jews as born destroyers, not rulers at all; diey had neidier culture, nor art, The Nugget 7 nor architecture of their own, ‘the surest expression of a people’s culture.’ ‘Peoples have a soul,’ said Hitler, ‘while the Jews have none. They are just calculators. That explains why only Jews could have founded Marxism, which negates and destroys the very basis of all culture. With their Marxism, the Jews hoped to create a broad mindless mass of plebs without any real intel¬ ligence, a gormless instrument in their hands.’ Was Germany, he asked, obliged to bear the Jewish yoke any longer? ‘The lion is a predatory animal,’ he said by way of answer. ‘It can’t help it — it’s in its nature. Man is not bound however to let himself be mauled by the lion. He must save his skin as best he can, even if the lion comes to harm. A solution of the Jewish problem must be arrived at. If the problem can be solved by common sense, t lien so much the better all around. If not, t lien t lie re are two possibilities — either a bloody conflict, or an Armenianization.’ (Was Hitler referring to die secret liquidation of i,500,000 Armenians by die Turks at die beginning of the century? He was maddeningly vague.) ‘Tactically and politically,’ he explained, ‘I adopt the standpoint that I have to instil in my people the conviction that diose who are against us are our mortal enemies.’ A few weeks later, on February 23, 1923, die Munich branch of the Nazi Party received a one-million-Reichsmark donation from Consul General Scharrer. A few months after diat, in November 1923, Hitler launched an abortive revolution in Munich; he was tried, imprisoned in Landsberg fortress, and eventually released. He published Mein Kampf and rebuilt die Party over die next years into a disciplined and authoritarian force with its own Party courts, its brownshirt SA guards and its black-uniformed ‘Praetorian Guard,’ die SS, until at the head of a swollen army of a million Party members he arrived at the chancellery in Berlin in January 193 3. It was no mean feat for an unknown, penniless, gas-blinded acting corporal to achieve by no other means than his power of oratory and a driving, dark ambition. During those years before 1933, Hitler had fashioned his plans into their final form. He had repeated diem more coherently in a 1928 manuscript which he never published. Of brutal simplicity, his foreign policies involved enlarging Germany’s dominion from her present 216,000 square miles to over half a million, at Russia and Poland’s expense. His contemporaries were more modest, desiring only to restore Germany’s 1914 frontiers. For Hitler diis was die ‘dumbest foreign aim imaginable,’ it was ‘inadequate from the patriotic, and unsatisfactory from the military point of view.’ No, PROLOGUE Germany must renounce her obsolete aspirations to overseas colonial mar¬ kets, and revert instead to ‘a clear, unambiguous Raumpolitik.’ First Germany must ‘create a powerful land force,’ so that foreigners would take her seri¬ ously. Then, he wrote in 1928, diere must be an alliance with Britain and her empire, so t hat ‘together we may dictate the rest of world history.’ His oratory during these years had developed most powerfully. His speeches were long and ex tempore, but logical.The suggestive force gripped each man in his audience. As Robespierre once said of Marat, ‘The man was dangerous: he believed in what he said.’ Flitler’s power after 1933 would be founded, as David Lloyd George wrote in 1936, on having kept his promises. In office, he would abolish the class war of die nineteendi century, and create a Germany of equal oppor¬ tunity for manual and intellectual workers, for rich and poor. ‘He doesn’t care a straw for die intelligentsia,’ Walther Hewel, his Landsberg prison companion, had written on December 14, 1924. ‘They always raise a diou- sand objections to every decision. The intellectuals he needs will come to him of their own accord, and they will become his leaders.’ Twenty years later, in a secret speech to his generals on January 27,1944, Hitler himself outlined the pseudo-Darwinian process he had hit upon to select Germa¬ ny’s new ruling class: he had used the Party itself as a deliberate vehicle for singling out the future leadership material — men of the requisite ruthless¬ ness, whose knees would not fold when die real struggle began. I set up my fighting manifesto and tailored it deliberately to attract only the toughest and most determined minority of the German people at first. When we were quite small and unimportant I often told my followers that if this manifesto is preached year after year, in thousands of speeches across die nation, it is bound to act like a magnet: gradually one steel filing after anodier will detach itself from the public and cling to this magnet, and then the moment will come where there’ll be this minority on the one side and die majority on the other — but this minority will be die one diat makes history, because die majority will always follow where there’s a tough minority to lead die way. In power after 1933, Hitler would adopt die same basic methods to restructure the German nation and toughen his eighty million subjects for the coming ordeal. His confidence in them was well-placed: die Germans The Nugget 9 were industrious, inventive, and artistic; they had produced great crafts¬ men, composers, philosophers, and scientists. Hitler once said that their national character had not changed since the Roman historian Tacitus had described die German tribes who had roamed north-west Europe nearly two thousand years before — a ‘wild, brave, and generous blue-eyed peo¬ ple.’ Hitler asserted that if, nonetheless, history had witnessed the Germans repeatedly engulfed by the tide of human affairs, then it was because their feckless leaders had failed them. It is hard to define in advance the origins of Hitler’s success in strength¬ ening the character of his people. Mussolini never thus succeeded with the Italian people, even in twenty years of Fascist rule. In 1943, the flabby struc¬ ture of Italian Fascism evaporated after a few air raids and die overthrow of Mussolini. In Germany, however, after ten years of Nazi indoctrination, Hitler’s subjects were able to withstand enemy air attacks — in which fifty or a hundred diousand people were killed overnight — widi a stoicism diat exasperated dieir enemies. At die end, when Germany was once again de¬ feated, diose enemies had to resort to the most draconian punitive mediods, of mass trials, confiscation and expropriation, internment and re-educa¬ tion, before the seeds that Hitler had sown could be eradicated. Adolf Hitler had built the National Socialist movement in Germany not on capricious electoral votes, but on people, and diey gave him — in the vast majority — dieir unconditional support to die end. A D Lilly IbiprftiiJ (isj. n lii ' Mil mii - '.i n 11 < i.iiiimi J™ « ffc. IK*V <<•,«. ■■ I-'.-. An unpromising start: On March 24, 1933 international Jewish organisa tions proclaim ‘war’on Hitler’s Germany (author’s collection) Part i: Approach to Absolute Power Dei Pobel, pah! Rienzi ist’s, der ihn zu Rittern macht. Nimm ihm Rienzi, und er ist, was er war. RICHARD WAGNER’S OPERA Rienzi Hitler, Schaub, and Ernst Rohm at the Hotel Dreesen (author’s collection) Dictator by Consent -*■ ^ W hen hitler became chancellor on January 30 , 1933 , Ger¬ many was an international bankrupt in an insolvent world. There were millions of unemployed. On March 4, 1933, his Party increased its strength in the elections to 288 of the Reichstag’s 647 seats.The Communist party was banned — a step which Hitler had advised against in his first Cabinet of January 30, fearing a general strike (‘You can’t ban six million men’) — and he began to enact t he laws he had promised, including decrees designed to force the Jews out of Germany’s professions, Germany’s trades, and eventually Germany. He had a sounder appreciation of economics than people believed. Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, whom he had inherited as finance minister, wrote privately after the war: ‘He dismissed warnings of inflation with the — not altogether accurate — comment that under a strong government inflation was impossible. In which connection he had an absolutely healthy instinct on the necessity of keeping expenditure in line wit It income.’ Hitler restored national confidence in t he future, which was the basis for any economic recovery. There were strict price and wage controls. Meanwhile, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, t lie autocratic chairman of the Reichsbank, moved to restore Germany’s solvency by introducing strictly bilateral trade agreements, and raising credit for Hitler’s ambitious programmes. Hitler’s first power base in 1933 was die labour force. Among the pa¬ pers ofWaldier Hewel — the nineteen-year-old student who had shared his Landsberg imprisonment — is diis doctrine written in Hitler’s spiky hand: They must learn to respect each odier and be respected again — the in¬ tellectual must respect die manual labourer and vice versa. Neither can exist widiout die odier. 3 14 i: Approach to Absolute Power From them both will emerge the new man: the man of the coming German Reich! Adolf Hitler, Landsberg, 18 December 1924 (Fortress Arrest) After 1933 the workers were no longer social outcasts. All the cancer¬ ous symptoms of industrial unrest — strikes, lockouts, absenteeism — became phantoms of die past. As Flitler’s brief successor, Karl Donitz, was to put it in 1943: ‘What did die workers care about the Jewish problem and all that? At last they had food and work again, and they were respected human be¬ ings.’ In April 1933 Flitler closed down die trade unions; he transferred their staff, members, and assets one year later to a monolithic German Labour Front, die DAF. It was the biggest trade union in the world, and one of the most successful. Dr. Robert Ley, die stuttering, thickset Party official who controlled the DAF for die next twelve years, certainly deserves a better appraisal from history. The DAF regularly received 93 percent of the sub¬ scriptions due — an unparalleled expression of the diirty million members’ confidence. With diis vast wealdi the DAF built for diem holiday cruise liners, housing, shops, hotels, and convalescent homes; it financed the Volkswagen factory, the Vullcan shipyards, production centres in die food industry, and the Bank of German Labour. Hitler respected Ley’s ability, and was willingly photographed in the company of Ley’s beautiful ash-blonde first wife. Labour leader Ley was to stand by Hitler beyond the end. during the months in Landsberg prison Hitler had mentioned one par¬ ticular ambition, the construction of a network of superhighways. Schwerin von Krosigk would write: Hitler used to describe how the city folk returned from dieir Sunday outings in overdowing trains, getting their buttons torn off, their hats crushed, their good mood ruined and every benefit of the relaxation wasted; how different it would be if the city workers could afford their own cars to go on real Sunday outings without all that. . . Road-building has always been the sign of powerful governments, he said, from the Romans and the Incas down to Napoleon. Only twelve days after die seizure of power in 1933, Hitler announced the autobahn construction programme; on June 2 8 the Cabinet passed the Dictator by Consent 15 law, and a few days later he sent for Dr. Fritz Todt, an engineer who had written a 48-page study of the problems of road-building in 1932, and asked him if he would like the job of Inspector-General of German Road Con¬ struction. He said he had always preferred travel by road to rail, as the contact with the people was closer: ‘I must have driven half a million miles in my fourteen years of struggle for power.’ Todt accepted the job: the in¬ terview lasted barely three minutes. On July 3 Hitler again sent for Todt, strolled for ninety minutes with him, told him what routes die first net¬ work would take, laid down the minimum widdi of the traffic lanes, and sent Todt to begin work at once. (All this emerges from Todt’s own private papers.) The military importance of die autobahns has been exaggerated. The German railroad system was of far greater significance. For the present, die autobahns were the means whereby Germany’s national unity could be enhanced, because Hitler realised diat the fight against provincialism and separatist trends would last for many years yet. Simultaneously Hitler appointed a Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, an eloquent 3 ^-year-old Rhinelander. To his Cabinet on March 11, 1933, Hitler explained: One of die chief jobs of die ministry will be to prepare [die nation] for important government moves. . .The government’s measures would not begin until there had been a certain period of public enlightenment. Hitler saw the random bickering of die newspapers of the democracies as an inexcusable frittering away of a vital national resource. He believed diat die press could become a powerful instrument of national policy. The freedom of editors had already been seriously curtailed by emergency laws passed by the pre-Hitler governments of Heinrich Briining and Franz von Papen. Goebbels surpassed them both however in tackling the dissident voices, cleansing the publishing houses by bringing them into line or simply confiscating them. To establish a virtual Nazi Party press monopoly Hitler used the Franz Eher publishing house, which the party had purchased in 1920. (At that time it had been publishing an insolvent Munich daily, die Volkischer Beobachter, with barely 7,000 subscribers; Hitler had appointed Max Amann, his sergeant major in die WorldWar, to manage Eher’s in April 1922, and the newspaper’s ratings had begun to climb.) Within a year of die seizure of power in 1933 the Nazi Party would control eighty-six newspa¬ pers with 3,200,000 readers. Laws were enacted closing down 1 20 socialist 16 i: Approach to Absolute Power and Communist printing plants, and these were sold off to the Party at knockdown prices. Max Amann soon controlled an empire of seven hun¬ dred newspapers. Jews and Marxists were forbidden in any case to practise journalism. From mid-1933 die Catholic-owned press was also purged of divisive trends. As Goebbels emphasised: ‘I reject the standpoint that there is in Germany a Cadiolic and a Protestant press; or a workers’ press; or a farmers’ press; or a city press or a proletariat press. There exists only a German press.’ at the same time Flitler established his police state. Control of die Reich’s police authorities passed progressively into die hands of Heinrich Himmler, Reichsfiihrer of die SS. Himmler had initially controlled the police force in Munich after Hitler came to power; by 1 9 5 3 he would control all Reich police forces. Hitler readily accepted that Himmler’s ‘concentration camps’ were indispensable for the political re-education of the dissident — and in¬ deed the dissolute as well, because by 193^ the camps would contain more than one hapless inmate whom Hitler had incarcerated as a drastic cure for some unsavoury human failing. (‘The punishment was not ordered by the Fiihrer to hurt you,’ Himmler wrote to one alcoholic confined in Dachau on May 1 8, 1937, ‘but to retrieve you from a path that has clearly led you and your family to ruin.’) Chief of the security police was one Reinhard Heydrich. In March 193 3 Himmler had appointed him, then twenty-nine, to head the political sec¬ tion at Munich police HQ. A tall, blond officer with aquiline features, Heydrich — renowned in later years for his cold-bloodedness — must have had some humour in his dusky soul, because in 1939 he dared write to the Reichsfiihrer SS diat a witch had been identified amongst Himmler’s ances¬ tors, and duly burned at die stake in 1629. On die nature of Hitler’s contacts with Himmler diere is little that can be said with certainty. In pedantic, spiky handwriting Himmler listed the topics he intended to discuss with the Fiihrer, and he sometimes added Hitler’s decisions on each case. The gaps diat these notes reveal are so as¬ tounding that we must assume diat Himmler kept Hitler in the dark about whole areas of his nefarious activities. one of the most important surveillance weapons in Hitler’s police state was controlled by Hermann Goring, not Himmler. This was die Forschungs- amt, or ‘Research Office,’ set up in April 1933 with a monopoly of Dictator by Consent ^7 wiretapping operations. The FA was a high-grade source of police, eco¬ nomic, and political Intelligence. Printed on the characteristic brown paper that gave them their famous name — the ‘Brown Pages’ — the wiretaps were distributed to Flitler’s ministers in locked dispatch boxes or by pneumatic post on the strictest ‘need-to-know’ basis. Unhappily, die entire FA archives were destroyed in 194^.The scattered items that have survived demonstrate its sinister efficiency, putting routine wiretaps on die fringe actors of the coming chapters like Gauleiter Julius Streicher, Miss Unity Mitford, Princess Stephanie Hohenlohe, Goebbels’s mistresses, and even Hitler’s adjutant FritzWiedemann.The first reference to its work was at a Cabinet meeting of March 29, 1933, when Hitler was told of exaggerated reports being hied on anti-Jewish atrocities in Ger¬ many. ‘The atrocity reports were principally cabled to America by die Hearst Press representative here, Deuss. This has been established beyond doubt by tapping his telephone conversations.’ (Hitler agreed diat Deuss should be deported.) German opposition elements were also wiretapped. One Brown Page related a phone call by die wife of General Kurt von Schleicher to a woman friend, with a riddle: ‘What is it? —Without an i, nobody wants to be it; with an i, everybody.’The answer was arisch, Aryan. (Arsch is not a word of great endearment). hitler prudently cultivated Germany’s venerable president, Field Mar¬ shal von Hindenburg. Hindenburg was Supreme Commander, and he could also block any of Hitler’s proposals. Hitler wooed him by appointing Dr. Hans Lammers, an expert on constitutional law, as Head of die Reich chan¬ cellery. Hitler also undertook to retain Dr. Otto Meissner as Chief of die President’s chancellery, and Franz Seldte as Minister of Labour — promises diat he honoured until his death twelve years later. Hitler also worked hard to win over the Reichswehr, the armed forces. Germany was permitted only a hundred-thousand-man army — numeri¬ cally smaller than most comparable countries’ fire brigades (Italy by comparison had 600,000 soldiers). The Versailles treaty forbade Germany to manufacture heavy artillery, military aircraft, tanks, or anti-aircraft guns; her navy was quiescent; she had no air force. Even prior to 1933, Hitler had approached the Reichswehr widi all die blandishments and posturing of a statesman courting a neighbouring power that he needed as an ally. These early contacts with the Reichswehr had however disappointed him. He had revered die retired General Hans von Seeckt until in November 1932 he 18 i: Approach to Absolute Power met him privately in Goring’s Berlin apartment. Here Seeckt described his own close relations with die German People’s Party. Hitler abruptly stood up and interrupted: ‘Herr Generaloberst! I had thought I was speaking with one of our great army commanders from die WorldWar.That you are flirting widi a political party has astonished me. That will be all.’ Relations widi the current Commander in Chief of the army, the fop¬ pish General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, were equally cool. He once drawled to Hitler, ‘Herr Hitler, if you come to power legally, all well and good. If you do not, I shall open fire.’ However, die new war minister whom Hindenburg had appointed, GeneralWerner von Blomberg, had commanded the enclave of East Prussia, and he had come to respect the Nazi Party organisation there as a welcome supplement to diat exposed province’s defences against the constant threat of Polish attack. He declared his un¬ conditional loyalty to Hitler. His chief of staff, Reichenau, had also come from East Prussia and was by no means deaf to the Nazi ideology. With all the generals Hitler had one powerful argument. He was going to restore to Germany her striking power, regardless of the restrictions of Versailles. Very shortly after ‘seizing power’ he had asked to meet the gen¬ erals, and had borrowed Hammerstein’s official apartment at No. 14 Bendler Strasse for die reception. It was February 3, 1933. Arriving widi Lammers and Wilhelm Bruckner, his own towering adjutant in SA uniform, Hitler was nervous and showed it diroughout the dinner party; he dien tapped his glass for silence and delivered a speech of which Hammerstein’s adjutant, Major Horst von Mellenthin, took a detailed note. This reads in part: There are two possible ways of overcoming our desperate situation: firstly, seizing by force new markets for our production; secondly, obtaining new Lebensraum for our population surplus. * A peace-loving public will not stomach objectives like diese. It will have to be prepared for them. Germany must recapture complete freedom of decision. This will not be feasible unless we first win political power. This is why my aim is to restore our political strengtli first. My [Nazi Party] organisation is nec¬ essary to get our citizens back into shape. Democracy is an Utopia. It is impossible. You won’t find it in either industry or die armed forces, so * Another general present, Curt Liebmann, noted his words thus: ‘We might fight for new export markets; or we might — and this would be better — conquer new Lebensraum in the east, and Germanise it ruthlessly.’ Dictator by Consent 19 it’s not likely to be of much use in such a complicated institution as a state. Democracy is the worst of all possible evils. Only one man can and should give the orders. This is the ideal I’ve been working toward since 1918, and when I think that my Movement — which has swollen from seven men to twelve millions — has raised me aloft from simple soldier to Reich Chancellor, it seems to show that t lie re’s still a large part of the public waiting to be won over to this ideal. The public has got to learn to think as a nation. This will weld it to- gether.This cannot be done by persuasion alone, but only by force.Those who won’t agree must get their arms twisted. Our supreme command¬ ment is to maintain our unity. This process is today well under way. This is why I built up my organi¬ sation and dedicated it to the state. Our target is the restoration of German might. That’s what I’m fighting for with every means. To restore our might we’ll need theWehrmacht, the armed forces. . . What matters above all is our defence policy, as one thing’s certain: tint our last battles will have to be fought by force. The [Nazi Party] organisation was not created by me to bear arms, but for the moral edu¬ cation of the individual; this I achieve by combating Marxism.... My organisation will solely confine itself to the ideological education of t he¬ rn asses, in order to satisfy the army’s domestic and foreign-policy needs. I am committed to the introduction of conscription ^forbidden by the Ver¬ sailles treaty]. This path I have set out to you will take many years to tread. If France has real statesmen, she will set about us during the preparatory period — not herself, but probably using her vassals in t he east. So it will be wrong to commit ourselves too much to die idea of equal armaments. We must make all our economic and military preparations in secret, and only come out into the open when they are 100 percent complete. Then we will have regained die freedom of decision. . . Then we must decide: foreign markets, or colonies? I’m for colonies. . . One day the time will come when we can raise a mighty army (and let me emphasise diat I will never use the armed forces to fight an internal enemy: I have other means of doing that.*) *The SS. At his Cabinet meeting on January 30, 1933, Hitler ruled that even if the Com munists called a general strike he would not permit the armed forces to put it down. 20 i: Approach to Absolute Power So I ask you to understand my aims and accept my political aid. With my Movement, a miracle has happened for die Fatherland. This miracle will not recur however, so we must use it. Fie could hardly have made himself clearer. Even so, his audience was unimpressed. Someone muttered, ‘Is drat man supposed to be the Fiihrer of the German people?’ By dien however Flitler’s revolution was only four days old, and they all had much to learn. Four days later die Cabinet discussed various ways of reducing unem¬ ployment. Flitler stated: ‘Every publicly supported project for creating employment must be judged by one criterion alone: is it or is it not requi¬ site for the restoration of die German nation’s fighting capability?’ He laid down that for the next five years, until 1938, diere would be only one guiding aim: ‘Everything for the Wehrmacht.’ A few days later, Hitler forced dirough Goring’s big ‘civil aviation’ budget. The Cabinet record related: ‘The Reich Chancellor [Hitler] explained that . . . it is a matter of providing die German nation in camouflaged form widi a new air force, which is at present forbidden under the terms of the Versailles treaty.’ Hitler told Blomberg diat die embryo panzer and Luftwaffe troops would be favoured as an elite for die next few years. He particularly wanted die Luftwaffe officer corps to be imbued with a ‘turbulent spirit of attack.’The initial ‘risk Luftwaffe’ was to be ready by late 19351 Of deeper interest are die instructions that Hitler issued to the German navy. The Commander in Chief, Admiral Erich Raeder, was called to a sepa¬ rate briefing by Hitler on his coming to power.The navy had already discussed widi Blomberg’s predecessor, in November 1932, an extensive naval con¬ struction programme. Hitler now instructed Raeder to base his calculations exclusively on the French and Russian navies. Raeder’s adjutant, Captain Erich Schulte-Monting, recalls: Hitler told Raeder it would be die tentpole of his future foreign policy to coexist peacefully with Britain, and he proposed to give practical ex¬ pression to this by trying to sign a Naval Agreement with her. He would like to keep die German navy relatively small, as he wanted to recognise Britain’s right to naval supremacy on account of her status as a world power. He proposed to recommend die balance of forces accordingly. Dictator by Consent 21 before their eyes, the Germans now saw Hitler’s promises coming true. On September 23, 1933, he ceremonially turned the first spit of excava¬ tions for Fritz Todt’s autobahn network at Frankfurt — a city where eight thousand men were unemployed in 1 932 .At seven a.m. t he first seven hun¬ dred men marched out across the River Main to t lie sound of bands playing. At ten a.m. Hitler spoke to them: ‘I know that this festive day will soon be over — that times will come when rain or frost or snow embitters you and makes the work much harder. Nobody will help us however if we don’t help ourselves.’ After he had gone, the workers stormed the little heap of earth that he had shovelled, to take home souvenirs. Such was the almost religious fervour that Hitler generated. Todt wrote to a professor on Sep¬ tember 30, 1933, ‘I’m absolutely convinced t hat any man coming together with tlie Fiihrer for just ten minutes a week is capable of ten times his normal output.’ Gradually tire network of highways spread. They followed routes t hat engineers had previously claimed impassable, for example across broad moors like the south shore of Lake Chiemsee in Bavaria. Long viaducts like t lie Mangfall bridge, 200 feet high, were personally selected by Hitler from seventy competing designs, for their simple but solid lines: ‘What we’re building,’ he explained, ‘will still be standing long after we’ve passed on.’ He toured the sites and spoke with the workers. ‘When I’m as old as you,’ he flattered one seventy-year-old labourer at Darmstadt, ‘I’d like to be able to work like you now.’ In November 1936, he gave orders that the Reich’s western frontiers were to be marked on the autobahns by monuments 130 feet high. With his rearmament programme already under way, the next logical step would be to disrupt the League of Nations. Hitler had earlier told Hindenburg t hat it resembled nothing if not a ganging-up by the victors to ensure that t hey could exact tire spoils and booty of the World War from the vanquished. For a long time he had however believed in continuing the discussions in Geneva, while his generals favoured pulling out. Late in Sep¬ tember Neurath also urged him to pull out of Geneva, but again Hitler had adopted tlie more moderate view. It was not until tire morning of October 4 that Blomberg succeeded in talking him round. Hitler formally notified the Cabinet of the decision on the thirteenth. He now proposed to with¬ draw from die League die next day, October 14, 193 3. It was a risky decision, but when Hitler sent Walter Funk, Goebbels’s state secretary, to East Prussia to procure die field marshal’s approval, Hindenburg boomed: 22 i: Approach to Absolute Power ‘At last a man with t lie courage of his convictions! ’ At the Cabinet meet¬ ing on October 13, Hitler announced that he would dissolve t lie Reichstag next day too, to give the public a chance to vote their approval of his ‘peace policies’ in a plebiscite. On November 12, 40 ■ $ million Germans voted in his favour, or over 94 percent of all votes cast. Two days later the deputy Chancellor, Papen, congratulated Hitler before the assembled Cabinet: We, your nearest and dearest colleagues, stand here today under the impact of the most extraordinary and overwhelming votes of support ever accorded by a nation to its leader. Through the genius of your lead¬ ership and through the ideals you recreated before us, you have succeeded in just nine months in creating from a nation torn by internal strife and bereft of hope, one united Reich w it It hope and faith in the future. . . Bypassing his own foreign ministry, Hitler began to send Joachim von Ribbentrop, the haughty but well-connected businessman whom Rudolf Hess had appointed as head of die Nazi Party’s own ‘foreign bureau,’ on diplomatic missions. Significantly, the first, in November 1933, was to Britain. In London Ribbentrop wooed Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald and met leading politicians like Stanley Baldwin, Sir John Simon, and Anthony Eden. Ribbentrop’s own secret notes for Hitler, reporting these meetings, have now been found. He had assuaged Macdonald’s fears about the Jewish Prob¬ lem. ‘I told him,’ Ribbentrop minuted, ‘that in our experience such a revolution in most odier countries would have probably cost the lives of several tens of thousands of Jews; but that Hitler was anything but blood¬ thirsty, and that we in Germany had solved this problem by a twenty-four-hour boycott and by taking certain clear measures against be¬ ing swamped by Jews.’ Ribbentrop waved aside an interruption by t he prime minister, saying: ‘Probably a more humane manner of solving such a prob¬ lem has never been hit upon. We regard it as astonishing that the healthy British people should have allowed Jewish emigres to turn their heads.’ Germany was confident that t lie whole world would eventually sympathise. On November 20, 1933, Ribbentrop saw the Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin. ‘I told [him],’ he reported, ‘that a new war between Germany and France was quite impossible, as was one between Britain and Germany, and that this is a fundamental principle in the mind of t lie chancellor, not only during his lifetime but as a testament for his nation for future years.’ Dictator by Consent 23 Ribbentrop truthfully reassured the British that Hitler had no intention of developing a global maritime strategy, so Britain and Germany could easily resolve any differences over the size of their respective navies. Later that day the prime minister described himself, as Ribbentrop reported to Hit¬ ler, as a great believer in friendship with Nazi Germany. Six days later Macdonald repeated that his government would do what it could to reach an accord with Hitler. ‘When you report to the chancellor,’ the prime min¬ ister said, ‘please tell him in confidence from me that we shall certainly find a common path to tread.’ Ribbentrop claimed that it was thanks to his secret diplomacy with Baldwin, Simon, and Anthony Eden that t he latter paid his first visit to Berlin in February 1934. British Ambassador Sir Eric Phipps did what he could to freeze Ribbentrop out of the talks. Characteristically, for Ribbentrop was already trampling his way into the upper echelons of power, he dictated this imme¬ diate plaint to Hitler: ‘I hear that the chancellor [Hitler] is to breakfast with Mr. Eden and the British ambassador. I should like to suggest that he re¬ mark to Mr. Eden that I have the chancellor’s confidence in foreign affairs, as this is my sole legitimation.’Writing to Hitler again on February 19 to urge him to allow Eden to return home with some kind of success — the Englishman was young and francophile, but he had fought well in the war and was certainly an up-and-coming Conservative politician — Ribbentrop repeated: ‘I should also like to remind you how necessary and worthwhile it would be for t he chancellor to mention in his talk with Mr. Eden that it is I who have his confidence in foreign affairs.’ The obstacle to agreement with Britain remained her ties to France. A few weeks later, as Ribbentrop’s secret hie shows, he attempted to secure a deal with the French. Visiting the seventy-year-old foreign minister, Louis Barthou, in Paris on March 4, 1934, he learned of the ‘dark forces’ at the Quai d’Orsay, like Barthou’s deputy Alexis Leger, who had always been militantly anti-German. Barthou challenged Ribbentrop to explain how Hitler could talk of peace, when every French agent — he pointed here to a t hick dossier — was reporting that he was madly rearming for war; Barthou also referred specifically to the paramilitary training of the SA and SS. Ribbentrop rejoined that France was also rearming in violation of theTreaty of Versailles. It seemed that France would remain a problem. On August 25, 1934, Ribbentrop reported to Hitler that diey would somehow have to eliminate 2 4 i: Approach to Absolute Power the francophile tendencies of the British foreign office. Perhaps t hey should get to work on King George V. ‘In England,’ he dictated, ‘the Crown has a vastly greater influence than we have been accustomed to assume. As the Royal Family has certain sympathies for Germany, I have the hope that we shall meet t lie re with some assistance for our foreign policy. I shall keep the chancellor au courant. I shall report separately,’ Ribbentrop added in his flamboyant handwriting, ‘on the fundamental question of how an accord with Britain is to be achieved.’ in 1933 Flitler’s powers were still far from absolute. He had no influence over the senior army appointments, for example. And General von Schwedler’s army personnel branch was a ‘hotbed of reaction’ in his eyes. In February 1934 however tire army’s Commander in Chief, Hammerstein, was replaced by Baron Werner von Fritsch. Fritsch used an outsized monocle; he had a grating academic voice and a manner of sitting bolt upright widi his hands on his knees, as though this were so prescribed in some army manual. For all this however Fritsch was a fervent nationalist. He shared with many Germans a hatred of the Jews, the ‘Jewish press,’ and a belief that ‘the pacifists, Jews, democrats, black-red-and-gold, and the French are all one and the same, namely people bent on Germany’s perdition.’ He had a soft spot for Hitler and ordained in February 1934 that the army should include the Nazi swastika in its insignia. From his private letters and manuscripts it is clear that Fritsch came to like working for Hitler, but could find as little respect for the ‘hotheads’ surrounding him as could they for this conservative, hesitant, and cautious general. On die day Fritsch first reported to him, Hitler told him: ‘Create an army that will be as powerful as possible, of inner homogeneity and uni¬ formity and of the highest possible standard of training.’ The success of Hitler’s January 1933 ‘revolution’ had rendered Ernst Rohm’s street army of brownshirt brawlers and bullies largely superfluous. The SA had swollen to two and a half million men. Encouraged initially by Blomberg and Reichenau it had been given rudi¬ mentary military training by the regular army as a sop to Party feelings. By early 1934 however the SA wanted more: it became a real threat not only to die puny regular army, but to Hitler too. Rohm believed diat Hitler was betraying the ‘socialist’ character of his programme, and he demanded the creation of a People’s Army based on the SA. Dictator by Consent 25 Hitler had seen this storm brewing since the summer of 1933, when he had addressed a joint meeting of SA and Reichswehr officers at Bad Godesberg on the Rhine.There he had explained that every revolution must be followed by a period of evolution. This play on words left the SA unsatisfied. Friction increased, despite an appeal by Blomberg to Rohm in mid-January 1934 not to rock the boat. On February 1 — the day Fritsch took over the army — Rohm responded with a memorandum demanding nothing less than a merger of the regular army into tlie SA, with himself, Rohm, as Commander in Chief. To Rohm, ‘revolutionary spirit’ was all-important, but not to Fritsch. ‘The army is founded on discipline,’ he argued at a worried conference with Blomberg on February 3, ‘and not on any “revolutionary spirit.’” To¬ gether they resolved to defeat Rohm. For diplomatic reasons, Hitler tried to postpone a showdown. When the British foreign secretary Anthony Eden visited Berlin to complain about tlie secret Luftwaffe and the violations of t he spirit of Versailles, Hitler pledged that the huge SA would be demilitarised. He summoned the SA leaders and Reichswehr generals to the war ministry building on February 28, and rudely dispelled Rohm’s aspirations to an SA ‘People’s Army.’ One army general, Curt Liebmann, noted that day: H[itler] said this: ‘When I took over the government in January 1933 ,1 felt I was marching forward along a broad, well-paved road. Then how¬ ever t hat road got narrower, and t lie surface worse. It turned into a narrow footpath — and today 1 have a feeling that I am inching my way forward, along a tightrope, while every day fresh burdens are thrust on me, now on tlie right, now on the left.’ Only the existing Reichswehr with its professional officers could satisfy his main need; according to another general, Maximilian vonWeichs, who took shorthand notes of the speech, Hitler added: ‘The new army must be capable of all manner of defence within five years; and of all manner of attack within eight.’ Since the western powers would probably not permit Germany to win Lebensraum, short sharp wars might be necessary in the west, ‘and after them, wars in the east.’ Hitler later learned, perhaps from telephone surveillance, that Rohm had that same day ridiculed him as ‘that ignorant World War corporal.’The Forschungsamt put a wiretap on the principal SA telephones. Rohm’s move- 26 i: Approach to Absolute Power ments were watched. He was seen in contact with the former war minister Schleicher, and with foreign diplomats. One diplomat, evidently a French¬ man, encouraged him that he might become the ‘Bonaparte of tlie Third Reich.’ The SA was observed to be stockpiling weapons — evidently for a ‘second revolution,’ in which Hitler would be deposed. although ernst Rohm was one of his former closest friends, one of the privileged few with whom he exchanged the familiar du, Hitler decided to make an example of him. His motives are still obscure. Only once, in Sep¬ tember 1939, is Hitler known to have discussed privately what he knew of Rohm’s machinations, and by that time he was already probably rationalis¬ ing rather than recalling: I knew that in France particularly t lie re were powerful forces urging intervention — t lie terms of the Versailles Diktat provided justification enough. I have to thank the French ambassador [Franfois-Poncet] alone that it did not come to that. I was reading all his dispatches [intercepted by the FA]. I knew that Rohm was mixed up in treasonable dealings with him and the French. I could see however that Poncet was confidentially ad¬ vising Paris against any intervention — the French should wait until civil war broke out here, which would make things easy for them.* It was only knowing this that kept me going throughout 1933 and 1934. Certain facts are clear. The SA was planning to overthrow Hitler’s gov¬ ernment: shadow ministers had already been nominated. Blomberg showed to Hitler an apparently genuine order signed by Rohm on May 2 3 for the SA to procure arms where it could, so as to ‘put muscle into the SA’s deal¬ ings with the Wehrmacht.’ The language could hardly have been plainer. Hitler was convinced. He told his Cabinet later, ‘This completed the evi¬ dence of high treason.’ Soon his agents indicated that the SA group Berlin-Brandenburg, under Karl Ernst, was stockpiling illegal arms for an operation ‘at the end of June.’ This gave him something of a deadline, but Hitler allowed the plot to thicken first. At the beginning of June, he had a *The Forschungsamt was continuously deciphering the French diplomatic cables, but the French diplomatic archives do not now appear to contain any reports indicating that Rohm was conspiring with M. Fran^ois-Poncet, and in correspondence with me the latter has denied it. Dictator by Consent 27 four-hour showdown with Rohm. Rohm gave his word of honour to go on leave to Bavaria from June 7, and to send die SA on thirty days’ leave in July. One high-ranking army officer — Colonel Eduard Wagner — wrote to his wife on die eleventh, ‘Rumour has it diat Rohm won’t be coming back.’ Someone selected die last day of June 1934, a Saturday, for the purge — Saturday was certainly Hitler’s favourite day for staging coups de theatre in later years. He evidently tipped off Admiral Raeder diat die balloon would go up then, as die admiral in turn cryptically recommended his senior staff to postpone a week-long study cruise diat diey were planning for diat week, widiout giving any cogent reason. Both Raeder and Goring were guests at a dinner widi the British ambassador on June 16, during Hitler’s absence in Venice. Goring, a woman journalist noted in her diary, arrived twenty min¬ utes late, medals a-clank. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he apologised. ‘Message from Venice diat the Fiihrer had booked a call, and I had to wait for him to come to die ’phone.’ Leaning across die table to Raeder he added, ‘I was willing to fly straight down to him if he needed but he said, “Stay where you are, I’m coming back sooner than I thought.” Somediing’s up.’The admiral, noted die journalist, bit his lip; Francois-Poncet smirked and the servants carried on widiout a word. Rumours multiplied. Franz von Papen made hostile references to die Nazis in a speech at Marburg. On June 21 Hindenburg told Hitler to ‘bring die trouble-makers finally to reason.’ Hitler told Goebbels that day diat he had seen through Papen: ‘He’s caused himself a whole heap of trouble,’ he said. The next day, June 22, he had a plane bring Viktor Lutze, a reliable if colourless Brownshirt commander, over from Hanover and, after swearing him to secrecy, told him diat he had received word diat Ernst Rohm was plotting against the ‘reactionary’ Reichswehr. He intended to retire him, he said, and he told Lutze to stand by to receive further orders. On the twenty-third, General von Fritsch began issuing orders alerting his army units. Machine-gun nests appeared in die corridors of the war ministry. The army discussed with the SS how far it could abet operations against die SA by supplying weapons, ammunition, and transport to the SS. In the files of Army District VII (i.e., Munich) diere is a cryptic note dated June 28, 1934: ‘Reich war ministry advises: . . . Chancellor’s attitude is [I] am con¬ vinced of army’s loyalty. Reichenau in buoyant mood. Rohm’s order.’ Hitler and Goring left Berlin that day for the Ruhr to attend die wed¬ ding of die local gauleiter Terboven. Under enemy interrogation in July 1944 Goring would testify: ‘There [in Essen] we were informed that Rohm 28 i: Approach to Absolute Power had given the SA orders to stand by, and had summoned all SA command¬ ers to meet him at Wiessee.’There were odd signs of something in t lie air. Lutze noticed that Hitler was called away to the telephone. Initiating steps to crush what looked like a putsch, Hitler sent Goring straight back to Berlin. An uneasy atmosphere descended on die wedding feast.There were phone calls from Goring and Himmler in Berlin, and from die Gestapo. Goring’s secretary ‘Pili’ Korner arrived from Berlin bringing a sheaf of wiretaps.These seemed to indicate that Rohm and his associates were plan¬ ning to start their putsch at four p.m. on Saturday the thirtieth. Hitler announced, ‘I’m going to make an example of diem.’ Rohm was widi his henchmen at Bad Wiessee, a watering hole outside Munich. Late on June 28 Hitler telephoned to Rohm’s adjutant orders to meet him diere at eleven a.m. on die thirtieth. Erhard Milch’s recollection in 1949 was that Goring had sent his state secretary Paul Korner over to Hitler widi a number of Forschungsamt wiretaps proving Rohm’s guilt. Former Forschungsamt employees have confirmed that Regierungsrat Rudolf Popp, chief of the FA ‘Assignments’ section, played a major part in uncovering die coming putsch. The next morning he phoned Goebbels, in Berlin, and ordered him to fly over immediately and join him at the Rhine Hotel Dreesen in Bad Godesberg. ‘So — it’s on,’ wrote Goebbels in his diary. ‘In God’s name!’ he then wrote, and added: ‘Anything however is better than this awful wait¬ ing.’ Hitler told him to bring his new private secretary Christa Schroeder, then twenty-five, with him. Wearing a lightweight white summer coat, die minister arrived at the hotel at four p.m. Viktor Lutze joined diem both a few minutes later. Hitler briefed Goebbels diat he was about to take out the mutinous SA leadership, among diem many of Goebbels’s closest old friends. ‘Drawing blood,’ recorded Goebbels widi approval. ‘Got to realise diat mutiny costs diem their neck. I agree widi diis. If do it you must, then ruthlessly. Proofs that Rohm was conspiring with Frani^ois-Poncet, Schleicher, and Strasser. So, action!’ he added, in this previously unpub¬ lished diary. ‘After reaching his decision, die Fiihrer is very calm. We while away die hours in discussions. Nobody must notice a thing.Talk widi Lutze, the new [SA] chief of staff. He’s very good.’ For an hour they watched a torchlight parade staged by the Labour Service, and a human torchlight swastika forming on the far bank of the river as the sun went down. ‘The Fiihrer is tense but very firm,’ Goebbels narrated. ‘We all keep silent.’To- Dictator by Consent 29 ward midnight, as both Lutze and Goebbels recorded with curiosity in their diaries, Hitler took another phone call from Berlin. ‘The rebels are arming themselves,’ Goebbels recorded. ‘Not a moment to be lost.’ A pale and trembling Hitler announced, ‘We’re on our way.’ He advised Goebbels to phone his wife to betake their family to safety in Berlin. At midnight on the twenty-ninth Hitler startled them all with a decision to fly to Bavaria in person. His adjutant Bruckner speculated that a courier had brought further crucial information from Berlin.Word certainly reached Hitler, before he took off, that incidents had broken out in Bavaria and that die Berlin SA had been alerted for some kind of operation at four p.m. next day, die diirtieth. Hitler took off soon after two a.m. on June 30 for Munich. Army officers were waiting on the airfield to greet him. He tore the insignia from the two bemused local SA commanders, August Schneidhuber and Wilhelm Schmid, and packed diem off to Stadelheim prison, where they were joined later by a bus-load of other SA wordiies. After a brief call on the local ministry of die interior his party set out for Bad Wiessee at five-thirty a.m., riding in diree open Mercedes limousines, with Hitler, Lutze, and Hess in die first, detectives in the second, and Goebbels in die diird. Not widiout personal risk, Hitler himself rooted Rohm, Edmund Heines, and his other henchman out of dieir rooms at the Wiessee lakefront hotel. Goebbels described in his diary, ‘The Chief was brilliant. Heines pitiful. With a rent boy. Rohm remained calm. Everydiing went off very smoothly.’ Heines appealed to Lutze as he was taken away, ‘I’ve done nothing! Help me!’ He and die others were however beyond redemption. By eight a.m. he was back in Munich. Of great interest is the record of Hitler’s utterances filed diat day by die headquarters of General Adam, commanding the local Army District: All the SA commanders are now under lock and key except Gruppen- fiihrer Ernst. I [Hitler] was aware of his [Rohm’s?] weaknesses, but I hoped for a long time to be able to channel this affair along die right lines. It’s all over now. It’s been infinitely hard for me to part from com¬ rades who have fought in this struggle of ours for years on end. These people would have ruined the entire SA. I had to put a stop to it some time. The scenes during our swoop onWiessee were scandalous and shame¬ ful — more disgusting dian I would ever have thought possible. 30 i: Approach to Absolute Power Now I have laid down a clear line: the army is die only bearer of arms. Every man, whether SA or not, is in future at die army’s disposal. Any man at whom the Wehrmacht crooks its finger, belongs to it. I have maxi¬ mum faidi in the Wehrmacht and die Reich war minister. A line has had to be drawn. You can rest assured that I shall now establish order. There were admittedly some facts that did not fit in widi Hitler’s ver¬ sion of events. Far from putsching in Berlin, SA Gruppenfuhrer Ernst was halfway to Bremen harbour, setting out on a cruise with his young bride. At Potsdam, a gang of men burst into General Schleicher’s house and gunned him down at his desk; his wife, who got in die gunmen’s way, was also shot. Ironically, Goring’s Forschungsamt was still tapping Schleicher’s phone; when homicide detectives from die Potsdam prosecutor’s office telephoned the justice ministry from the house, to report diat Schleicher was evidently the victim of a ‘political assassination,’ Goring angrily contradicted diem — the official version would, he said, be quite different. General von Bredow also met a sticky end, as did some of Papen’s staff, including his secretary the controversial Dr. Edgar Jung.* Back at party headquarters in Munich, Hitler phoned the code word Kolibri to Berlin, die signal for Goring to launch die counter-attack there. Later diat morning, he revealed to his cronies diat some of diose arrested were to be shot. The Gestapo had a list of names, several marked widi a cross, *. Running his eye down die list, Lutze noticed that Rohm was not among diem: Rohm had been of course an intimate friend of Hitler. For some time Hess argued that it would not be fair to spare Rohm; the axe should fall on all or none of them. Rohm’s name however was still not checked on the list of seven names which Hitler turned over to Sepp Dietrich, the stocky commander of the SS Leibstandarte (Lifeguards) Regi¬ ment, at five p.m. The six others were stood before a firing squad at Stadelheim prison later that day. At eight p.m. , Hitler flew back to Berlin by Junkers 1,2 plane with Goebbels. Goring met diem atTempelhof airport; Hitler found diat die secret air force’s deputy chief Erhard Milch had drawn up a guard of honour in die uniforms of the new Luftwaffe. * The Secret State Archives in Munich reveal that Dr. Jung had been one of three hired assassins employed by the Bavarian government, and that he had liquidated among oth¬ ers the separatist leader Heinz-Orbis in 1924. Dictator by Consent 31 Goring now revealed, to Hitler’s quiet dismay, that he had arbitrarily added several other names to the hit-list. ‘Goring reports that all went to plan in Berlin,’ recorded Goebbels that day. ‘Only cock-up: Mrs Schleicher bought it too.Tough, but can’t be helped.’ Christa Schroeder — Hitler’s private secretary, whom he had commanded to accompany him throughout this violent excursion to Bavaria — recalls sitting alone later that evening in die chancellery, eating her vegetarian meal, when Hitler unexpectedly joined her. He exclaimed: ‘So! Now I have taken a bath, and feel clean as a new-born babe again.’ much had in fact happened that unsettled Hitler. Goring had wantonly liquidated Gregor Strasser, Hitler’s rival, and diere had been a rash of kill¬ ings in Bavaria. Hitler learned that somebody had killed his old friend Pastor Bernhard Stempfle, an almost daily acquaintance of earlier years, who had helped edit the turgid pages of Mein Kampfior publication. Hitler’s adjutant Bruckner later described in private papers how Hitler vented his annoy¬ ance on Himmler when t lie Reichsfuhrer SS appeared at the chancellery with a final list of the victims — eighty-two all told. In later months Viktor Lutze told anybody who would listen that the Fiihrer had originally listed only seven men; he had offered Rohm suicide, and when Rohm declined this ‘offer’ Hitler had had him shot too.* Hitler’s seven had become seven¬ teen, and then eighty-two. ‘The Fiihrer was thus put in the embarrassing position of having to sanction all eighty-two killings afterward,’ complained Lutze. Lutze put the blame squarely on Himmler and Goring. Over lunch on July i Dr. Goebbels found Hitler pale and bitter. ‘Goring tenders his report,’ he wrote. ‘Executions almost over. A few still needed. It’s tough but necessary. Ernst, Strasser, Senle [Stempfle], Detten t. One final sweep and we’re through the worst. For twenty years t lie re must be peace.’ He whiled away the afternoon hours with Hitler. ‘I cannot leave him on his own,’ reported Goebbels, no doubt pleased to be in this sanctuary. ‘He’s suffering badly, but hanging tough.The death sentences are pronounced with tlie utmost gravity. Around sixty all told.’ Under pressure from oth¬ ers, Hitler that day yielded and ordered Rohm’s name added to the death list. ‘Twice Rohm is left alone for twenty minutes widi a pistol,’ recorded Goebbels in his dramatic diary of these events. ‘He doesn’t use it and is t lien * Martin Bormann’s diary lists seven names on June 30, 1934: ‘Rohm plot uncovered: Schneidhuber, Count Spreti, Heines, Hayn, Schmid, Heydebreck, Ernst all shot.’ 32 i: Approach to Absolute Power shot. With that, it’s all over.’ Sepp Dietrich called in to report, ‘a bit white about the gills,’ as Goebbels described, adding: ‘We’re not cut out to be executioners.’ In an act of rare magnanimity Hitler ordered state pensions provided for the next of kin of t he people murdered in t lie Night of die Long Knives, as June 30, 1934 came to be known. Even so he began to suffer nightmares and could not sleep. His medical records reveal that stomach ailments be¬ gan to plague him from this episode on; but the long-term benefits seemed wort h it — he had purchased the undivided loyalty of the Reichswehr gen¬ erals — formed a ‘blood brotherhood,’ one might say. On July 3 Blomberg as war minister thanked him on behalf of the assembled Cabinet. The Cabi¬ net retrospectively legalised most of the killings as ‘ acts of state emergency.’ * ‘One can now see clearly again,’ wrote Goebbels. ‘Events came dramati¬ cally to a head.The Reich was on die edge of an abyss. The Fiihrer saved it.’ Over die next days however it dawned on Hitler diat many of his hench¬ men had taken diings into dieir own hands. After a visit by Hitler to his lakeside cottage, Goebbels recorded cryptically: ‘He now sees things quite clearly. Lutze has become suspicious too.’ Hitler had belatedly deduced the extent to which Goring, Himmler, and die armed forces had manipulated him. After the Cabinet meeting, Hitler flew to East Prussia and reported to the fast-fading president. Hindenburg was sympathetic. ‘My dear Chancel¬ lor,’ he whispered, ‘those who make history must be able to shed blood. . .’ * Not all the killings were thus legalised. The Cabinet minutes of August 2, 1934, refer to a number of people charged with having settled private scores: in one case, a litigant had shot a man on June 30 simply for having testified against him during a civil action. Triumph of theWill efore july 1934 was over, there was further damage to Hitler’s image abroad. In an impatient attempt at overthrowing the dictatorial regime in Vienna, panicky Austrian SS gunmen shot dead the chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, in his Viennese office on July 2 <,. Mus¬ solini was deeply shocked at the murder, and this set back German-Italian relations. In later years Hitler protested his complete ignorance of the plot. The Goebbels diaries, preserved on microfiches in Moscow, and the private pa¬ pers of die military commander of Bavaria’s Military District VII give die lie to diis however. After returning from Venice in June, Hitler had confided to Dr. Goebbels his belief diat Mussolini had agreed to give him carte blanche in Austria: ‘Out with Dollfuss!’ was Goebbels note on that. ‘New elections under a neutral man of confidence. Influence of Nazis depending on number of votes. Economic issues to be resolved jointly by Rome and Berlin. Bodi are agreed. Dollfuss will be notified! ’ (The two dictators had also discussed odier matters. On disarmament, Mussolini fully endorsed Hitler’s posi¬ tion: ‘France has gone mad,’ he had said. They had also discussed ‘the East’ — they would try to build on a closer friendship with Poland ‘and seek a modus vivendi with Russia.’) Hitler mentioned the coming coup inVienna to Goebbels over lunch on July i o, and the minister found him conferring secretly with the Austrian Nazi leader Theo Habicht at die annual Richard Wagner festival in Bayreuth on July 2 2. Goebbels was sceptical as to whether it would come off, but Hitler diat morning ordered General Wilhelm Adam to report to him in Bayreuth. To die perplexed general Hitler revealed, 33 34 i: Approach to Absolute Power ‘Today the Austrian army is going to overthrow the government!’ He re¬ vealed that Dr. Anton Rintelen, a prominent Austrian politician, was going to take Dollfuss’s place, and that Rintelen would authorise the return of all Austrian refugees, i.e. the Austrian Nazis who had fled into Germany. Ad¬ am’s job would be to equip these Austrian ‘legionaries’ with weapons from German army stocks. Hitler assured him, ‘The moment I get word from Vienna I’ll inform you, t lien you will believe me.’ Soon the first reports came in, and they were not good. ‘Big rumpus,’ noted Goebbels. ‘Colossal tension. Awful wait. I’m still sceptical.’ At three p.m. Hitler telephoned. ‘Everything is going according to plan in Vienna. The government building is in our hands. Dollfuss has been injured — the rest of the news is confused as yet. I’ll phone again.’ He never did however, because Dollfuss was dead; and Eu¬ rope’s capitals were in uproar. The Habicht plot had failed for diree reasons. First, he had exaggerated the size of his following in Austria — particularly the support from the Aus¬ trian army. Second, the plot had been leaked to Dollfuss’s cabinet, and some ministers had betaken themselves to safety. And third, die illegal Austrian SA movement, disgruntled by the events of June 30 in Germany, wilfully withheld the support they had promised. The SS gang involved made mat¬ ters worse for Hitler by appealing in a panic to t he German legation for assistance. Hitler disowned them. He closed the frontier, sent a telegram of sympathy to Dollfuss’s widow, and at Goebbels’s suggestion he dismissed Habicht. The assassins were publicly hanged in Vienna. Two days after Dollfuss’s murder, Hitler spoke frankly to Goebbels about the future. ‘He has a prophetic vision,’ noted the minister. ‘Germany as master of the world. Job for a century.’ Hitler sent Franz von Papen, his vice-chancellor, to Vienna as ‘special ambassador,’ and rushed Dr. Hans Lammers up to Neudeck in East Prussia to notify President Hindenburg. Lammers returned with word that the aged president was dying. On August 1 Hitler himself flew to Neudeck to take leave of the field marshal. It was difficult for the dying and delirious old man to speak, and he kept addressing Hitler as ‘your Majesty.’That evening Hitler told his Cabinet that the doctors gave Hindenburg less than twenty-four hours to live.The Cabinet enacted the following law: The office of Reich President is combined with that of Reich Chancellor. In consequence, the previous powers of die Reich President will devolve Triumph of the Will 35 on t lie Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor, Adolf Hitler. He will nominate his own deputy. Hindenburg died next day, his last words being to convey his best wishes to Herr Hitler. In a plebiscite on August 19, 90 percent of the German people voted in favour of the new law. ‘Thus,’ Hitler said triumphantly to Blomberg, ‘I have conquered Germany.’ the oath of allegiance of theWehrmacht was now transferred to t lie Fuhrer. Only Blomberg as war minister could actually issue orders however, a for¬ mal obstacle which would not be removed until 1938. Meantime, Himmler’s own SS regiments began to appear, the spectacu¬ lar parades of his tall and muscular troops being the highlight of the Party Rally in 1934. The SS uniform was black and elegant, and there was no shortage of candidates for this immaculate elite that Himmler had created. The SS had an enforced mysticism which even Hitler found slightly ludi¬ crous: in 1940, witnessing the pagan Yule celebration of the SS Leibstandarte at Christmas, he quietly mocked to an adjutant that dais would never take die place of‘Silent Night.’ He announced to Blomberg diat he would allow die SS to raise only one armed division, the Verjugungstruppe — die forerun¬ ner of die Waffen SS. To Hitler die Waffen SS was a fourdi armed service, an elite. As late as 1942 he ruled that die peacetime ratio ofWaffen SS to regular army should be pegged at one to ten.The army, however, envied and mistrusted the SS. Now that the SA had been emasculated General von Fritsch suspected diat Himmler was intriguing against him. Generals claimed that the SS was as¬ sembling dossiers on them. Hidden microphones were actually discovered in die military district HQ in Munich. In 1938, when the safe in Blomberg’s office would not shut properly, it was found to be jammed by a wire which was traced to an amplifier beneadi the floorboards; the Abwehr traced die wiring to die Gestapo HQ. The second half of 1934 was marked by this open hostility between die Party and theWehrmacht.The Party suspected that Fritsch was plotting an army coup against Hitler. Colonel Karl Bodenschatz heard his boss Goring discuss this widi Hitler. Milch also confirmed these rumours. Hitler may have anticipated an assassination at¬ tempt. Believing himself even to be dying, in December 1934 he bent his mind to Germany’s future without him, and on die thirteenth he persuaded die Cabinet to pass a law allowing him to name his own successor. A noisy 36 i: Approach to Absolute Power campaign began, fed by foreign newspapers and emigre organisations abroad, with talk of an impending bloodbath. Hitler’s nerves were so frayed that he summoned Party and Wehrmacht leaders to the Prussian State Opera house at short notice on January 3, 1953, and in a dramatic two-hour speech again stated his unswerving loy¬ alty to the Wehrmacht, which he described as a pillar of state as vital for Germany’s future as the Nazi Party — ‘both of equal importance and invin¬ cible as long as they remain united.’ Werner Best later recalled that the speech was a mixture of threats and exhortations: ‘Its climax was his de¬ spairing pronouncement that he would put a bullet through his brains if the various Reich agencies refused to work in harmony.’ Admiral Hermann Boehm recalled Hitler as saying, ‘Suppose some Party official comes up to me and says, “That’s all well and good, mein Fiihrer, but General So-and-so is talking and working against you.”Then I reply, “I won’t believe it.” And if he then says, “Here is the written proof, mein Fiihrer,” I tear the rubbish up, because my faith in t lie Wehrmacht is unshakeable.’ Goebbels and Goring drafted a declaration of loyalty for the latter to read out to the Fiihrer. ‘After the Full re r’s speech,’ Fritsch himself recorded, ‘the witch-hunt by the SS died down for a time.’ hitler attended to the Wehrmacht body and soul. He documented a genu¬ ine interest in military technology, his unusually receptive brain soaking up the data and dimensions shown to him so well that he could regurgitate them years later without an error. On February 6, 19359 he toured the army’s research station at Kummersdorf — the first chancellor to do so since 1890. Blomberg and Reichenau actively supported the modern tank and armoured car prototypes displayed there by Guderian — but neither Fritsch nor his chief of staff, Ludwig Beck, looked favourably on this modern war technology. Beck was a calm, dedicated staff officer appointed in October •93 3 for his right-wing views. He had connived in t he events of June 30, 1934. He profoundly mistrusted radio however and all other newfangled gadgets. After this display, Hitler decided he could flex the new Wehrmacht mus¬ cles. On March 9, 1935 — a Saturday — he formally announced that Ger¬ many had created a secret air force. A week later he reintroduced conscrip¬ tion in violation of Versailles. Goebbels recorded how that decision was reached: ‘Discussions all Saturday morning [March 16]. Fiihrer argues with Blomberg over the number of divisions. Gets his own way: thirty-six. Grand Triumph of the Will 37 proclamation to the people: Law on rebuilding the armed forces; conscrip¬ tion. To put an end to the haggling, you’ve got to create Jaits accomplis. The other side aren’t going to war over it. As for their curses: stuff cotton wool in our ears. Cabinet 1:30 p.m.: Fiihrer sets out situation. Very grim.Then reads out die proclamation and law. Powerful emotions seize us all. Blomberg rises to his feet and thanks the Fiihrer. Heil Flitler, for die first time in t liese rooms. With one law, Versailles is expunged. Flistoric hour. Tremor of eter¬ nity! Gratitude that we are able to witness and take part in this.’ Mussolini protested uneasily, and joined with France to repeat, at a mid-April 1935 meeting at Stresa, dial any German violation of the demilitarised zone along die Rhine would call forth Italian intervention as well as British and French, under the terms of die Locarno treaty. General von Fritsch informed his army generals that any German violation of the Rhineland’s status diat year would certainly be ‘die drop that overflows the barrel.’ That same mondi, however, Hitler learned diat France was preparing an alliance with the Soviet Union, and that it was to be extended to include Czechoslovakia. Twenty-five big airfields were already under construction — far in excess of any legitimate Czech needs. On April 24 Fritsch assured his generals, ‘The Fiihrer is determined to avoid war, and will leave no stone unturned to diat end. Whedier he succeeds in diis depends on us alone.’ On May 2 Blomberg therefore circulated a secret provisional direc¬ tive for Operation Training ( Schulung ), a possible surprise attack on Czechoslovakia designed to eliminate diat risk in the event of war in die west. On July 10 Blomberg issued a furdier important directive. It pro¬ vided that any French invasion of die Rhineland would be used as a casus belli by Hitler: he would stage a holding action there until die Rhine bridges could be blown.The Wehrmacht would dien defend Germany on die Rhine. In die meantime Hitler had resumed his overtures to Britain, again choos¬ ing Joachim von Ribbentrop as his negotiator. As he elucidated to his appre¬ ciative generals, speaking in Munich on March 17, ‘My foreign ministry doesn’t influence foreign policy — it just registers political occurrences.’ His own view was: ‘The British will come running to us sooner or later.’ Later that month Sir John Simon, the British foreign secretary, and Anthony Eden appeared in Berlin to try to secure some limitations on Ger¬ man rearmament. Hitler received diem in die Congress Room of die chan¬ cellery and bragged that his army was expanding to thirty-six divisions, which was true, and that his Luftwaffe was already as big as the RAF, which was not. Ribbentrop delivered this advice to Hitler on April 3: ‘I definitely 38 i: Approach to Absolute Power do not believe in a serious development this summer.’ If Germany reached the spring of 1936 without trouble, then the danger of a crisis was past. Simon’s visit had gone well, he said; he had returned to London convinced of the Fuhrer’s desire for peace. In fact Sir John had talked of a new Ger¬ man colonial empire, drawing his hand across the map of Africa from the French Congo to Italian Somaliland, but Hitler had interrupted him: ‘I am not interested in colonies at present.’ He had proposed that die British gov¬ ernment agree to an expansion of the German navy to a mere thirty-five percent of the British tonnage. It was Ribbentrop’s undoubted achievement that Britain eventually agreed. The Anglo-German naval agreement that was now signed inspired Hitler to believe that a far-reaching alliance would be possible with Britain later on. In May 1 9 5 5 he had had another, more personal preoccupation, a polyp that had begun to obstruct his vocal cords. He had always had a morbid terror of cancer, having seen his mother die of it, and he secretly feared that this polyp might prove to be a cancerous growth, doomed to cut short his global career before it had really begun. On May 3 t he polyp was removed by Berlin’s leading throat surgeon, Professor Carl von Eicken. Hitler was forbidden to speak for three days — he had to write down his instructions, even to Goring, who was bound for a conference with Mussolini in Rome. On May 23, as news reached him t hat the Anglo-German naval agreement was about to be signed, he was in Hamburg. Here too he was given the results of the pathological tests on the polyp — it was a non-malignant growth. ‘Today,’ he rejoiced to Admiral Raeder, ‘is the happiest day of my life. This morning I was informed by my doctor that my throat infection is not seri¬ ous; and this afternoon I receive this tremendous political news,’ meaning the naval agreement. at their last meeting in August 1934, the dying Field Marshal Hindenburg had whispered, ‘Now, Herr Hitler, don’t trust the Italians!’ Hitler had re¬ ported this warning to his Cabinet, and added — according to Schwerin von Krosigk — that if ever he had to choose between Britain and Italy, Hindenburg’s words would form the basis of his choice. His personal adju¬ tant Fritz Wiedemann also quoted him as having said, ‘If I have to choose between Britain and Mussolini, the choice is clear: Italy is obviously closer ideologically, but politically I see a future only in alliance with the British.’ Not surprisingly, Hitler considered Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia on October 3, 1934, inopportune: ‘The time for struggle between the static Triumph of the Will 39 and the dynamic nations is still some way off,’ he declared. Britain and France announced sanctions against Italy. Flitler had to choose, and he chose Italy after all. He could not afford to see Fascist Italy destroyed. To his leading generals and ministers — as Keitel recalled — Hitler explained, ‘The day may come,’ he said, ‘when Germany too has to stand up against outside inter¬ vention — the day when we also begin to stake our rightful claims.’ Wiedemann recalls, ‘When Hitler was preoccupied with some plans or other, he often shut himself up alone in his room. You could hear him pac¬ ing restlessly up and down.The really big decisions like rearmament, occu¬ pation of the Rhineland, etc., he always took alone — mostly against the counsels of his staff and advisers. He knew full well that he alone had to bear the responsibility.’ powerfully influenced by Dr. Goebbels, Hitler now abandoned the path of statesmanlike and responsible policies and embarked upon die slippery ascent toward European hegemony. By mid-January 1936 he had resolved to bolster up his none-too-robust regime by a fresh coup: he would remilitarise Germany’s Rhineland — again in violation of Versailles. As a pretext he would take France’s imminent ratification of her pact with Rus¬ sia. Hitler could argue that the pact would be irreconcilable widi Locarno. He revealed his intention to Dr. Goebbels on January 20. On February 27, over lunch with Goring and Dr. Goebbels, he still felt it premature to march into die Rhineland.The next day however France confirmed her treaty with die Russians. Goebbels, remarkably, urged caution, but Hitler had made up his mind. On March 2 Blomberg issued a preliminary directive. The next day Fritsch sent instructions for diree infantry battalions to cross the Rhine to Aachen,Trier, and Saarbriicken on a given date; but Fritsch, referring to die July 10, 1933, directive, made clear diat should die French counter¬ attack, the German forces might have to withdraw to die Rhine. On March 4 die French ratified die Russian pact. On die fifth Blomberg ordered die occupation of the Rhineland to begin two days later. The Cabi¬ net approved.The infantry marched in. Hitler’s step was greeted by a cho¬ rus of protest from die West, and by noisy sabre-rattling from the French. Blomberg lost his nerve and begged Hitler to withdraw before shooting broke out. The three German attaches in London sent a joint telegram of warning to Blomberg. Hitler’s nerves stood the test better however, and neither Britain nor France moved a muscle against him; he attributed this in part to the intervention of Britain’s new monarch, Edward VIII. ‘If we 40 i: Approach to Absolute Power keep our nerve now,’ felt Goebbels, reviewing the two week crisis in his diary, ‘we’ve won.’ The German public was demonstrably impressed by Hitler’s methods. At the end of March 193 6 he received another overwhelming vote of popu¬ lar support — this time the vote was over ninety to one in his favour. contemplating Germany’s economic position in 1936, Hitler chafed that so little had been accomplished to make the country self-sufficient — a basic prerequisite for war. In April he put Hermann Goring in charge of raw materials and foreign currency questions. Aboard his yacht Grille at Kiel he told Goebbels in May of his vision of a United States of Europe under Ger¬ man leadership. ‘Years, perhaps even decades of work toward that end,’ commented the minister in his diary. ‘But what an end! ’ ‘The Ftihrer,’ wrote Goebbels after a secret conference with Hitler, Papen, and Ribbentrop in June, ‘sees a conflict coming in the Far East. Japan will thrash Russia. And then our great hour will come. Then we shall have to carve off enough territory to last us a hundred years. Fet’s hope that we’re ready, and that the Ftihrer is still alive.’ Impatient at industry’s slow progress, in August Hitler dictated to his secretary a rambling memorandum on the economy. ‘Four precious years have passed,’ he complained: Without doubt, we could by today already have been wholly independ¬ ent of fuel, rubber, and even (in part) iron-ore imports from abroad. Germany, he ordered, must be ‘capable of waging a worthwhile war against the Soviet Union,’ because ‘a victory over Germany by Bolshevism would lead not to a new Versailles treaty but to the final annihilation, in¬ deed die extermination [Ausrottung] of die German nation.’ Hitler announced that he had to resolve once and for all Germany’s economic problems by enlarging her Febensraum and thus her sources of raw materials and food. In detail, Hitler stated these two demands: ‘First: in four years die German army must be ready for action; and second, in four years the German economy must be ready for war.’ Hermann Goring himself, summoned to die Obersalzberg, was ap¬ pointed head of diis new ‘Four-Year Plan.’Wiedemann would recall Goring remarking to Hitler: ‘Mein Ftihrer, if I am not mistaken in my views, a major war is inevitable within die next five years.’ He read Hitler’s memo¬ randum to the other Cabinet members on September 4, making one thing Triumph of the Will 41 clear: ‘It is based on the assumption that war with Russia is inevitable. What t ho Russians have accomplished, so can we.’ Goring’s state secretary, Paul Korner, wrote on September 7 to a colleague: ‘Goring came back from the Obersalzberg bringing us die new guidelines for our work over the next years. Unfortunately I can’t tell you more . . . but when you get back to Berlin, you’ll find a clear path mapped out ahead.’ by the autumn of 1936 Hitler was already deeply involved in the Spanish Civil War. On July 233 in the interval of an opera at Bayreuth, emissaries from an obscure Spanish general, Francisco Franco, had been introduced to him by Canaris.They brought an appeal from Franco for aid in overdirow - ing die Republican government in Madrid. Franco wanted German trans¬ port planes to ferry Moroccan troops fromTetuan in North Africa to die Spanish mainland. By October a full-scale civil war was raging. Britain and France were committed with volunteers on die Republican side, and die first Russian tanks and bombs were detected. After discussing it widi Goring, Milch, and Albert Kesselring — die Luftwaffe’s new chief of staff — Hitler authorised full-scale Luftwaffe intervention. Goring sent a bomber squad¬ ron under the command of Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen to Spain on November 6. Hitler welcomed diis war for various reasons. He could test the new German equipment under combat conditions, and train successive waves of officers and men. Goring also welcomed it as a means of obtaining from Spain raw materials like tungsten, copper, and tannin for the Four-Year Plan. A day or two after Hitler delivered a ‘major political speech’ to his Cabinet on December 1 — of which no note survives — Goring commented to his department heads that the Luftwaffe was to be ready ‘for instant ac¬ tion, regardless of the cost.’ Germany wanted peace until 1941, Goring told them: ‘We can never be sure however that there won’t be complica¬ tions before then. We are in a sense already at war, even if not yet a shooting war. Hitler enters the Berlin Reichstag on March J, 1936 to proclaim the remilitari¬ sation of the German Rhineland (u.s. national archives) ‘One Day, theWorld’ B y early 1937 the Nazi state could be likened to an atomic struc¬ ture: die nucleus was Adolf Hitler, surrounded by successive rings of henchmen. In the innermost ring were Goring, Himmler, and Goebbels — privy to his most secret ambitions and to the means that he was proposing to employ to realise them. In die outer rings were die ministers, commanders in chief, and diplomats, each aware of only a small sector of die plans radiating from the nucleus. Beyond them was die German peo¬ ple.The whole structure was bound by the atomic forces of the police state — by die fear of die Gestapo and of Himmler’s renowned establishments at Dachau and elsewhere. There were advantages to being Fiihrer. He had paid no income tax since 1 93 3 — neither on the royalties for Mein Kampf, nor on the licence income for using his likeness on postage stamps. The facts were kept carefully se¬ cret, but he cared little for his image. He resisted every attempt made by well-meaning people to change his ‘postman’s cap,’ his crinkly boots, and his outmoded moustache for styles more suited to the thirties. He desired neither present publicity nor the acclaim of posterity. He wrote to Hans Lammers directing that if the British Who’s Who really insisted on having details of his life, they were to be given only die barest outline. As he ex¬ plained years later, in a secret speech to his generals in 1944, when diey protested at his harsh decisions on the Russian front: ‘It is a matter of su¬ preme indifference to me what posterity may think.’ early in November 1937 Hitler told his staff that an outright Franco vic¬ tory in Spain was not desirable: ‘Our interest is in maintaining existing tensions in die Mediterranean.’ That Franco was fighting the Communist backed Republicans was of only secondary importance. In April 1938 Hit- 43 44 i: Approach to Absolute Power ler would muse out loud to Reinhard Spitzy, Ribbentrop’s private secre¬ tary: ‘We have backed the wrong horse in Spain. We would have done bet¬ ter to back tire Republicans. They represent the people. We could always have converted these socialists into good National Socialists later. The peo¬ ple around Franco are all reactionary clerics, aristocrats, and moneybags — they’ve nothing in common with us Nazis at all!’ His relations with Mussolini were equally illogical, springing from not h- ing more substantial than what he termed in Mein Kampf his ‘intense admi¬ ration for tliis great man south of the Alps.’ He lavished gifts on the Italian dictator. Henriette Hoffmann has described how Hitler was to be seen in his favourite Munich cafe with a bookbinder, inspecting leather samples for a presentation set of the philosopher Nietzsche’s works for Mussolini: Hit¬ ler rubbed the leather skins, sniffed them, and finally rejected t hem all with the pronouncement, ‘The leather must be glacier-green’ — meaning the bleak blue-green of the glaciers from which Nietzsche’s Zarathustra con¬ templated the world. Despite Hitler’s official visit to Venice in June 1934, Mussolini had gone his own way. Austria remained a bone of contention between diem. Now that diey were allies in Spain however the Duce began to refer to an ‘Axis’ between Rome and Berlin. In September 1937 die Duce was Hitler’s guest for a week of the biggest military manoeuvres in Germany since 1918. Hitler showed off Germany’s new weapons and machinery — like the high-pressure steam turbines being built for the new battle cruiser Scharnhorst. In Berlin the Duce addressed a crowd of 730,000. Afterward, a cloudburst brought Berlin’s traffic to a standstill. At die President’s Palace the Duce, soaked to the skin, encountered German officialdom at its most mulish, for a house rule dating back to the mists of Prussian history prohib¬ ited residents from drawing hot water for baths after seven p.m. the german public found Hitler’s interest in Mussolini as incomprehen¬ sible as his shift to a pro-Japanese policy in die Far East. Until 1937 Blomberg, the army, and the foreign ministry had persuaded him to maintain an influential mission in China.The expectation was diat the Chinese leader, Chiang Kai-shek, would exchange raw materials for German guns, ammu¬ nition, and arms factories. Hitler saw Chiang as corrupt and wife-dominated however, and predicted diat his lack of contact with die people would drive the Chinese into the arms of the Bolsheviks. In 1936 he had audiorised German-Japanese staff talks in Berlin, initiated by die Japanese military ‘One Day, the World’ 45 attache, General Hiroshi Oshima, and Ribbentrop’s bureau. Again the for¬ eign minister Neurath was left in the dark. After the Japanese declaration of war on China in June 1937, Hitler cancelled German aid to China. Ribbentrop demanded a military Tripartite Pact between Germany, Japan, and Italy, ‘in anticipation of the inevitable conflict with the western pow¬ ers.’The pact was signed in Rome on November 6, 1937. It was concrete evidence of Hitler’s smouldering disenchantment with die British. Ever since 1922 Hitler had looked on Britain as a future part¬ ner. He frankly admired the ruthlessness with which die British had grasped dreir empire. He had devoured volumes of English folklore. He knew drat die three white rings on sailors’ collars denoted Admiral Horatio Nelson’s victories. He had repeatedly affirmed, ‘The collapse of the British Empire would be a great misfortune for Germany.’ Now he began sketching vague plans for assisting Britain if ever her colonies in die Far East should be attacked. Ribbentrop shared his sentiments. He had already introduced numerous influential Englishmen to the Fuhrer. In 1945 the Americans captured die transcripts of some of these audiences — widi Lord Beaverbrook, proprie¬ tor of die Daily Express , on November 22, 19353 widi Stanley Baldwin’s private secretary Tom Jones on May 17, 1936; widi die conductor Sir Tho¬ mas Beecham on November 13, 1936, and with many odiers. While diese records have since vanished, Ribbentrop’s own notes have now surfaced. He reported to Hitler that he had assured Tom Jones again and again diat ever since Hitler had begun widi seven men in Munich ‘absolute co-opera¬ tion and friendship between Britain and Germany had been a cornerstone of his foreign policy.’ Ribbentrop would explain to die Turkish diplomat Acikalin in 1941 that far from being die Fuhrer’s ‘evil genius,’ die fact was diat he had always advised Hitler to bend over backward to secure Britain’s friendship. As ambassador in London, Ribbentrop would now secretly offer Baldwin an ‘offensive and defensive alliance.’ It was a tragedy that Hitler knew so few Englishmen. He had met die Mitfords, Sir Oswald Mosley, Lords Londonderry and Rothermere, and die journalist Ward Price; and Major General J. F. C. Fuller, the acknowl¬ edged British tank expert, had also confidentially seen him. In September 1936, die wartime prime minister David Lloyd George spent two weeks in Germany as his guest, and admiringly wrote in the Daily Express how Hitler had united Catholic and Protestant, employer and artisan, rich and poor into one people — Ein Volk, in fact. (The British press magnate Cecil King 46 i: Approach to Absolute Power would write in his diary four years later. ‘Lloyd George spoke of Hitler as die greatest figure in Europe since Napoleon and possibly greater dian him) Lloyd George revealed that in 1918 die British were on the point of throw¬ ing in the sponge, since Field Marshal Earl Haig had indicated diat die Al¬ lied offensive could not continue much longer. Hitler would not tire of repeating the point to his weary generals when their own war entered its bleaker years. In June, there was anodier contact widi die Anglo-Saxon world when William Mackenzie King, the Canadian premier, had a two-hour talk with Hitler (he wrote in his diary his favourable impressions of die Nazis’ ‘con¬ structive’ work). To Hitler however die flavour of all the reports from Lon¬ don was that despite his secret assurances Britain had resumed a barely concealed rearmament effort, particularly of die RAF; and diere was diere- fore a real time limit on achieving his secret strategic ambitions in the east. His military attache reported from London on February 19, 1937: ‘In any war, time will work for Britain, but only if she can survive initial defeats which would make it impossible for her to fight on.’ Hitler had explained to Ribbentrop back in 1 9 5 <, that he was not pro¬ posing to repeat Admiral vonTirpitz’s earlier error in getting involved in an arms race; he was going to concede naval supremacy to die British, and hope diat diey would make him a similar concession widi regard to Germa¬ ny’s future land armies. In September 1938, however, the German naval staff would sadly summarise: ‘The realisation has dawned on the navy and the Fiihrer over the last one and a half years that, in contrast to what the Fiihrer had hoped for at the time of the signing of the naval agreement, Britain cannot be excluded as a possible future enemy.’ Hitler had certainly not anticipated diis ‘estrangement’; he privately told Julius Schaub and odiers on his staff diat it would not have occurred had EdwardVIII not been forced to abdicate (in December 1936). His succes¬ sor, the weak and ill-prepared King George VI, was wholly in die grip of his ‘evil and anti-German advisers.’When Edward, now Duke ofWindsor, vis¬ ited Berchtesgaden in October 1937 he told Hitler much diat confirmed diis view. Unfortunately, die record of dieir meeting would also vanish from the files captured in 1 94^. a less tangible reason for Hitler’s restlessness was the realisation that the years were slipping by, while his grand design was remaining unfulfilled. The same uninspiring faces assembled in the Cabinet room. A civil servant, ‘One Day, the World’ 47 the Gestapo official Werner Best, who sat in on one such meeting in 1937, found that tlie l iihrer had become ‘increasingly nervous, bad-tempered, impatient, gloomy, abrupt, distrustful, unjust, dogmatic, and intractable. Glowering,’ wrote Best, ‘he listened to die submissions of the Reich minis¬ ters and retorted in a surly voice. His aversion to topics, to the wrangling, and even to the people present was obvious.’ Hitler felt himself succumb¬ ing to the inertia of government bureaucracy. He took to appointing spe¬ cial plenipotentiaries to perform specific tasks. Cabinet meetings as such virtually ceased late in 1937. Instead Hitler dealt directly — through Lam- mers — widi affairs of state, and he began to communicate his will directly to the ministers and generals without discussion. Widi die end of Cabinet government in Germany diings moved faster. Many times in 1937 and 1938 he spoke in private to Goebbels of his burn¬ ing ambition to undo for ever die humiliation inflicted upon Germany by die Peace of Westphalia, which had brought die Thirty Years War to an end in 1648. A psychological requisite was the proper processing of public opin¬ ion. He was to explain in November 1938, with remarkable frankness: It was only by harping on Germany’s desire and search for peace that I managed, little by little, to secure the freedom of action and the arma¬ ments that we needed to take each successive step. The first target would be Austria. He proposed to win her by peaceful means if possible. Earlier in July 193 7 he had appointed an SS Gruppenfuhrer, Dr. Wilhelm Keppler, to act as die Nazi Party’s special agent for Austrian affairs; but he warned Keppler that he would not contemplate a revolution¬ ary solution. That same month Hitler was deeply moved by die participa¬ tion at die big Breslau song festival of contingents from die German-speaking areas outside the Reich’s frontiers — in Austria and Czechoslovakia. He made passing reference in his speech Vo ‘ 9 (, million Germans,’ of whom only 68 million were at present part of his Reich. The Austrian contingent, in bright national costumes, stormed his tribune; die women wept uncontrollably. When Goebbels showed him die newsreels, Hitler ordered diem suppressed to avoid reprisals against the Austrians seen cheering him; but it was a scene to which he frequently referred in private during die coming mondis. Visiting Goebbels’s villa at Schwanenwerder on die day after the festi¬ val, he confirmed that he was planning to make a ‘clean sweep’ in Austria, and that Czechoslovakia’s turn would follow. There too there was a large 48 i: Approach to Absolute Power German minority. Quite apart from the 150,000 counted in 1930 in the more remote Slovakia, there were three and a half million ethnic Germans ‘trapped’ in Bohemia and Moravia by the artificial frontiers which had cre¬ ated Czechoslovakia in 1919. Hitler denied the Czechs any right to be in Bohemia and Moravia at all: they had not filtered in until the sixth or seventh centuries. ‘The Czechs are past masters at infiltration,’ he was to state in October 1941. ‘Take Vienna: before the World War, only about 1 70 of the 1,800 Imperial court officials were of German origin — all the rest, right up to the top, were Czechs.’ Most of the ethnic Germans lived in the border ‘Sudeten territories’ where Czech and French engineers had laboured for years to erect fortifications. The Czech president, Dr. Eduard Benes, had ruthlessly enforced the ‘Czechification’ of the local administration of these territories; Hitler de¬ scribed him inelegantly to Goebbels as ‘a crafty, squinty-eyed little rat.’ Baron von Neurath had tried to induce him to mollify these policies, with¬ out success. The question was: when should Hitler strike? Spitzy recalls one scene at this time, of Hitler scanning the latest agency reports through gold-rimmed spectacles, while Ribbentrop peered over his shoulder. ‘Mein Fiihrer,’ said Ribbentrop, ‘I think we shall soon have to draw our sword from its scab¬ bard!’ ‘No, Ribbentrop,’ responded Hitler. ‘Not yet.’ Blomberg’s last directive to the Wehrmacht, in June 1937, had been primarily defensive. It had dwelt upon only two minor contingencies: ‘ Otto,’ a German attack on Austria should she restore the hated Habsburg monar¬ chy; and ‘Green,’ a surprise attack on Czechoslovakia if France or Russia invaded Germany (because the Russian air force must first be prevented from using the now-completed airfields in Czechoslovakia). General von Fritsch, the army’s Commander in Chief, had dutifully ordered the army to study ways of breaching the Czech fortifications. Lunching with Goebbels on November 4, 1937 Hitler asked the propaganda minister to go easy on the Czechs for the time being, as they could not do anything about them yet. ‘The Czechs are crazy,’ reflected Goebbels, describing this conversa¬ tion in his diary. ‘They are surrounded by a hundred million enemies whose land and people they have usurped. Na , prostl’ Hitler also instructed him to downplay both t heir future colonial demands and the church problem: t hey had to keep their propaganda powder dry. To Hitler it seemed that his army lacked enthusiasm. It certainly lacked ammunition and arms for a long conflict. Germany was gripped by a severe ‘One Day, the World’ 49 steel shortage. Early in 1937 the three services had been ordered to cut back their arms budgets.The navy argued emphatically against any reduc¬ tion of warship construction now that Britain was emerging as a possible enemy too. The gap could not however be bridged. In consequence of the launchings planned in 1938, of the two battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz, all construction would have to be postponed except for one cruiser and one carrier.The Luftwaffe pointed out that it was getting 70,000 tons of steel a month. At Blomberg’s suggestion Hitler called the Commander in Chief to thr chancellery to settle the dispute. Such was the background of one of Hitler’s most portentous secret con¬ ferences — the so-called ‘Hossbach Conference’ of November j, 1937 ( the afternoon of his admonitory talk with Goebbels). Hitler decided to use this opportunity to reveal to them some of his secret goals (or, as he put it to Goring, ‘to put some steam up Fritsch’s pants’). Colonel Friedrich Hossbach, hisWehrmacht adjutant, wrote a summary five days later of the proceed¬ ings. Part of this has survived; so has a telegram sent by die French ambas¬ sador reporting what he had learned of Hitler’s long meeting, and of die large number of generals and admirals summoned to the chancellery. It was not a formal Cabinet meeting. The subject was far too important for such an audience, Hitler explained; but to lend solemnity to the pro¬ ceedings (as he told Goring) he did invite foreign minister von Neurath, along with Blomberg, Goring, Raeder, and Fritsch to join him in the glass-walled conservatory of his ‘official residence,’ a wing of die chancel¬ lery. The glass doors were closed and a thick curtain drawn across. The dozen or so munitions and economics experts whom Blomberg had also rounded up, fruitlessly as it turned out, had to kick their heels for the next four hours in the smoking room next door. When the rest of die conference ended at 8:30 p.m., the word passed around: ‘The navy has won!’ and ‘Only the navy gets twenty diousand tons.’ In diat part of the speech of which Hossbach’s record has survived, Hit¬ ler reiterated his determination to launch a war to solve Germany’s Lebensraum problems within the next five or six years. As a first stage he might, under certain circumstances, order a ‘lightning attack’ on neigh¬ bouring Czechoslovakia during 1938. Hitler’s view was diat Britain had already tacitly written off Czechoslovakia, and diat France would follow suit. He was so emphatic that Fritsch proposed cancelling his projected leave in Egypt, due to start in ten days’ time. No objections were raised, either then or later. A directive relating to ‘ Green’ was issued by Blomberg’s 50 i: Approach to Absolute Power ministry on December 2 i: the western frontier defences would have to be improved, but Hitler would try to avoid war on two fronts and taking any other military or economic risks; should the political situation not develop as desired, ‘Green’ might have to be postponed for some years. On the other hand, the directive said, a situation might arise depriving Czechoslo¬ vakia of all her potential allies except Russia: ‘Then “Green” will take effect even before Germany is fully prepared for war.’ Blomberg’s directive shows how little he appreciated the full scope of Hitler’s ambitions. As anyone who had read Chapter 14 of Mein Kampfknew, Hitler had set his sights much further afield. From his very first speeches he had drawn attention to Russia’s open spaces; and if we apply the only proper yardstick, if we examine his long-term material preparations, only one con¬ clusion remains — that his ‘dream land,’ his new empire, awaited him in the east. One such clue is in German admiralty hies, a letter from the naval commandant at Pillau in East Prussia reporting a conversation between Hitler and the local Party gauleiter, Erich Koch, in June 1937: Hitler had, he said, warned of Pillau’s coming importance as a naval base ‘even more powerful than Kiel or Wilhelmshaven,’ to accommodate a bigger fleet in future years. ‘In the Fuhrer’s view the time will come — in say six or seven years — when Germany can progress from her present defensive posture to an offensive policy. Within Europe, this kind of development will only be possible toward the east.’ It is regrettable that no records have been found of most of Hitler’s important speeches to his gauleiters, like that on June 2, 1937, to which Koch was probably referring. One speech to Party leaders survives on discs. In this harangue, delivered on November 23, 1937, he proclaimed: ‘The British purchased their entire empire with less blood than we Germans lost in the World War alone. . .World empires are won only by revolutionary movements.’ He is heard adding later, ‘Today the German nation has at last acquired what it lacked for centuries — an organised leadership of the peo¬ ple.’ Hitler was not interested in overseas conquests. Therefore, when Lord Halifax, the British statesman, visited him in Bavaria on November 19 to discuss colonies for Germany in Africa he failed to excite the Fuhrer’s in¬ terest. by the end of 1937 it was clear that the coming year would be dominated by two factors — by Hitler’s ardent resolve to begin his fight for Lebensraum ‘One Day, the World’ 51 and by the growing certainty that Britain would do all she could to thwart him. On December 27 Ribbentrop, now Hitler’s ambassador in London, submitted to him an analysis of Britain’s attitude.* She now regarded Ger¬ many as her most deadly potential enemy, he said. Chamberlain was cur¬ rently formulating a new initiative with the hope of purchasing peace in Europe, in return for which tlie British would offer colonies, and certain concessions on Austria and Czechoslovakia. But, he warned, while die Brit¬ ish were largely in favour of a lasting agreement with Germany, there was a hostile ruling class that could always swing the British public around to support war, for example by atrocity-mongering against the Nazis. There was, wrote Ribbentrop, a ‘heroic’ ruling class that would not shrink from war to protect their material interests as a world power. ‘When Britain sees die odds improve, she will fight.’ If Britain continues in future to block Germany at every turn, dien diere can be no doubt but that the two nations will ultimately drift apart. Nonetheless, it seems proper to me diat our future policies should re¬ main anchored to striving for agreement with Britain.The embassy will dierefore work consistently toward an Anglo-German entente. On January 2, 1938, Ribbentrop significantly amended this view. ‘To¬ day,’ he wrote to the Fiihrer, ‘I no longer believe in a rapprochement. Brit¬ ain does not want a Germany of superior strength in the offing as a perma¬ nent direat to her islands. That is why she will fight.’ The upshot was a demand by Hitler later in January for a strengthening of the German fleet. By the end of 1944 there were to be four battleships, although not the six the navy had previously planned. On January 2 1 he delivered die first of many secret speeches to his gen¬ erals. An anonymous diree-page summary exists, showing that Hitler be¬ gan with a description of the Roman Empire, and how thereafter Christian¬ ity had given western civilisation die inner unity it needed to stave off east¬ ern invasions. ‘Only one man can lead, but diat man shoulders the entire burden of responsibility. It is a grave burden. Believe me, generals, . . . my nerves have gone to pieces and I just cannot sleep any longer for worry * This document, which the author obtained, clearly proves that Ribbentrop did warn Hitler that Britain would fight. The document was ‘not found’ by the editors of the Allied official publication, Documents on German Foreign Policy. 52 i: Approach to Absolute Power about Germany.’ Germany’s food situation was particularly grim. Germany’s position is really bleak. Day and night I battle with the prob¬ lem. One fact leads me to believe however that there may be hope for the German nation yet: if we look closely at the ruling nations of this ear tla — die British, French, and Americans — the statistics show diat only a vanishingly small component of them, perhaps 40 or $o million pure-blooded citizens of die ruling country, are controlling millions of other human beings and gigantic areas of die world. There is only one nation on earth, living in die heart of Europe in great compactness, of uniform race and language, tightly concentrated: and that is the German nation, widi 110 million Germans in Central Europe. This comparison gives us cause to hope. One day the entire world must and shall belong to this united block of Central Europe. Watched by Heinrich Himmler, Hitler is mobbed by youthful admirers at the Biickeberg harvest festival in 1936 (hoover archives) First Lady A t one end of that broad Munich boulevard, the Ludwig Strasse, is the Victory Arch; at t lie other, die grimy stone Feldherrnhalle mausoleum. Here, unsuspected by the silent crowds lining the icy sidewalks as dawn rose on December 22, 1937, Nazi Germany had jolted imperceptibly onto die course that was to lead it to ultimate ruination. It happened like this: General Erich Ludendorff, Hindenburg’s old chief of staff in die Great War, had died, and his simple oak coffin was lying in die shadow of die Victory Arch draped widi the Kaiser’s colours and flanked by tall, black-shrouded pylons topped widi bowls of lingering fire. High-ranking officers of die new Wehrmacht — die armed services — had stood, stiffly frozen, all night at each corner of die bier, carrying on silken cushions die eighty medals diat die departed warrior had earned. Hitler had arrived just before ten A.m., Werner von Blomberg — newly promoted to held marshal — had thrown his arm up in salute; General Hermann Goring, die Luftwaffe’s commander and most powerful man af¬ ter Hitler and Blomberg, had followed suit. (The army’s commander, Baron Werner von Fritsch, was still in Egypt on holiday.) To the thud of muffled drums, six officers had hoisted the coffin onto a gun carriage. The photographs show Hitler walking alone and ahead of his command¬ ers and ministers, bareheaded, his face a mask, conscious that one hundred diousand eyes were trained on him. This, he knew, was what his people wanted to see: their Fiihrer, followed by his faidiful henchmen, surrounded by his subjects, united in a common act of spectacle and grandeur. As the last melancholy strains of‘The Faithful Comrade’ died away, a nineteen-gun salute began from the battery in the Hofgarten, scattering indignant pi¬ geons into die misty air. 5 3 54 i: Approach to Absolute Power Hitler left with his adjutants for the courtyard where die cars were wait¬ ing. Here Blomberg approached him: ‘Mein Fiihrer, can I speak somewhere widi you in private?’ Suspecting nothing, Hitler invited him to his private apartment. Within five minutes he was in the elevator at No. 16, Prinzregenten Platz. Here Blomberg asked Hitler’s permission to marry again. His fiancee was of modest background — a secretary working for a government agency — but was this not what National Socialism was all about? Hitler gave his consent immediately. Widi Blomberg, Hitler had established close rapport. Bodi he and Goring agreed without hesitation to act as witnesses at the wedding.The ceremony took place in private at the war ministry on January i 2, 1938. The bride was twenty-four, while Blomberg was nearly sixty. She was undoubtedly attractive: she was slim, with fair hair, a broad forehead, grey-blue eyes, a petite nose, and a generous moudi. The couple departed immediately on their honeymoon, not knowing that their lopsided marriage would later be construed as having set Adolf Hitler on the final approach to absolute power. Their honeymoon was soon interrupted by die unexpected death of Blomberg’s mother. Blomberg’s chief of staff General Wilhelm Keitel ac¬ companied him to her funeral on January 20 at Eberswalde, diirty miles from Berlin. When die field marshal returned on the twenty-fourth, some disturbing news must have awaited him because he immediately applied for an urgent audience widi Hitler. Hitler had returned to Munich briefly to open die great arts and crafts exhibition there. When his car drew up outside the Berlin chancellery late on January 24 he found Goring waiting widi a buff folder in his hands. ‘Blomberg has married a whore!’ Goring announced. ‘Our new first lady has a police record. He tricked us into acting as witnesses.’ What had happened in Blomberg’s absence was this: three days earlier, on January 21, the police president of Berlin, Count Wolf von Helldorff, had shown to Keitel an innocuous change-of-address record card and asked if Keitel could confirm that the lady in die photograph was die new Frau von Blomberg. Keitel, however, had only seen her at the funeral, heavily veiled; he had suggested diat Goring be asked, as he had been at die wed¬ ding. Helldorff had explained that somediing of die woman’s past had come to light now diat she had routinely registered her change of address to Blomberg’s apartment in die war ministry building. He had visited Goring the next morning and given him die complete police dossier on Fraulein Eva Gruhn — as she had been before her marriage. First Lady 55 As Hitler opened this buff-coloured dossier now, on January 24, a col¬ lection of file cards, photographs, and printed forms met his eyes. There were fingerprint records, Wanted posters, and half a dozen photographs showing a woman in various sexual poses with a wax candle. The police background statements yielded a stark mirror image of a Berlin society in die grips of economic crisis. Fraulein Gruhn’s fadier had been killed in die war when she was five. Her mother was a registered masseuse. In 1932 Eva had left home at eighteen, and moved in widi her lover, a Czech Jew of forty-one, one Heinrich Lowinger. Later diat year he had been offered porno¬ graphic photographs, and it had struck him that this was easy money. He had hired a Polish photographer and the pictures were taken one Christmas afternoon. Lowinger had sold only eight when he was pulled in. The only odier items in the dossier were search notices relating to her having left home while underage, and a 1934 police data card which clearly states diat she had ‘no criminal record.’ According to die dossier, she had last visited her mother on January 9 with her future husband: ‘And we all know who that is,’ somebody had scribbled in the margin. As he turned page after page, Hitler became visibly angry. Hurling it back at Goring, he exclaimed: ‘Is there nothing I am to be spared?’ Hitler was stunned that Blomberg could have done this to him. Clearly, as Goring now said, the field marshal would have to resign; but who could succeed him? Heinrich Himmler, the all-powerful Reichsfiihrer of the black-uniformed SS, was one candidate. So, of course, was Goring. First in line, however, was General von Fritsch. In his confidential hand¬ written notes of these dramatic weeks, which were removed from Potsdam to Moscow in 1944, Fritsch denied any ambition to succeed Blomberg: ‘I would have refused such an appointment since, in view of the Party’s atti¬ tude toward me, the obstacles would have been insuperable.’ Hitler had a deep regard for Fritsch — but there was one worrisome skeleton in the cupboard, and it could be ignored no longer. Two years earlier, during the 1936 crisis of Hitler’s remilitarisation of the Rhineland, Himmler had shown to him a police dossier linking Fritsch with a homosexual blackmailer. At tint time Hitler had refused to look into it, but the allegation obviously festered in his brain. ‘At the end of March or early in April [1936],’ General von Fritsch was to write three years later, ‘I invited tlie Fiihrer to do the army the honour of becoming Honorary Colonel of the 9th Infantry Regi¬ ment at Potsdam. The Fiihrer accepted, and the regiment was to march to Berlin for die purpose on April 20. On April 19 Hossbach [Hitler’s adju- 56 i: Approach to Absolute Power tant] phoned me that the Fiihrer had withdrawn his agreement to become Colonel of the 9th Infantry Regt.’ At the time this was a baffling mystery to Fritsch. On Flitler’s birthday the next day, he had sent him a telegram from his sickbed at Achterberg: ‘The army and I follow you in proud confidence and willing fait It along the pat It you are marking out ahead into the future of Germany.’ (On January 18, 1939, Fritsch commented: ‘That was absolutely true at that time. Today I haven’t any faith at all in die man. Flow far die army’s officer corps has faith in him, I cannot surmise.’) By 1939, of course, he knew why Flitler had wididrawn his acceptance: ‘It was in the spring of 1936,’ he wrote, . . . that Flimmler [first] furnished to die Fiihrer the dossier claiming I had been blackmailed. Perhaps diat’s why the Fiihrer wididrew his agree¬ ment to become Colonel. His later explanation diat the Party would never understand his becoming Colonel of a regiment wasn’t very likely, or at least not acceptable. The following is also possible: Himmler finds out diat the Fiihrer wants to become Colonel of 9th Infantry Regt.; he fears this may strengdien die army’s influence even more. This he wants to thwart. That rascal Himmler is absolutely capable of such a deed. As recently as December 1937, while Fritsch was still in Egypt, Himmler had again brought up diat dossier, and stressed the security risk involved if Fritsch was a homosexual. Hitler had suspected diat the Party was just set¬ tling scores against Fritsch however, and had demanded its destruction. Since Fritsch’s return Hitler had not seen him except once, on January iG i 93 8 , when diey had a two-hour argument. Fritsch described it thus: The Fiihrer angrily began talking about his worries at the spread of anar¬ chist propaganda in the army. I tried in vain to calm him down. I asked for concrete evidence. The Fiihrer said that he did have such material, but he could not give it to me, only to Blomberg. In odier words, an open vote of No Confidence in me. I had no intention of leaving it at that. I planned to ask die Fiihrer for his open confidence in me, failing which I would resign. But it never came to diat. . . Now, on January 24, the shoe was on the other foot. Hitler decided to have it out with Fritsch. He told an aide to summon die Wehrmacht adju¬ tant Hossbach by telephone.The colonel was in bed however, and stubbornly First Lady 57 declined to come before next morning. Hitler lay awake until dawn, staring at the ceiling and worrying how to avoid tarnishing his own prestige if this double scandal ever became public. the next day, January 253 Goring reported at eleven a.m. that he had seen Keitel and instructed him to have a talk with the unfortunate war minister about his bride. By early afternoon, he had been to see Blomberg himself— he reported — and told him he must resign. Goring related to Hitler that die minister was a broken man. In Hossbach’s presence, Goring now furnished to Hitler the Gestapo dossier on the homosexual link to Fritsch’s name in 1936. The folder was evidently a recent reconstruction, containing several carbon copies of in¬ terrogations, affidavits, and photostats. A certain blackmailer, Otto Schmidt, had been arrested in 1936 and had dien recounted die homosexual exploits of one ‘General von Fritsch’ as witnessed by himself in November 1933. He had introduced himself as ‘Detective Inspector Kroger’ and threatened to arrest him. The general had produced an army ID card and blustered, ‘I am General von Fritsch.’ He had bribed Schmidt with 2,;oo marks col¬ lected from his bank in the Berlin suburb of Lichterfelde. As Goring contentedly pointed out to Hitler, Schmidt’s evidence had proved true in sixty other cases. The dossier, in short, was damning. Even so, Hitler was uncertain. He ordered Goring to question Otto Schmidt in detail, and he forbade Hossbach to mention the matter to Fritsch. Unfortunately Hossbach that same evening confided, rather incoherently, to Fritsch that allegations had been made about improper behaviour with a young man in November 1933; and this incomplete prior knowledge was to have fateful consequences for Fritsch. He concluded that a certain mem¬ ber of the HitlerYoudi was behind the complaint: in 1933 he had arranged for one young Berliner — Fritz Wermelskirch — an apprenticeship at Mercedes-Benz’s factory at Marienfelde.The youth had t lien turned to crime however, and when he bragged to underworld friends that he had a high-ranking benefactor Fritsch had severed all connections with him.That had been three years ago. The next morning Hossbach admitted to Hitler that he had warned Fritsch: the general had hotly rejected die allegation as ‘a stinking lie,’ and had added: ‘If the Fullrer wants to get rid of me, one word will suffice and I will resign.’ At this, Hitler announced with evident relief, ‘Then every¬ thing is all right. General von Fritsch can become minister after all.’ i: Approach to Absolute Power 5 $ During tI k: day, however, rival counsels prevailed. Blomberg was ush¬ ered into Hitler’s library in plain clot lies. He angrily criticised t he manner in which he had been dismissed. Then ire gave way to sorrow and Hitler — who genuinely feared that Blomberg might take his own life — tried to console him. He hinted that when Germany’s hour came he would like to see Blomberg at his side again.The discussion turned to a successor. Hitler commented, ‘Goring has neither the necessary perseverance nor the appli¬ cation.’ As for Fritsch, said Hitler, diere was some belief that he was a closet homosexual. To this Blomberg evenly replied that he could quite believe it. Thus the word of the Commander in Chief of the German army came to be tested against the utterances of a convict, his accuser Otto Schmidt, by now aged thirty-one, pale and puffy from years of incarceration. Late on January 26 Fritsch was summoned to die library. He himself wrote this hitherto unpublished account of the famous scene: I was eventually called in at about 8:30 p.m. The Fiihrer immediately announced to me that I had been accused of homosexual activities. He said he could understand everydiing, but he wanted to hear the truth. If I admitted the charges against me, I was to go on a long journey and nodiing further would happen to me. Goring also addressed me in simi¬ lar vein. I emphatically denied any kind of homosexual activities and asked who had accused me of diem. The Fiihrer replied diat it made no difference who the accuser was. He wished to know whether there was die slight¬ est basis for diese allegations. Fritsch remembered Wermelskirch. ‘Mein Fiihrer,’ he replied, ‘this can only be a reference to diat affair with a HitlerYoudi!’ Hitler was dumbfounded by Fritsch’s answer. Otto Schmidt, the man in the Gestapo dossier, was no Hitler Youth. Hitler thrust the folder into Fritsch’s hands. The general rapidly scanned it, purpled, and dismissed it all as a com¬ plete fabrication. At a signal from Hitler the blackmailer was led in to the library. Schmidt pointed unerringly at the general and exclaimed, ‘That’s the one.’ Fritsch was speechless. He blanched and was led out. Hossbach urged Hitler to give a hearing to General Ludwig Beck, the Chief of General Staff; but the very telephone call to Beck’s home at Lichterfelde stirred fresh suspicions in Hitler’s tortured mind: had not the First Lady 59 blackmail money been collected from a bank at Lichterfelde? (He later in¬ terrogated Beck about when he had last lent money to his Commander in Chief. The puzzled general could only reply that he had never done so.) Fritsch’s own pathetic story continues: I gave the Flihrer my word of honour. Confronted with die allegations of a habitual crook, my word was brushed aside as of no consequence. I was ordered to report to the Gestapo next morning. Deeply shaken at die abruptness displayed by the Fiihrer and Goring toward me, I went home and informed Major [Curt] Siewert [personal chief of staff] in brief about die allegations. Soon afterward I also informed General Beck. I men¬ tioned to both that it might be best for me to shoot myself in view of die unheard-of insult from the Fiihrer. Fritsch demanded a full court-martial to clear his name. Who should succeed Blomberg now? Goebbels suggested that Hitler himself should do so. Sent for again the next morning, January 2 7, Blomberg pointed out diat since President Hindenburg’s deadi the Fiihrer was consti¬ tutionally Supreme Commander of die Wehrmacht already. If he appointed no new war minister, dien he would have direct control of die armed forces. ‘I’ll diink that over,’ replied Hitler. ‘If I do that however, then I’ll be needing a goodWehrmacht chief of staff.’ ‘General Keitel,’ suggested Blomberg. ‘He’s done that job for me. He’s a hard worker and he knows his stuff.’ As Blomberg, now in plain clodies, left the chancellery for die last time, he noticed diat die sentries did not present arms to him. At one p.m. Hitler received Keitels a tall, handsome general of unmis¬ takably soldierly bearing aldiough he had been told to come in plain clothes. He had headed the army’s organisation branch during die recent expan¬ sion. He was a champion of a unified Wehrmacht command. Hitler asked him who ought to succeed Blomberg, and Keitel too offered Goring’s name. ‘No, that is out of die question,’ replied Hitler coolly. ‘I don’t think Goring has the ability. I shall probably take over Blomberg’s job myself.’ He asked Keitel to find him a new Wehrmacht adjutant to replace die disobedient Hossbach. Keitel picked Major Rudolf Schmundt. Hitler — Keitel — Schmundt: the links of the historic Wehrmacht chain of command were coming together. Over die next link, Fritsch’s position, diat question mark still hung. 6o i: Approach to Absolute Power as hitler had ordered, General von Fritsch submitted to Gestapo interro¬ gation that morning, January 27, 1938. Concealed microphones recorded every word, and the 8 3-page transcript has survived, revealing t he drama as the monocled baron was again confronted with the sleazy blackmailer. Schmidt stuck to his filthy story, despite the sternest warnings from Werner Best on die consequences of lying. The general he had seen in 1933 had smoked at least one cigar during die blackmail bargaining. Fie again de¬ scribed die alleged homosexual act: ‘This Bavarian twerp,’ referring to die male prostitute Weingartner, ‘was standing up and die man knelt down in front of him and was sucking at it . . .’ to which Fritsch could only expostu¬ late, ‘Flow dare he suggest such a tiling! That is supposed to have been me?’ He conducted part of die questioning himself. None of Schmidt’s details fitted him — he had not even smoked a cigarette since 1923. He frankly admitted diat the evidence seemed damning. ‘I must confess that if pressure has been brought to bear on him from some quarter or odier to tell a lie, then he’s doing it damnably cleverly.’ Two other ‘witnesses’ had been posted unobtrusively in the Gestapo headquarters where diey could see him. Weingartner, die male prostitute, was emphatic diat diis was not his client of 1933. Biicker, Schmidt’s accom¬ plice, detected a certain resemblance, but would not swear to it. Hitler was not informed of this ambivalent outcome. ‘If the Fiihrer had only been told of these two facts,’ Fritsch later wrote, ‘then his decision would surely have been very different, in view of the word of honour I had given him.’ ‘It’s one man’s word against anodier,’ observed Goebbels in his diary. ‘That of a ho¬ mosexual blackmailer against die army’s commander in chief.’ The next day he recorded that although Heydrich had conducted several ‘all-night’ interrogations, Fritsch was standing up to him. Hitler, however, had already written off Fritsch. On January 28 he was already discussing a shortlist of possible successors as Commander in Chief, army. His first choice was General Walter von Reichenau — Keitel’s pred¬ ecessor at the war ministry. Keitel advised against him; his own candidate was General Walther von Brauchitsch, a stolid, widely respected officer whose reputation was founded on his period as army commander in East Prussia. In fact Keitel had already telephoned him urgently to take the next train from Dresden; he arrived at a quarter to nine that evening. Next morn¬ ing Keitel repeated to Hitler the answers given by the general under close questioning; in particular Brauchitsch was willing to tie the army closer to the Nazi state. First Lady 61 Hitler sent for Brauchitsch. Now the general mentioned however that he too had delicate personal difficulties: he wanted a divorce to marry a Frau Charlotte Rtiffer, herself a divorcee; his first wife must be settled financially, which he could not afford. Brauchitsch’s nomination thus ap¬ peared to have foundered. The jostling for Fritsch’s office resumed. Reichenau was seen haunting t lie war ministry building. Goring sent his loyal aide Colonel Karl Bodenschatz to drop hints amongst Hitler’s adju¬ tants that Goring ought to take over die army too. Admiral Erich Raeder, die navy’s Commander in Chief, sent an adjutant to propose the revered but cantankerous General Gerd von Rundstedt as an interim tenant for die job. Hitler rejected all of these contenders. He heaved the weighty Army List volume across the desk to die navy captain and challenged him: ‘You suggest one!’ On February 3 Hitler reluctantly declared himself satisfied with Brauchitsch’s attitude on the Church, the Party, and military problems, and formally shook hands with him as Fritsch’s successor. The unfortunate Gen¬ eral von Fritsch was asked diat same afternoon by Hitler to submit his resignation. Fritsch wrote later, ‘ I accepted diis demand, as I could never have worked widi diis man again.’ On February 4 Hitler accordingly signed an icy letter to Fritsch, for¬ mally accepting his resignation ‘in view of your depleted health.’ The letter was published, dius driving the last nail into Fritsch’s coffin, as it turned out. Meanwhile, Hitler had charged Dr. Hans Lammers to negotiate die terms of a financial settlement for the first Frau von Brauchitsch to agree to a noiseless divorce. Eventually the Reich settled an allowance of about 1,300 marks a mondi on her. Hitler thereby purchased complete moral sway over die army’s new Commander in Chief, and for a relatively paltry sum. Hitler — Keitel — Schmundt — Brauchitsch: the chain of command had gained another link. Hitler decided that Brauchitsch, Goring, and Raeder as the diree service Commanders in Chief would take their orders from a new supreme command authority, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), with Wilhelm Keitel as its chief of staff. Hitler himself would be Supreme Commander, with the new OKW as his military secretariat. This OKW would also exercise Blomberg’s former ministerial func¬ tions. His old National Defence division, die Abteilung Landesverteidigung, 62 i: Approach to Absolute Power would transfer to the OKW as an operations staff, commanded by Colonel Max von Viebahn, a staff officer of the older generation. Thus Keitel himself became Hitler’s principal military secretary. Hitler never regretted the choice; the general’s metier was a willingness to obey. At most Hitler needed an industrious and efficient machine to put his own military policies into effect. He confided to Keitel that he was planning to do something that would make Europe ‘catch its breath.’ It would also serve to distract attention from the Wehrmacht’s problems. He would carry out a general top-level reshuffle, to give the impression not of a momentary weakness but of a gathering of strength. it was indeed a minor landslide. Hitler changed his foreign minister and minister of economics; inconvenient diplomats like Ambassador Ulrich von Hassell in Rome were forcibly retired; Goring was promoted to a field marshal, while three score army and Luftwaffe generals who were too old, conservative, or obstinate were axed or transferred; Keitel’s younger brother became chief of army personnel. Most of the dumbfounded victims first learned of these changes when they opened t heir newspapers the next morning. By February ^, 1938, Hit¬ ler knew that his tactics had largely succeeded. The British press lord, Rot her mere, telegraphed him, ‘May I add, my dear Fiihrer, my congratula¬ tions on the salutary changes you have made. Your star rises higher and higher.’ The German army, however, could not be so easily fobbed off. Fritsch’s disposal was seen as evidence of the hold that the Party was gaining. At four p.m. on February <, Hitler delivered to his leading army and Luftwaffe gen¬ erals, standing around him in a semicircle in the war ministry, a two-hour speech in which he mercilessly recited the allegations that had resulted in the resignations of both Blomberg and Fritsch. He read out t lie formal legal opinion of the minister of justice, and quoted choice extracts from the Otto Schmidt dossier. At eight o’clock that evening, Hitler presided over what was, as things turned out, tlie last Cabinet meeting ever called. He briefly introduced Keitel and Brauchitsch — the former would faithfully administer the Wehrmacht High Command until the end of the coming war in 19433 while the latter proved a complaisant army Commander in Chief only until De¬ cember 1941, when he and Hitler parted. After the Cabinet meeting, Hitler First Lady 63 set out for his mountainside home in Bavaria — as Fiihrer, Reich Chancellor, and now Supreme Commander of die armed forces in fact as well as name. ‘The damage that one woman can do,’ exclaimed Goebbels in his diary on February 6. 1 And that kind of woman too! ’Yet if these scandals had proven anything, it was that Adolf I litler was more deeply in the thrall of his devi¬ ous henchmen than even he suspected. By early March, when he was back in Berlin, the first whispers were reaching him that he had been misled — die SS had wilfully deceived him, and even Goring might not have been entirely above blame. Flitler evidently ignored die rumours. Fritsch was now lost beyond retrieval; while Flimmler, the SS, and Goring were indis¬ pensable. The army investigators began their inquiries in February. Fritsch en¬ gaged a gifted barrister, Count Rudiger von der Goltz. On March 1 Goltz succeeded in establishing diat the blackmailer Schmidt had witnessed not Fritsch, but only a cavalry captain of similar name, Achim von Frisch. The latter very commendably admitted die felony; to clinch it, he even pro¬ duced Schmidt’s signed receipt for the 2,300 marks that he had been paid. Disturbingly, he also revealed diat the Gestapo had investigated his bank account at Lichterfelde as early as January 1 3. Was it pure coincidence diat diis was only three days after the Blomberg wedding? General Walter Fleitz, representing die army tribunal, took this star¬ tling evidence to Flitler on March 3. Flitler’s first impulse was to call off die impending hearing. Heinrich Himmler was present however, and he inter¬ jected: ‘The Fritsch and die Frisch cases are two entirely different matters. The blackmailer Schmidt has himself identified die general!’ To underline diis particular point, Achim von Frisch was now also arrested, since he had confessed to homosexual offences. Hitler ordered the Fritsch trial to begin in secret on March 10. A few days later, Fritsch himself wrote, Initially my impression was diat Goring [who presided] was working to¬ ward an open verdict — in other words that my guilt had not been established, but diat it was still possible. The weight of evidence was so great that even Goring had to an¬ nounce that no reasonable person could fail to be convinced of my innocence. Finally die key witness, the blackmailer, confessed diat eve¬ rything he had said about me was a lie. 64 i: Approach to Absolute Power During the hearings it came out that on the very eve of t lie trial t lie head of the Gestapo’s homosexual investigations branch, Kriminalrat Joseph Meisinger, had threatened Schmidt with a sticky end should he recant on his sworn testimony. Fritsch was acquitted. There is no evidence t hat Flitler concerned himself in the least with the unbecoming background of this Gestapo intrigue. It was one of Meisinger’s officials who had checked the Lichterfelde bank account in January, so Meisinger at least realised the error he had made. Shortly after the trial began, Flimmler sent him out of harm’s way to Vienna; his career was un¬ impaired by die blunder. Not so the career of General von Fritsch. On die day after his acquittal, he wrote to his lawyer: ‘Whether and to what extent die Fiihrer will allow me to be rehabilitated still remains to be seen. I fear he will resist it with all his might. Goring’s closing remarks would seem to indicate diis in part.’ In his private notes, Fritsch recollected: Both before die end of die examination of die witnesses and while read¬ ing the tribunal’s verdict, Goring took pains to justify the Gestapo’s actions. . . Fie admittedly spoke of the tragedy of my plight, but said that under the circumstances it could not be helped. Throughout it all you could hear the leitmotif, ‘Thank God we’ve got rid of him and he can’t come back.’ Goring kept referring to me with emphasis as ‘Colonel General von Fritsch (retired).’ Not until Sunday, March 20, could General von Brauchitsch obtain an interview with Flitler to demand Fritsch’s rehabilitation. ‘The Fiihrer was apparently not entirely opposed to rehabilitating me,’ wrote Fritsch later. He drafted a twelve-point list of the facts pointing to a Gestapo intrigue. At the end of March he incorporated them in a letter to Himmler. It ended with the extraordinary words, ‘The entire attitude of the Gestapo through¬ out this affair has proven that its sole concern was to brand me as the guilty party,’ and ‘I t lie re fore challenge you to a duel with pistols.’ He asked first Beck and then Rundstedt to convey the letter to Himmler as his seconds. Both of these stalwarts politely declined. Under pressure from Brauchitsch, Hitler did take a sheet of his private gold-embossed notepaper and write sympathetically to Fritsch.* * See picture section for this document. ... !- J-.r.J 'll IH ©c^eLine $Md?$Tcrc(?(?i AJ1 -Jr A J jy LkriL *r -Sp-fi Ijllltri I-5J, SS-Uhnxi C.ratnnnr'.lhur (nl tnlckF f f r 1 1 J B^T L ff r l Hlle^-s?.- F^-lltifijrE.r i'DrrmhU , ■ r.rrL'H'F.lp, * ■) **'f ill Ucl. rwi I, n t?&b 1 fl -i - i |u 22%fy *1 f.lln.! 4jJ*[fieif .J«r .i L'Tnchnnf ■.:■ fjLJ<■ il 1 .■». lurlrn mu JL-.- ist D.2.JS rji=h iiKTnhtHFF^.ira i;i ilr: • i-tm l JDsI: ^r.ijBPTt? SnLll# ■ UraalLiLL'l^ii. mnn hlOTGll IrualULI, b wjyfl. H, H iLkjnLp. 1^ f HhTl^Pn ra J- it Ehav;i■ rifttnllH l.liihl r.=-=-b. iu> . Fs -LrJ tu Hiirllons tjululiin, an Ht let HUc5iKn.li. El'ci. ^prp.Ti.npt HmJnJp.il karri, rlp-r Dll Hlr Ini', 5s-( rhF r r ^S ^ &VI JF* bli L in L _rxj itnhC Itgie-f ill.LcJ . If latatvjl r :.J I n n .t : in llflj- FP^F f Lr. - r i> Fikkl! j_ii -£ lit? Vr jn IcJiS-uiig ^I'lCAch, E . i rtrupr kirn rin kbLk((it.:-l dl>r TDiPht niLj.IUnnpl , J5i Mr! IT.I,16 Ihm. Jji.'Si n*ri 8*rrpn rA-C lUb*! iib'imrnilir.T _u-TVfj-^<■ ,nrJh.ru r S c uciuc-JTlearftJ'ilijar . nun^haml j^E iur^hn r t -i*hr* ip n . - T LJ u k n ■ r , h n. u l> uiiij 1> a t n d II II fiW ^ j yp Prince Christoph of Hesse, chief of the Forschungsamt, presses Jor the return of top secret intercepts and the keys to courier-pouches conveying them to Hitler. Equivalent to the modern NSA and GCHCf the Nazi Forschungsamt is Hitler’s indispensable wiretap and code breaking agency. Prince Christoph — brother-in- law of Prince Philip, the later Duke of Edinburgh — will die in a 1943 plane crash (GERMAN FEDERAL ARCHIVES,) 66 i: Approach to Absolute Power The general replied with a pathetic homily about the bond of confidence he had believed to exist between them. Hitler let him know that at the next Reichstag session he would personally speak words of praise for him. This did not happen, and by June Fritsch had gone so far as to draft an open letter to every senior general revealing the facts of his acquittal; this may have come to Hitler’s ears, because all the army and Luftwaffe generals who had heard Hitler’s secret Berlin speech on February j were ordered to a remote Pomeranian airfield on June 13, ostensibly to witness a Luftwaffe equipment display. At noon Hitler arrived, and then the three-hour judge¬ ment and findings in the Fritsch trial were read out to them by the tribunal’s president. After that, with visible embarrassment, Hitler began to speak: ‘Gentle¬ men,’ he said, ‘I was t lie victim of a very regrettable error over General von Fritsch.’ He asked them to picture his ‘mental torment,’ caused by the Blomberg affair. In 1936, he said, he had not taken the Schmidt dossier seriously; but after the Blomberg scandal he had believed anything possible. ‘The allegations against General von Fritsch were not malicious fabrica¬ tions,’ he insisted. ‘A minor official blundered — that’s all.’ He had ordered the blackmailer to be shot. More than one general left that airfield with the momentary conviction that Hitler had spoken honestly. Brauchitsch reported die day’s events to Fritsch two days later. Hitler appointed him to be Colonel of his old regi¬ ment, but this ancient honour did little to heal the injury. ‘Eidier the Fiihrer sees to it diat law and order prevail again in Ger¬ many,’ wrote Fritsch, . . . and diat people like Himmler and Heydrich get their deserts, or he will continue to cover for the misdeeds of diese people — in which case I fear for the future. Since die Fiihrer has sanctioned and condoned the way the Gestapo acted in my case, I must regretfully abandon my plan to challenge Himmler to a duel. Besides, after so much time has elapsed it would probably look somewhat affected. What I cannot, and never will, understand is die Fuhrer’s attitude toward me. Perhaps he personally begrudges me that I dented his aura of infallibility by being acquitted. Goddess oj Fortune H itler had returned to the Berghof, high above the little Al¬ pine town of Berchtesgaden, early on February 6, 1938. It was here that he always came when he had to ponder the path ahead. Ever since he had first been driven up the rough mountain paths on the pillion seat of a motorbike, he had been in love with this Obersalzberg mountainside — a green ridge straddling lakes and pine forests, velvet pas¬ tures and dairy herds. Flere in the late 1920s he had purchased a cottage with die royalties earned by Mein Kampf and articles published under a pseu¬ donym by the Hearst Press and the NewYork Times in America. Around this cottage he had built his Berghof.The air up here was clean and pure. ‘Fresh air is the finest form of nourishment,’ he would say. Rudolf Hess, his deputy, described Hitler’s everyday routine at the Berghof in a long letter to his mother dated January 15, 1938: On his rest days up here the Fiihrer likes to stay up far into the night: he watches a him, then chats — mostly about naval things if I’m there as diey interest us bodi — then reads a while. It’s morning before he goes to sleep. At least he doesn’t ask to be woken up until 1 or two p.m., in contrast to Berlin where he doesn’t get to bed any earlier but is up again after only four or five hours. After a communal lunch he and his guests usually take a stroll of half an hour or more to a tea pavilion built a year ago with a magnificent view over Salzburg. . . It’s really cosy sitting at the big open fire at a large circular table which just about fills the equally round building.The illumination is provided by candles on holders around tlie walls. [Heinrich] Hoffmann [Hitler’s photographer] and his missus 67 68 i: Approach to Absolute Power are usually there — he plays the part of the court jester; there’s always one of the Fiihrer’s doctors, Dr. [Karl] Brandt or Dr. [Werner] Haase, as well as the press chief Dr. [Otto] Dietrich, [adjutantsWilhelm] Bruckner, [Julius] Schaub, or [Fritz] Wiedemann; often [Sophie] Stork, whom you know, is up there with Evi Braun and her sister [Gretl]; and sometimes Dr. [Theo] Morell with his wife [Johanna] and Professor [Albert] Speer — Speer is usually up there when new buildings are being planned. After one or two hours up t here we walk down for about ten minutes to a group of cross-country vehicles waiting to drive us back down.’ Hitler appointed Martin Bormann, Hess’s chief of staff, to manage the Berghof. It was a position that gradually gave Bormann control over Hit¬ ler’s household too. A former estate manager from Mecklenburg, Bormann was a hard worker and took care that Hitler knew it: he would telephone for a routine invitation to Hitler’s luncheon table, then cancel it ‘because of the pressure of work.’ To the slothful and pleasure-loving soldiers and bu¬ reaucrats his love of hard work made Bormann a thoroughly loathsome creature. ‘Since 1933 I’ve worked like a horse,’ he wrote to Party officials after Hess’s strange defection in 1941. ‘Nay, more than a horse — because a horse gets its Sunday and rests at night.’ Hitler’s word was Bormann’s command. Bormann bought up the adja¬ cent plots of land to preserve the Berghof’s privacy. Once Hitler men¬ tioned that a farmstead spoiled his view: when he next looked, it had van¬ ished and the site was levelled and freshly turfed. On June 13, 1937 — a Sunday — Bormann noted in his diary, ‘Because of the heat of high summer, the Fiihrer wished there were a tree where the daily “march-past” occurs. I have ordered a tree from Munich.’ The lime tree was erected four days later. Thousands flocked daily to the Berghof to see Hitler in the flesh. ‘The Fiihrer is up here at die Obersalzberg now,’ wrote his autobahn architect Fritz Todt to a friend. ‘On days when he has nothing particular to do he permits anybody who wants to, to come past his garden after lunch at about 2 or three p.m., and he waves to them. It’s always a very gay procession up here on die Obersalzberg. . . The folks walk past quietly saluting, and they mustn’t shout or anything. Only die children are allowed to hop over to the Fiihrer.’ The main feature of the rebuilt Berghof was die Great Hall, a room over sixty feet long. One entire wall was a panorama window; unprepared visi- Goddess of Fortune 69 tors walking into the Great Flail gained the momentary, eerie notion that they were looking at an unusually vivid green drapery, until their eyes refocused to infinity and the distant shapes of die trees of die Untersberg mountain were seen. From the quarries of the Untersberg would later be hewn die red mar¬ ble slabs widi which Hitler would rebuild his Berlin chancellery. Legend had it diat in diat mountain lay die mediaeval emperor Barbarossa — that he would lie there for a diousand years, and that one day he would return when Germany most needed him. In the Great Hall there was an overlong table, surfaced with a red marble slab from across die valley. On it each morning die adjutants spread out the mail, the newspapers, and the latest dispatches from Berlin. On diis same marble slab were later unfolded die maps of Europe and charts of die world’s oceans. One 1940 photograph shows die Fiihrer leaning on die maps, surrounded by generals and adjutants. The potted plants have been pushed to the far end of die table, and Schmundt has casually laid his leadier document pouch amongst diem. Alfred Jodi, Wehrmacht chief of operations, is standing expression¬ lessly with folded arms in front of a rich tapestry. On die back of the snap¬ shot Jodi himself has pencilled, ‘July 31,1940: Up at the Berghof.The Fiihrer is enlarging on a decision taken shortly before — and it’s a good diing diat die maps can’t be recognised.’The maps are of the Soviet Union. Days in die Berghof passed with a monotonous sameness, die thick-walled building shrouded in a cathedral-like silence punctuated by the yapping of two Scottish terriers owned by a young woman living anonymously up¬ stairs, or by die laughter of an adjutant’s children. Hitler himself slept all morning, while the servants silently cleaned the panelling, or dusted die works of art - lu re aTintoretto orTiepolo, diere a small Schwindt. Lunch was presided over by Hitler, with die young woman on his left: die talk revolved around film, theatre, or fashion. The meals were however of puri¬ tan simplicity. Earlier in his life, Hitler had eaten meat, but he had suddenly pronounced himself a vegetarian after a suicide tragedy in his town apart¬ ment in Munich in 193 1 — a fad for which he later offered various excuses: diat he had noticed body odours when he ate meat; or that the human jaw was designed for vegetarian meals. Hitler regaled his Berghof diners with unappetising detail of the various processes he had observed in a slaughter-house, and all die distracting en¬ deavours of the young woman at his side failed to stop him from inflicting diis on each new unsuspecting visitor to the Berghof. 7 o i: Approach to Absolute Power After supper, the tapestries in the Great Hall were drawn back and a movie film was shown. Hitler followed this practice nightly until Europe dissolved into war at his command. His appetite for movies was prodi¬ gious, but Bormann efficiently submitted weekly lists to the propaganda ministry and asked for certain regular favourites like The Hound of the Baskervilles and Mutiny on the Bounty to be permanently available at die Berghof for the Fiihrer’s entertainment. it was here at the Berghof that Hitler proposed to stage his next coup — a conference widi die Austrian chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg. Relations with Austria were formally governed by a treaty of July 1936. Schuschnigg was autocratic and wilful, and refused to accept the harsh realities of Central European politics. To his friend die police president ofVienna he once ad¬ mitted diat Austria’s future was ‘of course’ inseparable from Germany’s — but he was damned if he was going to put up with Berlin dictating his own foreign policy to him. Such a meeting widi Hitler had long been Schuschnigg’s dream: he would talk to the Reich Chancellor ‘man to man,’ he said. Hitler was initially only lukewarm, but he had told his special ambassador in Vienna, Franz von Papen, in the first week in January diat die meeting might take place at the end of die mondi. On the eleventh, at Hitler’s New Year diplomatic recep¬ tion, Franpois-Poncet happened to express a hope diat 1938 would not be seeing any of Hitler’s ‘Saturday surprises’ — to which die Nazi foreign min¬ ister, Neuradi, replied diat the internal situation in Austria did give cause for concern. Over dinner with the Austrian envoy, Stefan Tauschitz, on January 21, Neuradi amplified diis: ‘If a boiler is kept heating, and diere’s no safety valve, it’s bound to explode.’This was a reference to the continued intern¬ ment of Austrian Nazis, against die spirit of die July 1936 treaty. On the twenty-second, Vienna learned from Berlin that Goring was se¬ cretly boasting diat die Reich’s difficulties in paying cash for Austrian raw materials would disappear in die spring. On January 26, the very day of the confrontation staged in Hitler’s library between General von Fritsch and the blackmailer, Neurath telegraphed from Berlin to Vienna die Fuhrer’s proposal that the Berghof meeting should take place on about February 1 Five days later Alfred Jodi’s diary quoted Keitel: ‘[The] Fiihrer wants to switch the spotlight away from the Wehrmacht, make Europe catch its breath. . . Schuschnigg had better not take heart, but tremble.’ Goddess of Fortune 7^ two days later, on February 2, 1938, Flitler walked across the chancellery garden to the foreign ministry and appointed Joachim von Ribbentrop as die new foreign minister in place of Neuradi. He had already told Goebbels of his intention two weeks before; Goebbels warned him that Ribbentrop was a ‘zero,’ but Hitler saw in him die ideal diplomatic secretary — a loyal henchman who would channel his political directives to the missions abroad. Ribbentrop had few odier admirers. One voice, diat of an army general (Karl Heinrich von Stiilpnagel), summarised the main objections to him: Indescribably vain . . . His idea of foreign policy is this: Hitler gives him a drum and tells him to bang it, so he bangs the drum loud and strong. After a while Hitler takes die drum away and hands him a trumpet; and he blows that trumpet until he’s told to stop and play a flute instead. Just why he’s been banging and tooting and fluting, he never knows and never finds out. Ribbentrop was four years younger than Hitler. He had served as an officer in a good Prussian regiment. In post-war years he had built up a diriving export-import business in wines and spirits; with his increasing affluence he had bought a villa in Berlin’s fashionable Dahlem suburb, and married into the Henkell champagne family. Hitler regarded this rich newcomer as somebody widi influential con¬ nections abroad. There is no doubt that he had selected Ribbentrop, until now his London ambassador, to replace Neurath in the forlorn hope that this would flatter opinion in the British capital. He apparently disclosed to him only his more immediate geographical ambitions — Austria, Czecho¬ slovakia, the former German province of Memel seized by Lithuania in 1923, Danzig, and the ‘Polish Corridor’ (die strip of land linking Poland to die Baltic but separating East Prussia from die rest of Germany). Ribbentrop, for his part, respected Hitler’s confidences. He was a gentleman, widi a sense of the korrekt that sometimes inflated to almost ludicrous propor¬ tions. He would decline to discuss widi post-war American investigators die details of his August 1939 secret pact with Stalin, since it was still se¬ cret, ‘as a matter of international courtesy!’ franz von Papen, Hitler’s special envoy to Vienna since 1934, arrived at die Berghof late on February 6, 1938, shortly after Hitler himself. Hitler had recalled him, but now promptly sent him back to Vienna with instruc- 72 i: Approach to Absolute Power tions to invite the Austrian chancellor to the Berghof on tlie twelfth. Papen pocketed his pride and did so; over the next few days, he and Schuschnigg discussed what demands each side had to make of the other. Schuschnigg agreed in principle to appoint pro-German ministers of finance and secu¬ rity. Hitler agreed to close down the Nazis’ headquarters in Vienna. For this summit meeting, Hitler set his stage with the care of a Bayreuth producer. The guard barracks on die approach road to the Berghof were filled with ‘Austrian Legion’ units: there were i 20,000 men in the legion, outnumbering Austria’s legal army two to one. The SS sentry manning die gate on the final approach growled in unmistakable Carinthian dialect. And as Hitler marched down the steps to meet die half-tracked vehicle bringing Schuschnigg’s little group up die icebound lanes, he was accompanied by Reichenau and Luftwaffe general Hugo Sperrle — ‘my two most brutal-looking generals,’ he later chuckled to his adjutants. He boasted to Goebbels afterwards diat he had used ‘pretty tough’ language to the Aus¬ trian chancellor, and had direatened to use force to get his way, saying, ‘Guns speak louder than words.’ The Austrian made a bad impression on the prudish Fiihrer. He remarked to his staff diat Schuschnigg had not shaved and his fingernails were dirty. The atmosphere of dieir talks was well-illustrated by Hitler’s own May 1942 recollection: ‘I won’t ever forget how Schuschnigg shrivelled up when I told him to get rid of those silly little barricades facing our frontier, as otherwise I was going to send in a couple of engineer battalions to clear them up for him.’ Hitler said he had decided to solve the Austrian problem so oder so. His advisers had submitted an alternative, less martial, plan to him. Schuschnigg must sign it too. ‘This is tlie first time in my life I have ever changed my mind,’ Hitler said. Schuschnigg put up a stout fight de¬ spite die blatant intimidation tactics. Over lunch, Hitler’s generals loudly discoursed on die Luftwaffe and its new bombs, and Hitler talked about his panzer armies of the future. Schuschnigg poked at his food without appetite.Then Hitler subtly changed his tone, and turned with endiusiasm to his plans to rebuild Hamburg with giant skyscrapers bigger dian New York’s; he sketched die giant bridge diat he andTodt were going to throw across the River Elbe — the longest bridge in die world. ‘A tunnel would have been cheaper,’ he admitted. ‘I want Americans arriving in Europe to see for themselves however diat anything they can do, we Germans can do better.’ He also announced diat later in 1938a new warship was to be launched with die name of Admiral Tegethojf— Goddess of Fortune 73 after t he Austrian hero who had sunk t he Italian fleet in the Battle of Lissa in 1866. ‘I’m going to invite both you as Austrian chancellor and Admiral Horthy to the ceremony,’ Hitler promised Schuschnigg.This generated such enthusiasm that when Hitler withdrew after lunch with Ribbentrop — to draw up the document that Schuschnigg must sign — some of the Austrian visitors loudly proclaimed ‘Heil Hitler,’ to everybody’s embarrassment. This mood changed sharply when Schuschnigg saw the proposed agree¬ ment. It required him to appoint Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart as minister of security and Dr. Hans Fischbock as minister of finance, to prepare an eco¬ nomic union between Austria and Germany. All imprisoned Nazis were to be amnestied and reinstated. Ribbentrop bluntly told Schuschnigg that t It esc terms were not open to negotiation. A new battle began. It was not a gentle process obtaining Schuschnigg’s signature. At one point Ribbentrop came in and complained: ‘Mein Ftihrer, I’ve reached agreement with him on every point except one: he won’t appoint Seyss-Inquart as minister of security.’ Hitler retorted, ‘Tell him that if he doesn’t agree, I’ll invade this very hour!’ (This was bluff.) Schuschnigg was insisting on six days’ grace, as only PresidentWilhelm Milclas could appoint new ministers. Hitler called him back into his study and resumed his bluster. Once he threatened, ‘Do you want Austria to become another Spain?’ Then he asked Schuschnigg to step outside, and as the door opened he called out into the Great Hall: ‘General Keitel!’ When Keitel hurried in Hitler motioned him to a chair: ‘Just sit diere.’This dumb charade lasted for ten minutes before Schuschnigg was called back in. Schuschnigg ini¬ tialled the final draft of die agreement without further objection. He had withstood Hitler’s hypnotic influence for longer than many of the Wehrmacht’s most seasoned generals later did. ‘I have to admit,’ Schuschnigg told a Viennese intimate two days later, ‘that t lie re’s something of the prophet about Hitler.’ For all Hitler’s tough talk, he had no intention of starting a forcible invasion of Austria, provided that Schuschnigg kept his part of the bargain. Hitler told his Luftwaffe adjutant that Austria would draw closer to the Reich of her own accord — perhaps that very autumn of 1938 — unless Schuschnigg committed some Dummheit meantime. To deter Schuschnigg from second thoughts, however, he ordered the OKW to fake preparations for an ‘invasion’; Vice Admiral Wilhelm Canaris personally arranged this from his Abwehr’s regional headquarters in Munich. 74 i: Approach to Absolute Power at first these fears seemed groundless. Shortly after Hitler’s return to Berlin, he learned on February 14 that President Miklas had fully ratified t ho Berghof agreement. Hitler was host to die diplomatic corps diat evening: the Austrian envoy Stefan Tauschitz reported to Vienna afterward diat con¬ gratulations were showered on him by Goring, Goebbels, and Hitler him¬ self. Hitler told the diplomats diat die ‘age of misunderstandings’ was over. It was not long before diis tone changed, however. As though on a given signal, the British and French newspapers began printing lurid stories of Hitler’s Berghof‘blackmail.’ ‘The world’s press rages,’ noted Goebbels, ‘and speaks — not entirely unjustly — of rape.’ The upshot was that on February 1 8, 1938, the German air force received its first ever provisional order from Goring to investigate possible operations against London and soudi- ern England, in case war widi Britain broke out. Ribbentrop’s personal Intelligence office, run by Rudolf Likus, learned diat once back in Vienna, Schuschnigg and Guido Schmidt had ‘recovered dieir balance’ and that diey were working to sabotage the Berghof agreement. Hitler adhered to it — sedulously, one might think. In his next Reichstag speech, on February 20, he praised Schuschnigg. Next day he summoned the radical Austrian Nazi, Joseph Leopold, to Berlin and dismissed him. Hitler informed Leopold’s successor diat from now on diere was to be a different approach toward Austria. To Ribbentrop and five Austrian Nazis on February 1938, he repeated diat he had abandoned forever all thought of using force against Austria. Time, he said, was in his favour. on march 3 Hitler had received the new American charge d’affaires, Hugh R. Wilson. In a private letter to President Roosevelt, Wilson remarked upon the ‘lack of drama in this exceedingly dramatic figure,’ and upon die for¬ mality of the occasion. When Wilson had met die ex-saddlemaker Presi¬ dent Friedrich Ebert diey had munched black bread and quaffed beer to¬ gether; but Hitler now received him in a stiff dress suit. The Fiihrer was healthier dian Wilson had expected — more solid and erect, though pale. The character in the Fiihrer’s face, his fine artistic hands, his simplicity, directness, and modesty were the first impressions diatWilson conveyed to Roosevelt. The same day, March 3, saw the long-announced new British initiative. The offer was brought from London by the ambassador Sir Nevile Henderson. Chamberlain himself had explained it to the Cabinet’s foreign policy committee on January 24, as a deal whereby Nazi Germany ‘would Goddess of Fortune 75 be brought into the arrangement by becoming one of tho African Colonial Powers.’ In return, Germany would be expected to limit her armaments and to recognise the status quo in Europe. Flitler listened to the ambassador’s ten-minute speech with a scowl, then launched into a ferocious thirty-minute reply: nothing could be done until die current press campaign against him in England ceased. Nor was he go¬ ing to tolerate the interference of third parties in Central Europe. He re¬ fused to consider unilaterally limiting armaments, so long as die Soviet Union’s rearmament continued unchecked. Henderson patiently outlined die colonies offered, on die globe in Hitler’s study. Hitler asked what was so difficult about simply giving back die African colonies ‘robbed’ from Ger¬ many after the World War. Hitler asked Ribbentrop to return to London to take formal leave as ambassador — an act of calculated blandishment — and instructed him to find out whether Chamberlain seriously desired entente. Hitler’s more gen¬ eral instructions to him were reflected by Ribbentrop’s remarks to Baron Ernst vonWeizsacker on March g, when he invited him to become his new state secretary. Ribbentrop talked of a ‘grand program’ that cannot be accomplished without the Sword. It will therefore take three or four more years before we are ready. . . Where exactly the fighting will be, and wherefore, is open to later dis¬ cussion. If at all possible, Austria is to be finished off [liquidiert] before 1938 is out. In Berlin, Hitler found army opinion still unsettled by the creation of die OKW. There were sounds of distant thunder. The General Staff submitted its opinion on March 7, 1938. General Waldier von Brauchitsch, Commander in Chief, signed the memorandum, which had been drafted by General Ludwig Beck, togedier with his deputy Erich von Manstein. Their proposal was that die army should have pre¬ dominance in any Wehrmacht command. Viewed in die subsequent light of a world war waged largely by the strategic bomber and the submarine, Beck’s memorandum was a dismal disappointment. In part it gratuitously insulted Hitler. In bygone times, the document conceded, any monarch could be a warlord if he chose — Frederick die Great and Napoleon were examples; but now ‘even a genius’ could not manage both political and 7 6 i: Approach to Absolute Power military leadership. Beck rightly argued 1 hat drere were two quite distinct functions in a war — tire organisation of die domestic war economy by a ‘Reich Secretary for War,’ and the conduct of strategic operations by a ‘Reich Chief of General Staff.’ Inasmuch as die balance of future wars would lie in the army’s hands, clearly the army should provide that strategic leadership. The more there comes to die fore a war in the east, which will be a matter of the conquest of territory . . . the more it becomes obvious that ultimately the success of die army will decide between die victory or defeat of die nation in that war. A further factor is diat, of our eastern enemies, Russia and Poland cannot be mortally injured at sea or in the air; and even if Czechoslova¬ kia’s cities and industrial centres are destroyed, she can only be forced at most to surrender certain territories, but not to surrender her sover¬ eignty completely. The document argued that the navy and Luftwaffe would be confined to primarily defensive roles — to ‘keeping the sea-lanes open’ and ‘defence of the homeland .’The possibilities of extended cruiser warfare, of die subma¬ rine campaign, of operations like die seaborne invasion of Holland, of the bombardment of Belgrade and the destruction of the Polish, French, and Russian air forces were not even contemplated by Beck. Hitler told his adjutants diat the document was calling for the precise opposite of what he had ordered on February 4. ‘If the army had had any say in it,’ he later reminded Major Rudolf Schmundt, ‘the Rhineland would still not be free today; nor would we have reintroduced conscription; nor concluded die naval agreement; nor entered Austria.’ ‘nor entered Austria’: toward midday on March 9, 1938, Hitler heard rumours that Schuschnigg was to spring a snap plebiscite on Austria’s fu¬ ture. This was the Dummheit that Hitler had been waiting for. The plebi¬ scite’s one question had been so formulated diat any Austrian voting ‘No’ to it could be charged widi high treason (since voters had to state dieir names and addresses on the ballot papers). Some of his ministers felt the voting age should be eighteen, with only his Party members allowed to vote; odi- ers recalled that the constitution defined the voting age as twenty-one, but Schuschnigg arbitrarily raised it for die plebiscite to twenty-four — the Nazis being primarily a Party of youdi — and stipulated that votes were to be Goddess of Fortune 77 handed to his own Party officials, not the usual polling stations. Even if one of the printed ‘Yes’ ballot papers were to be crossed out and marked with a large ‘No’ it would still count as a ‘Yes.’There were no ‘No’ ballot papers. Flitler flew his agent Keppler to Vienna with instructions to prevent the plebiscite, or failing that to insist on a supplementary question sounding t lie Austrian public on its attitude toward union with the Reich.That evening Schuschnigg formally announced the plebiscite. Flitler listened to die broad¬ cast from Innsbruck, then pounded the table with his fist and exclaimed, ‘It’s got to be done m and done now! ’ A month later he announced, ‘When Herr Schuschnigg breached the Agreement on March 9, at that moment I felt that the call of Providence had come.’ Toward midnight Hitler mustered his principal henchmen Goring, Goebbels, and Bormann at t he chancellery and told them that by calling his ‘stupid and crass plebiscite’ Schuschnigg was trying to outsmart them. He proposed therefore to force his own solution on Austria now. Goebbels suggested they send a thousand planes to drop leaflets over Austria, and then ‘actively intervene.’ Ribbentrop’s private secretary Reinhard Spitzy was rushed to London with a letter asking the new Nazi foreign minister to assess immediately what Britain’s probable reaction would be. Hitler sat up with Goebbels and the others until five a.m. plotting. ‘He believes die hour has come,’ recorded Goebbels. ‘Just wants to sleep on it. Says that Italy and Britain won’t do anything.’The main worry was Austria’s powerful neighbours and friends. Hitler took great pains drafting a letter die next day to Mussolini, begging his approval. (The complete text, found seven years later in Goring’s desk, shows Hitler not only justifying his entry into Austria but also making plain diat his next move would be against Czechoslovakia.) In his diary Alfred Jodi was to note, ‘Italy is the most tick¬ lish problem: if she doesn’t act against us, then the others won’t either.’ By ten a.m. on March 10, when Keitel was summoned to die chancel¬ lery, Hitler had provisionally decided to invade Austria two days later. ‘There’s always been something about March,’ wrote a jubilant Goebbels. ‘It has been the Fuhrer’s lucky month so far.’ Neurath, well pleased to have Hit¬ ler’s ear again in Ribbentrop’s absence, also advised a rapid grab at Austria. Keitel sent back a messenger to the Wehrmacht headquarters to fetch their operation plans. Despite Blomberg’s explicit directive of June 1937 how¬ ever there were none, except for ‘Otto.’ Keitel meanwhile went to fetch General Beck, and asked him what plans the General Staff had made for invading Austria. Beck gasped, ‘None at all!’ He repeated this to Hitler 7 8 i: Approach to Absolute Power when they got back to t lie chancellery. The most he could mobilise would be two corps. Beck primly declaimed: ‘I cannot take any responsibility for an invasion of Austria.’ Hitler retorted, ‘You don’t have to. If you stall over this, I’ll have die invasion carried out by my SS.They will march in with bands playing. Is that what die army wants?’ Beck bitterly reflected, in a letter to Hossbach in October, diat this was his first and last military conference with Hitler, and it had lasted just five minutes. The Luftwaffe raised none of these obstacles. Goring immediately made 300 aircraft available for propaganda flights. Diplomatic officials also moved fast, as Weizsacker’s diary shows: 6:30 p.m., hear from Neurath diat we’re to invade on March 12 . . . Above all I insist that we rig internal events in Austria in such a way diat we are requested from there to come in, to get off on die right foot his¬ torically. It seems a new idea to Neurath, but he’ll implant it in the Reich chancellery. At about eight p.m. the Austrian Nazi Odilo Globocnik— of whom, more later — arrived at the chancellery. He convinced Neurath to suggest to Hit¬ ler diat Seyss-Inquart should telegraph an ‘appeal’ for German interven¬ tion to Berlin. Hitler, Goring, and Goebbels drafted a suitable text. The telegram (which Seyss-Inquart never even saw) appealed to Hitler to send in troops to restore order because of unrest, murder, and bloodshed in Vienna. Over dinner in his villa, Goring handed the draft telegram to die Aus¬ trian general Glaise-Horstenau to take back to Vienna. Hitler had already given die general a veiled ultimatum for Seyss-Inquart to hand to Schuschnigg himself. At two a.m. he issued die directive for the Wehrmacht operation, ‘to restore constitutional conditions’ in Austria. ‘I myself will take charge of the whole operation. . .’ Evidently Hitler did not sleep much diat night. When Reinhard Spitzy flew back from London, arriving at four a.m. (Hitler had himself telephoned him, using a code name, the evening before), Hitler offered him breakfast and read Ribbentrop’s verdict on Britain’s likely response to the invasion — ‘I am basically convinced,’ the minister had written, ‘diat for the present Britain won’t start anything against us, but will act to reassure die odier powers.’ Goddess of Fortune 79 That morning, March 11, Goebbels’s chief propagandist Alfred-Ingemar Berndt confidentially briefed Berlin press representatives: ‘Rather more emphasis is to be put on t ho events in Austria today — the tabloid newspa¬ pers are to make headlines of them, t he political journals are to run about two columns. You are to avoid too much uniformity.’ Brauchitsch conferred at die chancellery for most of the day. When Gen¬ eral Heinz Guderian asked if he could deck out his tanks with flags and flowers to emphasise die ‘peaceful’ nature of their operation, Hitler agreed wholeheartedly. The telephone lines between Berlin and Vienna buzzed with all die plotting. A failure at the chancellery telephone exchange even obliged Hitler and Goring to conduct dieir conversations from a phone boodi in die conservatory. Hitler’s special agent, Wilhelm Keppler, was keeping a weather eye on Seyss-Inquart in Vienna now, to ensure that diis vacillating and over-legalistic Nazi minister did just as the Fiihrer told him. For several hours beyond die deadline set by Hitler in his ultimatum, Schuschnigg procrastinated. From die phone boodi Goring’s voice could be heard shouting orders to his agents in Vienna. Goring’s task was to ensure that Schuschnigg resigned before nightfall. Schuschnigg did at last postpone the plebiscite, but — after dis¬ cussing diis widi Hitler — Goring phoned Seyss-Inquart to say diat die Fiihrer wanted clear information by ^: 3 o p. m . as to whether or not President Miklas had invited Seyss-Inquart to form the new Cabinet. Seyss-Inquart expressed die pious hope that Austria would remain independent even if National Socialist in character. Goring gave him a noncommittal reply. Five-thirty came and went. Goring ordered Seyss-Inquart and the mili¬ tary attache, General Wolfgang Muff, to visit the president: ‘Tell him we are not joking. . . If Miklas hasn’t grasped that in four hours, dien tell him he’s got four minutes to grasp it now.’To diis Seyss-Inquart weakly replied, ‘Oh, well.’ At eight p.m. he again came on the phone from Vienna: nobody had resigned, and die Schuschnigg government had merely ‘withdrawn,’ leav¬ ing events in limbo. For half an hour diere was agitated discussion in the chancellery of this irregular position, widi Goring in favour now of military intervention, and Hitler a passive, pensive listener. Then, as they slouched back from die phone booth to die conference room, Hitler slapped his diigh, looked up, and announced: Jetzt geht’s los— voran!’ (‘Okay, let’s roll — move!’) At about 8:3 o p. m . Hitler signed die executive order. The invasion would commence die next morning. 8 o i: Approach to Absolute Power Soon afterward, at 8148 p.m. , Keppler telephoned ffomVienna that Miklas had dissolved the government and ordered die Austrian army not to resist. By ten p.m. die all-important telegram — signed ‘Seyss-Inquart’ — had also arrived, appealing on behalf of the provisional Austrian government for German troops to restore order. By 10:30 p.m. Hitler also knew that even Mussolini would look benignly on a German occupation of Austria. Hitler hysterically besought his special emissary in Rome over die phone: ‘Tell Mussolini I shall never forget him for this! . . . Never, never, never! Come what may!’ And, ‘Once diis Austrian affair is over and done with, I am will¬ ing to go through thick and diin widi him.’ As he replaced die telephone, Hitler confessed to Goring that this was the happiest day of his life. For die first time in over a decade he could return to his native Austria and visit the grave of his parents at Leonding. hitler told his adjutant Bruckner to ensure that Ribbentrop stayed on in London as a ‘lightning rod’ for at least two or diree more days. He himself would be inVienna, if all went well, when he next saw Ribbentrop. Neurath blanched when he heard this, and begged Hitler not to risk Vienna yet — Braunau, his birthplace, perhaps, but not Vienna. Hitler insisted, and or¬ dered absolute secrecy. For the first time in two days he retired. Neidier he nor Keitel however was allowed much slumber, as apprehensive generals and diplomats tel¬ ephoned frantic appeals to him to call off die operation ‘before blood flowed.’ Brauchitsch and Beck repeatedly phoned Keitel and Weizsacker diat night, begging them to intervene. The OKW chief of operations, General Max vonViebahn, bombarded Keitel with phone calls, and at two a.m. Viebahn willingly connected General Muff, the military attache, to Hitler’s bedside phone. Viebahn suffered a nervous breakdown the next morning and barri¬ caded himself into an office at the war ministry, where he hurled ink bottles at die door, like some military Martin Luther. (Jodi succeeded him.) Once again, it was a Saturday. At six a.m. that day, March 1 2, Hitler departed from Berlin by plane. At the Munich operations post of General Fedor von Bock he was briefed on die operation so far. Wildly cheering crowds had greeted the German ‘invaders’; Austrian troops and the veter¬ ans of the World War were lining die highways, saluting and proudly dis¬ playing die long-forgotten medals on their breasts. Czechoslovakia did not bestir herself. Indeed, as Hitler sardonically commented to the profusely weeping general seated beside him — Franz Haider — Czechoslovakia seemed Goddess of Fortune Si suddenly very anxious to oblige him. He crossed the frontier near Braunau at about four o’clock and drove on, standing erect in the front of his open Mercedes, saluting or waving as his driver Erich Kempka changed down through die gears to avoid running down die hysterical crowds pressing into dieir padi. It was dusk by the time diey reached Linz, packed widi a million clamouring Austrians. From die city hall’s balcony he spoke to die crowds: ‘If Providence once sent me out from diis fine city, and called upon me to lead die Reich, then surely it must have had some mission in mind for me. And that can only have been one mission — to return my beloved native country to die German Reich!’ On die following afternoon he drove out to Leonding where his parents lay — and still lie — buried. By die time he returned to his hotel an idea which had occurred to him during the night had taken more definite shape: originally he had envisaged an autonomous Austria under his own elected presidency; but could he not now afford to proclaim Austria’s outright un¬ ion with die Reich, i.e., the Anschluss?The Austrian public obviously sup¬ ported him overwhelmingly. He sent a messenger by air to Goring, asking his opinion, and he telephoned Keppler in Vienna to ask Seyss-Inquart to put die idea to his Cabinet at once. When these latter two arrived diat evening diey confirmed that the Austrian Cabinet agreed to die Anschluss widi die Reich. Thus was Hitler’s decision taken. ‘There is but one moment when the Goddess of Fortune wafts by,’ he reminded his adjutants. ‘And if you don’t grab her by the hem, you won’t get a second chance.’ We need not follow Hitler’s triumphal progress the next day onward to Vienna. Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, Archbishop of diat city, had telephoned him seeking permission to ring all the church bells in Austria to welcome him, and he asked for swastika banners to decorate the steeples as Hitler drove into the capital. At two p.m. on March i (, he took the salute at a great military parade at the Maria-Theresa monument. Wehrmacht troops marched past together widi Austrian regiments, garlanded alike widi flowers and flags. A diousand bombers and fighters of the two air forces — led by one German and one Austrian officer — diundered over die capital’s rooftops. Baron von Weizsacker, who had arrived widi Ribbentrop, wrote diat day: ‘Which of us does not recall that oft-repeated question of earlier years: What did ourWorldWar sacrifices avail us?’ Here was the answer. The whole city was wild widi frenetic acclaim. They were seeing the rebirdi of German greatness, of a nation defeated despite bloody self-sacrifice, dismembered in armistice, humiliated, crip- 82 i: Approach to Absolute Power pled by international debt and yet once again arising in the heart of Eu¬ rope — a nation united by one of their humblest children, a leader promis¬ ing them an era of greatness and prosperity. As darkness fell upon Vienna, now a mere provincial capital, Hitler fas¬ tened himself into the seat of his Junkers plane — sitting left of die aisle. They flew toward the sunset, the craggy Alpine skyline tinged with ever-changing hues of scarlet and gold. General Keitel was looking out over Bohemia and Moravia, to his right. Widi tears in his eyes, Hitler called his attention to Austria, on his side of the plane. ‘All that is now German again!’ After a while he leaned across die gangway again. Keitel’s adjutant, sit¬ ting behind them, saw Hitler show a crumpled newspaper clipping that he had been clutching ever since leaving Vienna. It was a sketch map of die Reich’s new frontiers. Czechoslovakia was now enclosed on three sides. Hitler superimposed his left hand on die map, so that his forefinger and thumb encompassed Czechoslovakia’s frontiers. He winked broadly at the OKW general, and slowly pinched finger and thumb togedier. Hitler campaigning inVienna, April 1938 (author’s COLLECTION) ‘Green ’ ^ ^ his was the beginning of Hitler’s new-style diplomacy. On each occasion from now on he satisfied himself that the western powers _ would not fight provided he made each territorial claim sound reasonable enough. When General Wakher von Brauchitsch had proposed to him on March 9, 1938, the strengthening of their defences along the Moselle and Rhine rivers by early 1939, Hitler had seen no need for any urgency. He was to explain, in a secret speech to Nazi editors on Novem¬ ber 10, ‘The general world situation seemed more favourable than ever before for us to stake our claims.’ March 17 saw Hitler with his chief engineer Fritz Todt unrolling maps and sketching in the new autobahns for Austria. ‘Astounding, the fresh plans he is already hatching,’ recorded Goebbels afterwards. Hitler’s next victim, as he had indicated to Mussolini, would be Czechoslovakia.Through Intel¬ ligence channels Prague indicated a willingness to seek a solution to the problem of die Germans living in the Sudeten territories just inside her frontiers. Hitler had however no desire to adopt any solution diat die Czechs might propose. On March 19 he conferred widi Nazi party leaders, includ¬ ing Dr. Goebbels, whom he invited upstairs to his little study in the chan¬ cellery. Over an unfurled map of Europe diey plotted dieir next moves. The Fiihrer confirmed that Czechoslovakia would be next: ‘We’ll share diat widi die Poles and Hungarians,’ recorded Goebbels in his extraordinary diary afterwards: ‘And without further ado.’ That same day the propaganda minister issued a secret circular to Nazi editors to use die word Grossdeutsch — Greater German — only sparingly as yet. ‘Obviously other territories belong to the actual Grossdeutsches Reich and claim will be laid to diem in due course.’ How stirring it was, reflected Goebbels in the privacy of his diary, to hear the Fiihrer say diat his one 83 8 4 i: Approach to Absolute Power desire was to live to see with his own eyes ‘tins great German, Teutonic Reich.’ Hitler announced his plan to allow Germany and Austria to vote on April i o to confirm die Anschluss. The election campaign took him the length and breaddi of bodi countries. On the seventh he had turned the first spade’s depdi of a new autobahn system in Austria. His surgeon Hanskarl von Hasselbach later wrote: ‘The people lined both sides of die roads for mile after mile, wild with indescribable rejoicing. Many of die public wept openly at die sight of Hitler.’ After speaking from die balcony ofVienna’s city hall on April 9, he took the overnight train to Berlin. As diey passed through Leipzig he remarked to Goebbels diat he was working on a plan to ship all of Europe’s Jews off to die Indian Ocean island of Madagascar. True, the island concerned was a French dominion, but an hour later he explained that one day he was going to settle France’s hash too — ‘His life’s burning ambition,’ Goebbels perceived. Bodi men voted at a booth on die Berlin railroad station concourse.The question on die ballot paper was: ‘Do you accept Adolf Hitler as our Fiihrer, and do you dius accept die reunification of Austria with the German Reich as effected on March 13, 1938?’The result staggered even Hitler. Of 49, 493,028 entitled to vote, 49,279,104 had done so; and of these 48,7^1,83-7 adults (99.08 percent) had stated their support of Hitler’s action. This was an unanimity of almost embar¬ rassing dimensions. Hitler had told Goebbels that he would put the former Chancellor Schuschnigg on trial, but diat he would of course commute any resulting deadi sentence.There was however no trial; instead he instructed Ribbentrop that Schuschnigg was to be well-treated and housed in a quiet villa some¬ where. In later years — like so many other Hitler directives — this came to be overlooked, and Schuschnigg went into a concentration camp from which he was liberated only in 194^. on march 24, 1938 Hitler again discussed the next moves with Ribbentrop and Goebbels. He would one day adjust Germany’s frontier with France, but he proposed to leave their frontier with Italy unchanged. ‘He particu¬ larly does not want to reach the Adriatic,’ observed Goebbels. ‘Our ocean lies to die Nordi and East. A country cannot throw its weight in two direc¬ tions at once.’ Almost immediately Hitler started subversive activities in die Sudeten territories. On die afternoon of March 2 8 he discussed tactics with Konrad ‘Green’ *5 Henlein, the leader of the Sudeten German Party. Henlein had been ‘dis¬ covered’ by Canaris in 193^ and schooled by the Abwehr in subversive op¬ erations. Since then he had built up a powerful political organisation amongst die 3,200,000 Sudeten Germans. Conferring widi him in top secret to- gedier widi Ribbentrop and SS-GruppenfuhrerWerner Lorenz, Hitler gave him two missions: die first was to formulate a series of demands on die Czechs of such a character that, though ostensibly quite reasonable, diere was no danger that the Czech leader, Dr. Eduard Benes, would actually entertain them; die second was to use the influence that Henlein had evi¬ dently built up in London to prevail upon die British not to interfere. Military preparations began simultaneously. On the same day, March 28, Keitel signed an important instruction to die army and air force to modernise the main bridges across die Danube and die highways in Austria leading toward Czechoslovakia. On April 1 the General Staff telephoned General Wilhelm von Leeb orders to report to Beck: Leeb would com¬ mand die Sevendi Army which would operate from Austrian soil against Czechoslovakia. General Beck’s own hostility to the Czechs was well-known. Manstein, in a letter of July 21, had written of Beck’s ‘fierce yearning’ for the destruc¬ tion of Czechoslovakia. In December 1937 Beck had referred to her, in conversation with Jeno Ratz, die Hungarian chief of general staff, as an ap¬ pendix on German soil: ‘As long as she exists, Germany can’t fight any war.’ He felt however diat Czechoslovakia was impregnable to military assault. Beck seemed unaware that modern states were vulnerable to attack by odier means, diat die army was only one weapon in Hitler’s arsenal. Hitler and die OKW, however, saw their future campaigns not just in terms of cannon and gunpowder. Unlike his generals, Hitler knew many of die cards diat his opponents held. Goring’s Forschungsamt and Ribbentrop’s Pers-Z code-breakers were regularly reading the telegrams between London, Paris, and their missions abroad as well as the cypher dispatches from die Italian and Hungarian diplomats in Berlin. Many a Hitler decision that infuriated his generals by its seeming lack of logic at the time can be explained by his illicit knowledge of his opponents’ plans. Germany’s ties widi Fascist Italy were now a fact, and Hitler hoped to sign a formal treaty with Mussolini during his fordicoming state visit to Italy. On April 2, seeing off Hans-George von Mackensen as his new ambassador to Rome, he once more said diat he had decided to write off the disputed 86 i: Approach to Absolute Power South Tyrol frontier region in Italy’s favour — Germany’s frontiers with Italy,Yugoslavia, and Hungary were permanent. ‘Our aspirations,’ said Hit¬ ler, echoing what he had told Ribbentrop and Goebbels, ‘are to die nor tit. After tlie Sudeten Germans our sights will be set on the Baltic. We must turn our interest to die Polish Corridor and, perhaps, die odier Baltic states. Not diat we want any non-Germans in our domain — but if rule any we must, dien the Baltic countries.’ Weizsacker recorded these words. He also noted that Hitler had told Neurath on April 20, his birthday, diat foreign triumphs were now coming in diick and fast. He would bide his time, prepare, then strike like lightning. Hitler dared not risk settling die Czech affair until he was sure of Mus¬ solini’s support. If, in Rome, Mussolini told him in confidence diat he was planning to extend his African empire, dien Hitler could demand Italian support over Czechoslovakia as die price for German support in Africa. And dien, as he once ruminated to Schmundt during April, ‘I’ll return from Rome with Czechoslovakia in die bag.’ On April 21 he instructed Keitel to draft a suitable OKW directive. The tactical ideal would be a surprise invasion, but world opinion would rule that out unless, for instance, some anti-German outrage occurred there like the murder of their envoy in Prague. The German army and air force must strike simultaneously, leaving Czechoslovakia isolated and demoral¬ ised, while German armour poured rudilessly dirough Pilsen toward Prague. In four days diis main battle must be over. The next day Hitler sent for the Hungarian envoy Dome Sztojay, and confided to him diat in the coming carving up of Czechoslovakia it would be up to Hungary to recover the territory she had lost there after the World War, including ‘Hungary’s old coronation city,’ Bratislava (Pressburg). Sztojay reported this splendid news to his foreign minister Koloman von Kanya in a secret handwritten letter. the big military parade marking Hitler’s forty-nindi birdiday had reminded him diat his years were drawing on. An adjutant heard him remark for the first time that his acuity of decision was now at its peak. Moreover an assas¬ sin’s bullet might always cut him down. On April 23, 1938, he signed a secret decree confirming Goring as his successor. On May 2 Hitler wrote out in longhand a private testament, a rare documentary glimpse of him as a human being, putting his affairs in order, arranging his own funeral and disposing of his personal effects to his family and private staff. ‘Green’ 8j The entire Reich government assembled at the Anhalt station in Berlin to bid him farewell for Rome t hat day. The last time he had seen Italy, in 1934, the Italians had consigned him to a hot palazzo in Venice with win¬ dows that could not be opened and myriads of mosquitoes. In his bedcham¬ ber he had clambered onto a chair to unscrew each scalding light bulb in the chandelier. This time however, in May 1938, Mussolini had provided a lavish reception. For a week in Italy, Flitler could survey the Roman scene and weigh the powers of the Duce against the prerogatives of the King. As his special train hauled into Rome’s suburbs on May 3, he marshalled his private staff and warned them not to burst out laughing at die sight of a diminutive figure kneeling on the platform, weighed down widi gold braid: for that was the king of Italy, and he was not kneeling — that was his full height .Yet there was no escaping the tiny King Victor Emanuel III, for technically he was Flitler’s host. The royal camarilla could not have angered him more had they actu¬ ally conspired to humiliate Flitler, diis humble son of a Braunau customs official. The gates of the king’s villa were accidentally locked in his face, and at die palace Flitler encountered suffocating royal etiquette for die first time. The noble Italian chief of protocol led die German guests up die long, shallow flight of stairs, striking every tread solemnly with a gold-encrusted staff. Hitler, the nervous foreign visitor, fell out of step, found himself gain¬ ing on the uniformed nobleman ahead, and stopped abruptly, causing con¬ fusion and clatter on the steps behind, then started again, walking more quickly until he was soon alongside the Italian again.The latter affected not to notice him, but perceptibly quickened his own pace, until the whole dirong was trotting up die last few stairs in an undignified gallop. There were other flaws. Hitler had proposed giving Italy a planetarium. Ribbentrop pointed out diat Italy already had two, both robbed from Ger¬ many as post-war reparations. ‘It would seem to me, dierefore,’ Ribbentrop observed in a note, ‘diat die gift of a planetarium to Mussolini might be somewhat out of place.’ At a Dopolavoro display only three gilded chairs were provided for the royal couple, Hitler, and Mussolini; inevitably die two dictators had to stand, leaving die third chair empty, while a hundred diousand chuckling Italians looked on. At a concert at die Villa Borghese, die nobility occupied die front rows while die soldiers Rodolfo Graziani, Italo Balbo, and Pietro Badoglio were crowded back into insignificance. This was repeated at the military parade at Naples. Hitler boorishly re¬ marked out loud that diese were die generals who had brought the king his 88 i: Approach to Absolute Power Abyssinian empire; at which the row behind him melted away until the generals were in front. Later, Wiedemann subsequently testified, Hitler petulantly announced to Mussolini: ‘I’m going home, I didn’t come to see the King, but you, my friend!’ He returned to Berlin on May io with mixed impressions. His worst fears of Italy’s military worth were confirmed. In German eyes t lie Duce’s most modern weaponry, proudly paraded in Rome, was already obsolete. Hitler was aghast at Mussolini’s ignorance of military technology — he would be at the mercy of his generals, he said, and they had sworn their allegiance to the king. The Italians ducked out of signing the draft alliance that Ribbentrop had taken with him, and in Weizsacker’s words, ‘dealt us a slap in tlie face with an improvised draft treaty of their own, more akin to an armistice with an enemy than a bond of loyalty signed between friends.’ Hitler had two long secret talks with the Duce on May 4, and had told him of his ambitions in the east. ‘Over Czechoslovakia,’ Goebbels noted later that day, quoting Hitler, ‘Mussolini has given us a totally free hand.’ Mussolini affirmed that in any conflict between Germany and Czechoslovakia he would stand aside, ‘his sword in its scabbard.’The phrase seemed ambiguous, but Keitel’s adjutant recorded Hitler’s words at a secret speech to generals on August 15, 1938: ‘What will Italy’s position be? I have received reassurances [visit to Italy], Nobody’s going to attack us!’ Unhappily, no full record exists of the preg¬ nant remarks that Hitler evidently uttered to Benito Mussolini aboard the battleship Conte Cavour. Mussolini recalled him as saying that ‘Germany will step out along the ancient Teutonic path, toward the east.’ the upshot of Hitler’s visit to Rome had been to discredit monarchies in his eyes for all time.To his intimates, he had in earlier years hinted that he would one day retire and pass supreme command to a contender of royal blood. He would then live his last years as a pensioner in Munich, Regensburg, or Linz, dictating the third volume of his memoirs to Fraulein Johanna Wolf, the more elderly of his secretaries. He had in fact discussed with the late President Hindenburg his plan to restore a Hohenzollern to the throne — not so much die Crown Prince, FriedrichWilhelm, as one of the prince’s sons instead. What Hitler had seen in Rome however put all thought of that out of his head. On his return to Berlin, he had Goring contact the former Social Democrat leaders like Carl Severing, Gustav Noske, Otto Braun, and Paul ‘Green’ 89 Lobe and increase their pensions — in recognition of their having dispensed with the monarchy. Nonetheless, he sent routine birthday greetings on May 6 to Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm. The prince replied with congratula¬ tions for Hitler’s contribution to peace in Europe. Hitler dourly remarked to Wiedemann, ‘I’m not here to ensure peace in Europe; I’m here to make Germany great again. If that can be done peacefully, well and good. If not, we’ll have to do it differently.’ hitler had evidently decided not to wait over Czechoslovakia.Weizsacker recorded on May 13, ‘He’s thinking of dealing with the Sudeten German problem before die year is out, as die present balance of power [Konstellation] might otherwise shift against us.’ A cunning propaganda campaign was worked out, beginning widi deliberate silence on die dispute. Goebbels briefed the Nazi editors on die diirteendi: ‘You are again reminded diat you are not allowed to report minor incidents in Czechoslovakia.’ There was a psychological battle to be won. Meanwhile, Hitler applied his mind to die supposedly impregnable Czech frontier defences. The OKW advised him that die fortifications were for¬ midable — there were big gun-sites, proof against all known calibres of ar¬ tillery, at hundred-yard intervals, and machine-gun bunkers in between. Hitler decided that the attack would have to come from within the fortifications simultaneously widi the main invasion from widiout. This would be followed by a rapid armoured penetration into Czechoslovakia, while the Luftwaffe bombers struck at Prague. The foreign line-up against him was now much clearer. Britain was the biggest worry. His agents in Vienna had captured papers revealing the ex¬ tent to which the British envoy diere had egged Schuschnigg on against Hitler. Britain’s links with France and the United States were growing stronger: from diplomatic sources Hitler was aware of the Anglo-French staff talks in London — a decoded telegram of die U.S. ambassador in Lon¬ don, Joseph Kennedy, reached Hitler early in May indicating that while Britain was prepared to force die Czechs to accept some of Hitler’s terms, he would not be given a free hand in Central Europe. After a joint confer¬ ence widi the navy on May 4, the Luftwaffe’s deputy chief of operations, Colonel Hans Jeschonnek, wrote: ‘The general political situation has radi¬ cally changed recently, with Britain emerging increasingly as Germany’s principal enemy.’ The Fiihrer had already stated quite plainly to Raeder in January 1938, for instance, ‘The Fiihrer’s impression is that die naval con- 90 i: Approach to Absolute Power struction program is not progressing fast enough. He compares the naval construction effort with the Luftwaffe’s dynamic advance and with tlie en- ergy with which Field Marshal Goring intervenes and spurs all his factories on.’ The yards lacked skilled labour, welders, and materials however, and Raeder pointed to the reckless increase in public construction projects com¬ peting with die rearmament program — the Volkswagen works, the Munich subway, die reconstruction of Berlin, Nuremberg, Hamburg, and much else. Hitler turned a deaf ear on his protests. His studied recklessness with public funds was sweeping German architecture out of the pre-1933 dol¬ drums. Pretentious new public buildings were springing up — dieir style frequently dictated by Hitler himself, as he was prone to issue diumbnail sketches of the grand boulevards and buildings. Hitler disliked the formless products of Germany’s older school of architects, and appointed die youthful Albert Speer as chief architect to Berlin, and die self-taught Hermann Giesler in Munich. To Speer — commissioned immediately to build a new Reich chancellery — Hitler commented that it would be useful for receiving and impressing die ‘little nations.’ His designs went furdier dian that however: one evening in October 1941 Hitler explained in private: When one enters die Reich chancellery one must have the feeling diat one is visiting the Master of die World. One will arrive there along wide avenues containing the Triumphal Arch, the Pantheon of the Army, die Square of die People — things to take your breath away! . . . For material we shall use granite. Granite will ensure that our monuments last for¬ ever. In ten diousand years they’ll still be standing. One day, Berlin will be the capital of the world. Hitler also handed to Speer a project for a vast stadium at Nuremberg capable of seating over 3^0,000 spectators: ‘In future,’ he said, ‘all the Ol¬ ympic Games will be held there.’ ON may 17, 1938, the Fiihrer flew widi Major Schmundt to Munich, where Martin Bormann was waiting for him with a column of automobiles. At a stately speed the convoy swept south toward Berchtesgaden, with Hitler’s open supercharged Mercedes in front and his escort and luggage bringing up die rear. From time to time Hitler glanced at die speedometer to check they were not exceeding his personal speed limit of fifty miles per hour. His housekeeper and domestic staff were marshalled on the Berghof’s terrace. ‘Green’ 91 Orderlies stepped forward and opened his car door, and he vanished into die villa. He could hear the Scottish terriers yapping in the distance, he scented die familiar odours of wood and wax polish, and dirilled to die Great Hall’s spectacle of die world spread out at his feet below. Picking his way along the narrow paths laid out on the Obersalzberg mountainside, Hitler began to diink aloud to his trusted adjutants. He still felt uneasy about his army generals. Fritsch was gone but diere was still Ludwig Beck, die Chief of General Staff; and Beck was an officer ‘more at home in his swivel chair than a slit trench,’ as Hitler sniffed. And diere was Gerd von Rundstedt, the army’s senior-ranking general; Rundstedt had deeply offended Hitler recently by advising him coarsely to have nothing to do widi diat ‘Negroid arsehole’ Mussolini. In Austria, however, Hitler had renewed his acquaintance with General Franz Haider, Beck’s deputy; he had already formed a fine impression of Haider during the big September 1937 manoeuvres. He decided to replace Beck by Haider soon. While in Berlin, Hitler had asked the OKW to draw up an interim di¬ rective for ‘Green.’ It reached the Berghof on May 21. It opened with a reassuring definition of aims by Hitler: ‘It is not my intention to destroy Czechoslovakia in the immediate future by military action unless pro¬ voked ... or unless political events in Europe create a particularly favour¬ able and perhaps unrepeatable climate for doing so.’ That same day news reached him that Czech policemen had shot dead two Sudeten German farmers near Eger, and that die Czech government was mobilising nearly 200,000 troops on the — wholly false — pretext diat Germany was already concentrating troops against her. Hitler angrily ordered Keitel and foreign minister Ribbentrop to meet him in Munich. In a secret speech six months later he was to relate: ‘After May 21 it was quite plain that this problem would have to be tackled — so oder so! Any furdier postponement would only make it tougher, and its solution even bloodier.’ Claiming the backing of Hitler, Goebbels unleashed a press campaign against Prague: ‘Ribbentrop is on the verge of tears,’ he noted gleefully. Ribbentrop arrived in Munich, warned by General von Brauchitsch before he left that die army was not ready for an attack on Czechoslovakia. He persuaded Hitler diat die press must hold its fire. Schmundt forwarded to Keitel lists of questions asked by the Fiihrer. Could enough troops be mobi¬ lised widiout putting die western powers on guard? How strong would a German armoured force have to be to carry out die invasion by itself? Could die western frontier be strengthened by die construction gangs? 92 i: Approach to Absolute Power The OKW’s replies, cabled to the Berghof, put a damper on any idea of immediate action except in an emergency.The new heavy howitzers (i ^-cen¬ timetre trench mortars) could not enter service before the fall, because no live ammunition would be available before then. To attack the enemy fortifications Hitler would have only twenty-three 21 -centimetre howitzers and eight of these were in East Prussia. All week Hitler grappled with t lie decision — to attack now or later? He was mortified by the unbridled anti-German outburst in the foreign press. Lord Halifax, the British foreign secretary, was tactless enough to write urging him not to make die situation worse — as though it was Hitler who had mobilised. The Czechs and die British even gloated that only Benes’s mobilisation or¬ der had forced Hitler to back down. By Wednesday, May 253 his mind was made up. The intellectual process involved by this was evident to his private staff. They could hear him pacing up and down hour after hour at night. War with the western powers now seemed a certainty. From here on die Berghof, his naval adjutant — die cigar-smoking captain Karl-Jesco von Puttkamer — ca¬ bled to Admiral Raeder a warning to stand by to meet the Fiihrer in Berlin on Friday, May 2 7; Puttkamer tipped him off diat diere was to be a further acceleration of warship construction, since ‘die Fiihrer now has to assume that France and Britain will rank amongst our enemies.’ Back in Berlin diat Friday, Hitler informed Raeder that he wanted die new battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz completed by early 1940; he also de¬ manded an upgrading of the armament of the new battle cruisers, the ex¬ pansion of naval shipyard capacity, and the completion of die total percent¬ age of submarines permitted under die 1934 Anglo-German Agreement. Nonetheless Hitler contrived to give the admiral die impression that the naval part of any war would not begin before 1944 or 1 94;; such was the contingency plan subsequently analysed by Raeder’s chief of naval opera¬ tions, and it was on this time assumption that die naval staff began to for¬ mulate its new ship-construction program, the Z-Plan. Hitler had also decided to begin laying down an impregnable West Wall along the western frontiers — two parallel defence zones, the forward one to be built and manned by the army, die rearward by the Luftwaffe. On Friday, May 27, he issued corresponding new targets to die army: it was to speed up work on the existing 1,360 concrete pillboxes, and build in addition 1,800 more pillboxes and ten thousand bunkers by October 1, 1938. On die following day, Saturday, May 2 8, he called a top-level confer- ‘Green’ 93 ence of selected ministers and generals in the chancellery. Goring, who guessed what was afoot, whispered apprehensively to Wiedemann: ‘Does die Fiihrer really imagine that the French won’t do anything if we weigh into die Czechs? Doesn’t he read the Forschungsamt intercepts?’ Flitler had invited Brauchitsch, Beck, and Neurath; Ribbentrop was not in evidence, but his liaison officer Flewel came with Baron vonWeizsacker. Goebbels noted in his diary a word picture of Flitler pacing up and down, pondering his decision. ‘We have to leave him alone. He is brooding on a decision. That often takes some time.’ Hitler stressed diat he would take sole responsibility for his decision — ‘Far-reaching decisions can only be taken alone,’ Beck noted him as saying—and diat decision he now announced, according to Wiedemann’s recollection, as follows: ‘It is my unshakeable resolve diat Czechoslovakia shall vanish from the map of Europe.’ He explained to them why he had not reacted immediately to die provo¬ cation offered by Prague’s unwarranted mobilisation: firstly, his army was not yet ready to penetrate the Czech frontier fortifications; and secondly, Germany’s rear cover, in die west, was at present inadequate to deter France. However, he said, with British rearmament still three years short of com¬ pletion, and with die French forces similarly unprepared, diis opportunity must be grasped soon: ‘In two or three years,’ he said, ‘their temporary weakness will have passed.’ He spoke for three hours, but when he finished he had still not indicated to diem precisely when ‘Green,’ the attack on Czechoslovakia, would begin. Opinions differed. Neurath toldWiedemann as they left the chancellery, ‘ So, we have at least anodier year. A lot of things can happen before dien.’ Later that Saturday Goring instructed his senior Luftwaffe generals to come and confer widi him the next day. On May 30 and again on June 1 Fritz Todt’s diary shows him lunching with Hitler: Hitler formally asked him to oversee the army’s construction of the West Wall. On June 1 the air ministry issued its orders for die erection of Air Defence Zone West. The navy had shown no lesser alacrity. Raeder had evidently stipulated to Hit¬ ler, at their Thursday meeting, that in any war in the west the Nazis’ first strategic objective must be to extend dieir coastal base by the occupation of neutral Belgium and Holland, because Hitler mentioned diis require¬ ment in his secret conference with die ministers and generals on the next day, May 2 8. The army’s general staff complied only most reluctantly. Beck suggested to Brauchitsch that diey humour Hitler ‘for die time being.’ Hitler in turn 94 i: Approach to Absolute Power commented cynically to Goring, ‘These old generals will just about man¬ age Czechoslovakia — after that we’ll have four or five years’ grace anyway.’ hitler’s policies now turned, t lie re fore, on destroying Czechoslovakia in a lightning four-day campaign. (It would take France at least four days to mobilise.) To Schmundt he outlined the campaign as he envisaged it: on Day One his Fifth Columnists could sabotage the Czech ‘nerve centres’ while the fortifications were seized by Trojan-horse tactics or bombed by the Luftwaffe. On Day Two camouflaged units would secure key bridges and targets between t he German frontier and the enemy fortihcations. Across these bridges on Day Three would pour the army’s mechanised units to relieve the troops that had dug in among the fortifications; and on Day Four the divisions waiting on the frontier would follow, while a motorised for¬ mation and the 2nd Panzer Division lunged into the heart of Czechoslova¬ kia. The final OKW directive that Flitler signed on May 30 suggested no date for tire attack. The document now began however, ‘It is my unshake- able resolve to smash Czechoslovakia by means of a military operation.’ The handwritten notes of Hitler’s chief adjutant Colonel Rudolf Schmundt (‘Schm!)Jor the invasion of Czechoslovakia (u.s. national archives) The Other Side of Hitler W hile the Nazi screw was slowly turned on Czechoslovakia during the summer of 1938 Hitler stayed at die Berghof and followed die lazy routine of a country gentleman, surrounded by his personal friends and dieir womenfolk. He rose at ten, read the pa¬ pers, strolled, watched a movie of his choice, and retired between ten and midnight. Once he stayed up until 3 : 1 a.m. to hear die result of die box¬ ing match in the U.S.A. between Max Schmeling and die Negro Joe Louis; but his champion was defeated, and for days afterward his adjutants grinned as they handed him the dutifully translated telegrams sent by U.S. citizens to die Fiihrer. ‘Herr Adolph Hitler, Berlin, Germany,’ cabled one corre¬ spondent from Colorado. ‘How do you feel after tonight’s defeat of Nazi number one pugilist, defeated by Afro-American?’ And another, ‘Our sym¬ pathies on die disgraceful showing Herr Max made tonight. Just about as long as you would last if we tied in to Germany.’ Hitler’s military advisers went on routine summer furloughs. Jodi and Schmundt took five weeks until die end of July, Keitel then went off until mid-August. Late in June 1938a new naval adjutant arrived, a dour Frisian, Commander Alwin-Broder Albrecht; Puttkamer returned to die destroy¬ ers. The elegant Luftwaffe adjutant Nicolaus von Below was still there, as was die new army adjutant, die brash and jocular Gerhard Engel. Himmler had also provided Hitler with a young, good-looking SS Obersturmfiihrer as an aide-de-camp, Max Wiinsche; Wunsche’s diary affords us a vivid im¬ pression of the dictator’s life and daily ordinances as well as proving die almost complete absence from the Berghof of gauleiters and odier Nazi Party dignitaries. Once, the SA chief of staffViktor Lutze gate-crashed die Berghof. Hitler afterward ordered his sentries to refuse access to anybody who tried to see him widiout appointment. The Berghof was his private 95 96 i: Approach to Absolute Power residence, and several times during the coming crises Bormann or Lammers would issue notices to that effect. Here the ir Fiihrer could hobnob in peace with his court photographer Heinrich Hoffmann or with the various ladies who currently found his favour. The Wunsche diary records young archi¬ tect Albert Speer as a frequent visitor, and telephoning ingratiatingly to report the birth of a daughter. And once it shows Hitler commanding Bormann to purchase a private car, as he desired to undertake a special motor journey somewhere ‘incognito.’ Hitler’s contempt for lawyers was notorious. In 1934 he had learned that t he Supreme Court had nullified one old lady’s testament because she had written it on headed notepaper; Hitler sent for Franz Gurtner and drafted a special law reversing the absurd ruling, but when he had come to write his own testament in May 1938 he wrote it out in full, in longhand, nonetheless. (This did not prevent post-war lawyers from voiding it all the same, on government instructions.) He showed what he thought of lawyers in one August 1942 directive, reported by Lammers to Gurtner: ‘In many cases,’ Hitler had ruled, ‘it will undoubtedly be necessary to determine whether t here were sexual relations between two people or not. If this much is known however, it is wholly superfluous to probe for closer par¬ ticulars as to how and where such sexual intercourse took place. The cross-examination of women in particular should cease! ’ Lammers contin¬ ued. ‘Every time that cross-examining police officials or judges keep prob¬ ing for details as to the how and where of die sexual intercourse, die Fiihrer has gained die very clear impression that this is done for the same reasons that the same intimate questions are asked in the Confessional box.’ Max Wunsche’s diary shows some of the other matters exercising Hit¬ ler’s mind in die summer of 1938. Onjune 1 7, ‘Fiihrer orders the pedestal of the Strauss bust changed.’ On July 7, ‘The Fiihrer commands diat the sockets of flagpoles required more than once are to be made permanent.’ Five days later, ‘ On die drive up to die Berghof a letter was passed to the Fiihrer. In this, a man complains that he has still received no reply to a letter sent two years ago (Bouliler’s chancellery).The Fiihrer is very annoyed and orders diat every matter addressed to him is to be seen to as a matter of urgency.’ On the fourteendi Hitler is found ‘deliberating whether it might not be possible to manufacture all cigarettes without nicotine content’; a few days later he ‘commands diat no more smoking is to be permitted at die Berghof.’This nit-picking extended to road safety: ‘4:44 p.m. , the Fiihrer confiscates die driving license ofSS Gruppenfiilirer [Fritz] Weitzel’s chauffeur The Other Side of Hitler 97 for six months and details the Reichsfuhrer to proceed strictly against traffic offenders.’ The Wunsche diary also records small, unpublicised acts of hu¬ manity: ‘The Fiihrer will act as godfather to the triplets of Frau Feil of Kirchanschorung. A perambulator is on order in Munich and 300 marks have been sent to the mother. Doctors’ bills will be taken care of.’ On July 21 Wunsche recorded: ‘Lunch at die Osteria.The Fiihrer commands diat the woman who passed the letter to him during the journey from the Obersalzberg is to be given help. SS Colonel [Hans] Rattenhuber is given 300 marks for this purpose.’ This was the ‘popular dictator’ — friend of the arts, benefactor of die impoverished, defender of the innocent, persecutor of the delinquent. In an early Cabinet meeting, on June 8, 1933, he had come out against die deadi penalty for economic sabotage, arguing: ‘I am against using the death sentence because it is irreversible. The death sentence should be reserved for only the gravest crimes, particularly those of a political nature.’ By June 1938, however, his compunctions were fewer. ‘The Fiihrer signs die new law providing die deadi sentence for highway robbery’; and pre¬ cisely one week later, ‘The Fiihrer countersigns die death sentence passed on the highway robber Gotze.’ He also interfered blatantly in die judicial process. ‘The Fiihrer,’ noted Wunsche, ‘commands that Salzberger, the woman-killer, is to be sentenced as rapidly as possible. Justice Minister Giirtner is informed of this.’ Every member of Hitler’s staff wishing to marry had to secure his per¬ mission first, from die most august field marshal to the humblest corporal. He took a personal interest in die prospective wives, requiring to see their photographs and frequently guffawing over the oddities of die match pro¬ posed. When in August 1936 Hitler’s chauffeur Kempka proposed to marry one Rosel Bubestinger, Schaub at first wrote to the SS authorities asking for rapid clearance — until her ancestry was found to be askew; then Schaub telephoned them instructions not to hurry die clearance, ‘but on die con¬ trary to protract it to stop diem marrying. This is the explicit instruction of a Senior Person,’ he added, in a clear reference to Hitler. Hitler himself declined to marry. He had proclaimed it the duty of every German family to produce four children, but he had cynical reasons for remaining single. He had the female vote to consider. He was wedded to Germany, he liked to say. In the twenties he had picked up women casually for an evening’s amusement — Emil Maurice, his driver, once told Hitler’s secretaries that he used to drive him to Berlin and ‘organised’ girls for him. 98 i: Approach to Absolute Power The first romance to have a permanently disturbing effect on him was with his step-niece Geli Raubal, tho daughter of his half-sister Angela. Geli’s tragic death in a locked room of Hitler’s Munich flat would mark the turn¬ ing point in his career — a moment when he would brace himself for the future, casting off all fleshly pleasures in the most literal sense. His physi¬ cian Karl Brandt would write warmly of the moral comfort and support that this young girl gave to Hitler in his years of struggle. ‘I remember the emotion with which Hitler spoke of her in earlier years — it was akin to the worship of a Madonna.’ Geli had tire cheerful resolution that Hitler valued in a woman, but she was jealous of other girls. In 1930 she cajoled him to take her to the Oktoberfest in Munich; while Hitler tucked into roast chicken and beer she saw Heinrich Hoffmann arrive with a comely fair-haired girl in tow whom he laughingly introduced to all and sundry as ‘my niece.’ Geli saw this as a jibe at her. She next saw the girl in a photograph beaming at her from Hoffmann’s studio window in Munich’s Amalien Strasse, when die Schaubs went there in May 1931 to have their wedding photos taken. The girl was Eva Braun, aged twenty-one, one of Hoffmann’s more decorative assist¬ ants. In later months Eva took to slipping billets-doux into the unsuspect¬ ing Hitler’s pockets. On one occasion Geli found the message first. In September 1931 Geli’s tortured affair widi Hitler ended with her suicide. She shot herself through the heart with Hitler’s own 6.3 ^-millime¬ tre Walther pistol. The emotional damage diat he suffered was never re¬ paired. He ordered her room locked and left as it was, with her carnival costume, her books, her white furniture and odier property scattered about it as on the day she died. In his May 1938 testament he ordained, ‘The contents of die room in my Munich home where my niece Geli Raubal used to live are to be handed to my sister Angela’ — Geli’s modier. A few days after Geli’s deadi Hitler found another note from Eva in his pocket, expressing her sympathy. Eva Braun had little of Geli’s character. ‘The greater the man,’ Hitler had defined in 1934, ‘die more insignificant should be his woman.’The simple Eva fitted die bill exactly. She was a former convent schoolgirl, but gained in self-assurance and charm as she grew older. At first Hitler had taken only to inviting her to tea in his Munich apart¬ ment, and she had to resort to great feminine cunning to win him. She faked her own May 1934 diary, threatening suicide, and left it lying around for him to find. (She was infuriated by rumours diat one of German soci- The Other Side of Hitler 99 ety’s most notable beauties, Baroness Sigrid Laffert, was a regular house- guest at the Berghof.) Eva swallowed a dose — but not an overdose — of sleeping tablets and was ‘rushed to the hospital.’ Hitler hurried to Munich, aghast at die mere threat of a second suicide scandal around his name. Her ‘diary’ was shown to him. Upon her discharge from the hospital, the artful girl was powdered a sickly hue and displayed to him while her women friends cackled upstairs. Thus she won her Adolf. In 1936 she attended the Nuremberg Rally. At die Kaiserhof hotel Frau Angela Raubal, Geli’s sorrowing mother, met her face to face. The indignant mother marshalled half the ladies in die hotel in her support while the rest sided with Eva. It was open war until Hitler intervened and told his half-sister to leave Nuremberg and vacate die Berghof where she had kept house for him forthwidi. Eva Braun moved into her own permanent apartment at the Berghof, but die villa now became her gilded cage too. When official guests came she withdrew to her attic rooms and immersed herself in old movie magazines. She knew that Hitler would never present her in public as his wife. Over die years Eva and Adolf exchanged many hundreds of handwritten letters. They filled a trunk, which was looted in August 1944, by an officer of the American CIC.* And over die years Hitler remained faithful to her. Over die last decade of his life his natural libido was somewhat diminished anyway — his medical records display only half the usual secretion of testis hormone in his blood serum, comparable to that of a busy executive — or of a man serving a long prison sentence. His staff was aware of Eva’s exist¬ ence, but kept the secret well. Emmy Goring was never introduced to her. The staff referred to her as ‘E.B.,’ addressed her as ‘madam,’ and kissed her hand. Hitler would call her ‘Patscherl’; she referred to him as ‘Chief.’ He continued to pay her monthly wages to the Hoffmann studios until die end of their lives. There was clearly an empathy between them, of an intensity not really documented except by dieir chosen manner of departure from it — the suicide pact in 1944. She remained his anonymous shadow to die end. * See page xvi .The Dana press agency announced on November 22,194^: ‘A torn field-grey tunic and tattered pair of black pants — the uniform that Hitler was wearing at the moment of the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 were among Eva Braun’s private effects. Several boxes, photo albums, extracts of letters she had written to Hitler, are now in military custody.’The information came from Eisenhower’s G-2, Major General Edwin L. Sibert.The uniform was ceremonially burned by the Americans in 1948. lOO i: Approach to Absolute Power the only other woman whose company he valued was GertiTroost, the young widow of the architect Professor LudwigTroost. He took her under his wing, appointed her a professor, and consulted her on colour schemes for the fine new buildings rising in Germany. He had first met her husband at Frau Bruckmann’s salon in 1928, and that same day he told the architect, ‘When I come to power, you will be my architect. I have great plans in mind and I believe you are the only one who can carry them out for me.’ Troost did not however live long. As Hitler gave the obligatory three taps to the foundation stone for t lie House of Art (which still stands in modern Munich), the shaft of the silver-headed hammer broke, an omen of ill for¬ tune of the highest degree, as the local architect Schiedermayer tactlessly whispered to the Fuhrer in his dialect: ‘Dos bedeudt a Ungliick.’ Hitler himself had sketched the rough outlines for the House of Art, using the back of an Osteria menu, one day in 1931 — a gallery of stern Grecian lines which even today is mocked as Munich’s ‘Athens Station.’The gallery opened in 1936, and by 1938 was recognised by the Party as a sta¬ ble, Nazi-conservative breakwater in the running tide of decadent and Jew¬ ish art. Hitler treasured in his flat a picture book of the Palace of Knossos in Crete, and this influenced his architectural tastes. He sketched in pen-and-ink hundreds of monuments, memorials, arches, bridges and temple-like struc¬ tures, witli a remarkably good eye for proportion and perspective, though showing a propensity for over-rich designs like those of Gottfried Semper, who had erected many ofVienna’s nineteenth-century buildings. It wasTroost who influenced Hitler more toward neo-classical designs — t lie soaring shafts of granite and marble, and the squat, oblong buildings that were to charac¬ terise the twelve years of Nazi rule. Troost’s place as Hitler’s chief architect was filled by Albert Speer, who had providentially built himself a studio villa higher up the Obersalzberg. Speer wrote in a memorandum on August 31, 1938: Only a few people know the scale of the Fuhrer’s plans for the reshaping of Berlin, Nuremberg, Munich, and Hamburg. These four cities are to get over the next ten years buildings quite capable of swallowing a major part of the building trade’s capacity, whereas our present stone-quarrying capacity already falls far short of these buildings’ requirements. Speer pointed out that there were not enough architects familiar with Hitler’s style to go around: The Other Side of Hitler 101 By imparting basic design ideas and by frequent personal intervention and by innumerable personal improvements the Fiihrer has created a new artistic school that has without doubt the elements of a viable and general architectural line. At present only a few architects are spreading the Fiihrer’s design ideas — architects who know what matters to him through t lieir close contacts with t lie Frihrer. . . . From 1937 on, the Elbe bridge at Hamburg particularly interested Hit¬ ler. On March 29, 1938, Todt recorded in his diary, ‘Discussion with tire Frihrer on the Hamburg suspension bridge.’ Hitler also planned a huge Congress Hall, a building so vast that a giant image of the speaker would have to be thrown by television techniques onto a screen above his podium. Until the last days of his life this would-be architect would sketch buildings and facades, while his faithful Speer made scale models from the sketches, and finally the buildings themselves. Hitler wanted the monuments of the Nazi renaissance to last millennia. On December 17, 1938, when Todt put to him Professor Wilhelm Thorak’s plans for a gigantic Monument to La¬ bour, this became very clear. ‘The Frihrer,’Todt recorded, ‘expressed reser¬ vations about using Untersberg stone. . . .The Fiihrer recommended us to consider whether a reddish granite or something similar of absolute per¬ manence should not be used, so that this gigantic monument will still be standing in a thousand years in all its nobility despite atmospheric erosion.’ driving up and down Germany, Hitler saw his dreams come true. He liked to see the faces and hands of the German construction workers. Once Wiedemann murmured to him in 1935% ‘You still have the people with you; die question is: how much longer?’ Hitler indignantly replied, ‘They’re be¬ hind me more dian ever — not “still.” Come for a drive with me — Munich, Stuttgart, Wiesbaden — then you’ll see just how enthusiastic the people are!’ He couldnot, however, take criticism. In early 1939,Wiedemann wrote a short sketch of die small talk at Hitler’s table: All argument, however reasoned, was virtually impossible. . . .The Fiihrer used to tell anecdotes of die World War . . . and of his own childhood and youth experiences, and he revealed a lot of whatever he happened to be mulling over at the time, so diose lunching widi him before a big speech had a pretty fair idea of what he was going to say. In earlier years 102 i: Approach to Absolute Power I was often shocked at his unbridled remarks about the Jews, t lie Church, the bourgeoisie, the civil service, and monarchists. Later on it left me stone cold, as it was always the same tiling. Eva Braun, asleep on a summer meadow in Bavaria before the war;from a roll offilm found at the Berghof in 1945 (author’s collection) Whetting the Blade L ess regular visitors that summer of 1938 were the military. Occa¬ sionally they gathered in the Berghof’s Great Hall — army and air force generals, or experts on fortifications, standing uncomfort¬ ably on the terra-cotta-red carpet or staring uneasily at the oak-panelled ceiling until the Fuhrer came downstairs to hear them out. He could not fathom his generals. To Hitler, a new nation’s first war was as essential as cutting teetli to a growing child. Six years from now, on June 22,1944, he would put tlais blunt philosophy to a secret audience of newly promoted generals: ‘Whatever is born into this world must suffer pain on its arrival. The first sign of life t hat: a child gives as it leaves its mother’s womb is not a cry of joy but a cry of pain. The mot her too feels only pain. And every nation emerging in this world is also accompanied by trials and suffering; tint’s the way things are. . .The birth certificate of nations must always be written out in blood.’ The Luftwaffe worked hard all summer planning bombing attacks on Czech cities and airborne operations. All this was however anathema to the effete and elderly Reichswehr generals — especially Ludwig Beck, the Chief of General Staff. He fired off wordy memoranda all summer, marshalling spurious arguments against ‘Green.’ Even if Hungary attacked simultane¬ ously the campaign would still last at least three weeks; but the new West Wall could not hold out more than two weeks against tlie French. Hitler’s emergency plan to arm Labour Service battalions to man the West Wall was ‘a military impossibility.’ General Beck thoroughly endorsed the idea of destroying Czechoslova¬ kia. But, procrastinator that he was, he preferred it all to come ‘in the fu¬ ture’ 'r~ not now, when he was Chief of General Staff. His memoranda grew both shriller and gloomier, until by mid-July 1938 he was threatening 1 °3 104 i: Approach to Absolute Power Brauchitsch that he would call on the leading generals to resign widi him if die Fiihrer would not abandon his intentions. Brauchitsch showed die docu¬ ment to Hitler. Beck’s arguments were riddled with fallacies — among diem being diat German arms production could never be increased, or diat all Germany’s allies were weak and unreliable, while her enemies were resolute and pow¬ erful. To appreciative audiences likeTodt, Schmundt, and Engel, Hitler tore the arguments to shreds: for example, Beck had included France’s garde mobile, police, and gendarmerie as well as her regular army, but he had not added to the German army strength die equivalent SA, SS, or police battal¬ ions. ‘Beck should not think me stupid,’ he complained. When it was all over he recounted in secret to hand-picked Nazi editors what this internal struggle was like: You can take it from me, gentlemen, it was not always easy either to take such decisions or to stand by them, because obviously the whole nation does not throw its weight behind diem, far less die intellectuals: there are, of course, lots of gifted characters — at least diey regard themselves as gifted — and they conjured up more obstacles than endiusiasm about such decisions. That’s why it was all die more important diat I stood by the decisions I took back in May and carried them out with iron deter¬ mination in face of every opposition. Hitler also had a low opinion of die army’s engineers. He found the army’s Inspector of Engineers and Fortifications, General Otto Forster, quite ignorant of bunker design and modern weapons technology. Mistrustfully, he sent Goring and Fuftwaffe experts to inspect the army’s progress with the West Wall early in June. By early 1938 only 640 blockhouses had been completed here and — until Hitler’s recent demand for twelve diousand more — the army had only been planning to add anodier 1,360 during 1938. Goring called at the Berghof on June 14 and together withTodt delivered a devastating report on the progress made by the army so far. Virtually nodi- ing had been done, he claimed: for instance, the entire Istein Block boasted only two puny machine guns. The comparisons were not fair to die sixty-year-old Generaloberst Adam, because he had had first to solve all the problems of accommodating, feed¬ ing, and supplying the huge construction force. And whileTodt’s mass pro¬ duction of die earlier pillbox designs would not begin until early August, Whetting the Blade 105 the army was struggling with much more complex sites. Hitler was very angry; Brauchitsch in turn required Adam to visit the Berghof on June 30. Adam did not mince his language; he described Hitler’s order to erect 1 2,000 bunkers by October 1 as impossible. ‘It’s written in the stars,’ he put it, ‘how much we ll have done by autumn.’ Hitler retorted that ‘The word “impossible” is unknown to [Todt]! ’ Todt himself was puzzled by all this army rancour, and wrote that day to the adjutant of Rudolf Hess, Alfred Leitgen: ‘You put up with a lot of tilings that frankly you don’t expect after five years of National Socialism.’ The outcome of all this was a remarkable document, dictated by Hitler to his secretary Christa Schroeder — a wordy essay on fortifications design and infantry psychology. It turned on his insistence that the West Wall must conserve the fighting power of its defenders, not just their bare skins. He ridiculed the monstrous Infanteriewerk designed by the army engi¬ neers. Hitler’s ideal was a small gastight pillbox that could be easily mass-produced and scattered in depth along the line, to shelter his infantry from the enemy’s softening-up bombardment. Once the bombardment was over, these pillboxes would disgorge their troops, their weapons unscathed, into tire open to engage the subsequent French infantry attack. ‘To be killed then is honourable,’ Hitler explained, ‘but to get smoked out of a blockhouse is not only cowardly but stupid.’ He knew that the infantryman was a human being with mortal fears and the need for sleep, food, fresh water, and shelter. How many of his comrades of the World War had died needlessly while going to the latrines, just because of the short-sightedness of the Otto Forsters who had forgotten to provide them in the bunkers? ‘Particularly die younger soldiers in combat for the first time will need to relieve them¬ selves more frequently,’ Hitler dictated. Elsewhere his document observed, ‘Only somebody who has fought a defensive battle for weeks or months on end will know the true value of a flask of drinking water, and how happy die troops are when they can just brew up some tea or coffee.’ On July 4 he dictated to Fritz Todt that building projects diat could not be ready diat year must take second place to this Wall, ‘which is a project diat will make any further work in peacetime possible,’ as Todt admonished State Secretary Werner Willikens next day. All that summer Hitler’s adjutants saw him sketching new bunker de¬ signs. He laid down how thick the concrete should be, the amount of steel reinforcing, die position of each girder. The sketches became blueprints, io6 i: Approach to Absolute Power the blueprints became wooden forms and webs of reinforcing, the millions of tons of concrete were added, and at the rate of seventy sites a day the West Wall took shape. By late August 148,000 construction workers were employed; the army engineers provided 50,000 more. A hundred trains a day transported 1 lie construction materials to t lie west. Six batteries of former naval 1 70-milli- metre guns were to be sited so that they could bombard the French towns of Strasbourg, Colmar, and Mulhouse in retaliation for any French attack on German towns. On August 1 2,Todt was again summoned to the Berghof and ordered by Flitler to build an intermediate position, consisting of hun¬ dreds of the heavy strongpoints he had himself sketched. Todt decided to shut down work on several autobahn sections to find the workers and fore¬ men necessary. how much of all this was pure bluff, we shall never know. Spitzy himself witnessed one act after an excellent luncheon with him and his private staff: a manservant announced t he arrival of a noble British emissary. Flitler started up in agitation. ‘Gott im Himmel! Don’t let him in yet — I’m still in a good humour!’ Before his staff’s eyes, he tlien worked himself up, solo, into an artificial rage — his face darkened, he breathed heavily, and his eyes glared. Then he went next door and acted out for die unfortunate Lord a scene so loud that every word was audible from the lunch table. Ten minutes later he returned with sweat beading his brow. He carefully closed the door behind him and said with a chuckle, ‘Gentlemen, I need tea. He thinks I’m JuriousV Hitler was one of the masters of psychological warfare too. ‘Thank God they all read German and take our newspapers,’ he would remark about his opponents with a snigger in November. (In August, he explained his method to his generals: ‘Put the wind up them — show diem your teeth!’) Each day he scanned the Forschungsamt’s latest wiretaps on the phone conversations between Prague and Czech diplomats abroad, to keep track of his own success. He deliberately spread misinformation about the actual date of any planned invasion. On May 2 2 he had received Henlein in secret; two days later Henlein confided to die Hungarian military attache in Prague, Eszterhazy, ‘The Fuhrer has assured me that the present gap in the West Wall will be sealed in eight or ten weeks, and then he’ll tackle the Czech problem.’ On July 14 he briefed Wiedemann, whom he knew from the wiretaps to be a chatterbox, to tell Lord Halifax on his coming trip to London diat the deadline was Whetting the Blade loy March 1939. On August 9 he stressed to FritzTodt that work on the West Wall would continue to October 1 at least, ‘probably even until October 1 ^ — in short, until the first shots ring out. Two days later he ordered Flalder to have the six 170-millimetre gun batteries ready to open fire by the last day in September. As Flitler explained somewhat superfluously to Wiedemann before his departure, he was a revolutionary and as such unapproachable by the tech¬ niques of old-style diplomacy. On July 1 2 Flitler instructed Ribbentrop to ‘talk tough’ on Czechoslovakia. Goring’s Luftwaffe, Ribbentrop must say, was invincible. He himself, he told Ribbentrop on a later occasion, would be in one of die first tanks invading Czechoslovakia! On July 14 the Danzig gauleiter, Albert Forster, met Mr. Winston Churchill, and told him that ‘if Britain and Germany could only come to terms they could share the world between them.’ Four days later, on July 18, Wiedemann flew back from London to Berchtesgaden. Lord Halifax, he said, had revealed to him that his one am¬ bition in life before he died was to see the Fiihrer ‘at the side of the king of England, driving to Buckingham Palace to the cheers of the crowds.’ hitler realised that his army generals viewed the immediate future less festively. Early in August 193 8 he learned from General von Reichenau t hat t here had been a gathering on August 4 of the most senior generals. Beck had read out his latest memorandum, and called for concerted opposition by die army. (As Hitler quipped to his staff, Beck was only ever able to make up his mind when his decision was against doing somediing!) Hitler called to die Berghof’s Great Hall die generals’ chiefs of staff, and spoke to them for diree hours. When however he spoke at one point of die West Wall, Major General Gustav von Wietersheim quoted his superior, General Adam, as predicting diat the Wall could be defended for diree weeks at most. Hitler began to leaf dirough his notes and suddenly interrupted him widi a torrent of facts and figures on die quantities of concrete, iron, and steel invested in die fortifications. Hitler declaimed, ‘I’m telling you, Gen¬ eral, the position diere will be held not for diree weeks but for three years! ’ On die day after the meeting, General von Leeb learned of it from his Chief of Staff, Manstein. ‘He’s just come from the Fiihrer,’ Leeb put in his diary of August 11. ‘Thinks die chips are already down.’ 108 i: Approach to Absolute Power ‘What manner of generals are these — that one has to whip to war in¬ stead of holding them back?’ Hitler asked in exasperation. An immediate antidote had to be found. He invited all die army’s senior generals to attend a demonstration at the Juterbog artillery school on August i 5. He had in fact planned several such artillery demonstrations. On November 10 he was to explain to his appreciative Nazi editors: ‘I was convinced that these months of activity would slowly but surely get on the nerves of the gentle¬ men in Prague.’ At Juterbog, construction workers had erected exact rep¬ licas of the Czech frontier fortifications. Now Colonel Walter Model, head of the General Staffs experimental branch, staged an infantry assault on them. According to Curt Liebmann, it was ‘pure theatre, with much donner und blitzen and shouts of Hurrah! ’ General Beck was furious but could say nothing. Now Hitler ordered the 11, 0-millimetre howitzers to open fire on the ‘Czech bunkers,’ followed by other guns — including the high-velocity 88-millimetre anti-aircraft guns, of which he had ordered one hundred placed at the army’s disposal for the assault. After t lie deafening barrage stilled, he clambered through die smok¬ ing and battered concrete hulks while Keitel’s adjutant struck matches to illuminate tlie gloom. Only direct hits on the embrasures had had any real effect. Hitler emerged grinning however, knocked the dust off his brown Party tunic, and loudly professed himself astonished at the devastation. In the canteen he spoke to the generals. Erhard Milch made a brief diary note: ‘August 15, 1938, Flihrer’s speech to the generals, 2:4^ 4:14 p.m . A glimpse into his thinking, his mind is made up!! ’ Keitel’s adjutant Eberhard wrote a more complete record.This shows tint Hitler once again rehearsed the problem of Lebensraum. ‘It is my one great fear that something may befall me personally, before I can put the necessary decisions into effect,’ he explained. He had already taken die first seven steps: he had founded die Party to ‘clean up’ Germany; established political unity in 1933; taken Germany out of the League of Nations and dius restored her freedom of action; re¬ armed; reintroduced conscription; remilitarised die German Rhineland, and reunited Austria with the Reich. The eighth step now lay ahead: ‘However the situation may develop, Czechoslovakia has got to be eliminated before anything else.’ ‘In political life, diere is but one moment when die Goddess of Fortune wafts by,’ he declaimed. ‘And if you don’t grab her by the hem you won’t get a second chance!’ He had used diat argument before, of course. On August 24, 1938 Hitler invited the Hungarians to ajeast (author’s collection) no i: Approach to Absolute Power Britain’s rearmament was barely one year old, he pointed out. ‘They’ll recoil as long as we show no signs of weakening.’ The quality of France’s artillery and aircraft was dubious. Of Russia, Flitler had no fears whatever. As for Czechoslovakia herself, a war of nerves would do as much as any¬ thing. ‘If somebody is forced to watch for three long months while his neigh¬ bour whets the blade . . .’ (Flitler left the sentence unfinished.) In his view, after a brief spell of fanatical (‘Hussite’)* resistance, Czechoslovakia would be finished. Flitler concluded his speech, ‘I am firmly convinced that Ger¬ many will win and that our National Socialist upbringing will see us through.’ And he added, ‘I believe that by the time this year is out we shall all be looking back on a great victory.’ Beck was horrified by all of this. In Berlin t he next day, August 16, Gen¬ eral Leeb entered in his private diary: ‘Chips down. Fuhrer convinced Brit¬ ain and France won’t intervene. Beck opposite opinion, gloomy mood.’ At Juterbog Beck had exclaimed to General Adam, ‘After a graphic display like tliat the man [Hitler] will only go more berserk than ever.’ He said he was going to wait until Hitler ‘threw him out,’ but submitted his resigna¬ tion offer to Brauchitsch on the eighteenth nonetheless. Hitler asked Beck to stay on for t he time being, for ‘reasons of foreign policy,’ and Beck meekly agreed. He probably hoped for command of an Army Group, but nothing was further from Hitler’s mind. By the end of August 1938 General Franz Haider, fifty-four, a Bavarian of slight physique and a mild, pedantic temperament, had taken over the General Staff. Beck was out — right out. throughout that month, August 1938, the ‘whetting the blade’ contin¬ ued. When t lie chief of the French air force, General Joseph Vuillemin, was shown around the Luftwaffe’s installations, Goring arranged a spectacular but deceitful display from one end of Germany to the other. The French delegation secretly advised Paris that the French air force would not last many days against Hitler’s Luftwaffe. When Hitler tried to bribe the Hun¬ garians into promising outright support of his invasion of Czechoslovakia however he was disappointed. Hungary had been dismembered after the World War, losing slabs of territory to Czechoslovakia. A flamboyant week-long state visit by the Hungarians, coupled with the launching of a *The reference is to Jan Hus, the Czech patriot and revolutionary. Whetting the Blade 111 battle cruiser named Prinz Eugen in their honour*, failed to extract more than conditional undertakings from their Regent, Admiral Miklos von Horthy. They were not ready for war. In 1937 Beck had indicated that the target year was 1940 and — as the Hungarian defence minister Jeno Ratz confided to Keitel on August 22, 1938 — Hungary had laid plans accord¬ ingly. Hitler had used all his gangster charms to impress the visitors. Knowing that Madame Horthy was a devout Catholic, he had placed a prayer stool and crucifix in her rooms, as well as a large bouquet of her favourite flower, lily of the valley. Then he took Horthy and his staff aboard the German state yacht Grille so t hat the old admiral could feel the throb of engines and the pull of waves beneath his feet again. The secret meetings which began on August 23, during a sea trip to Heligoland, were stormy. In the morning Hitler conferred privately with Horthy. The Regent declared his willingness on principle to participate in ‘Green,’ but said that 193 8 was far too early. Horthy picturesquely reminded the Fiihrer t hat Hungary had ‘ 1 30Yugoslav camps’ along her other borders. When he then enlarged on the risk that ‘Green’ would unleash a world war, resulting in Germany’s defeat by the British navy, Hitler impatiently inter¬ rupted him: ‘Rubbish! Hold your tongue!’ It was inconceivable to him that Hungary was so reluctant to fight to regain her part of Slovakia. As he sourly pointed out to Imredy that after¬ noon, ‘This is going to be a cold buffet. There’ll be no waiter service — everybody will have to help himself.’ They returned by separate trains to Berlin on August 24. On the train, Admiral Raeder sought a private interview with Hitler and asked him about die likelihood of naval warfare with Britain. He set out the formidable stra¬ tegic problems diat Germany would face. Hitler listened politely and ended dieir interview after an hour with the remark, ‘Herr Admiral, what you and I have been discussing is pure theory. Britain will not fight.’ He maintained die pressure on their Hungarian visitors. Keitel visited Ratz in his hotel on August 2 4, according to the Hungarian record, and again emphasised Hitler’s firm resolve to occupy Czechoslovakia; he added diat only the date was uncertain. * Italy had objected to the original choice of name, Admiral Tegethoff, offered by Hitler to Schuschnigg. 112 i: Approach to Absolute Power When Ratz asked t lie Fuhrer next day what act would be considered a sufficient Czech provocation, Hitler replied, ‘The murder of German citi¬ zens.’ protected by two thousand security agents, Hitler set out on August 26, 1938, from Berlin for a much-publicised inspection of the West Wall. At Aachen near the Belgian frontier General Adam met him, and indicated that what he had to say was secret; he asked for Himmler, the labour-service chief Konstantin Hierl, and Fritz Todt to withdraw from t lie dining car, leaving generals Brauchitsch, Keitel, and Jodi. Adam stoutly began, ‘As gen¬ eral commanding the western front I obviously have a far better insight into the situation here than anybody else, and my worries are consequently big¬ ger.’ Hitler interrupted menacingly, ‘Get to tlie point! ’ Adam embarked on a long-winded warning t hat by the time the winter frosts set in they would not have completed more than one-third of the West Wall at most; and that he, as the military commander, must always take the worst possible case into account, namely that the western powers would march. He got no further. Hitler interrupted again, this time finally, to end the conference. In a convoy of three-axle cross-country vehicles, he toured the con¬ struction sites with Adam’s sector commanders. The narrow country lanes were choked with thousands of heavy trucks carrying sand, gravel, steel, cement, and tarpaulin-sheeted objects that were obviously guns and am¬ munition, westward to the Wall. Afterwards, he returned to the train for further conferences and to sleep. The General Staffs records show that he tried to convince the generals that: France would not risk serious interven¬ tion so long as she felt menaced by Italy in North Africa and along her Alpine frontier. General Adam remained pessimistic. Hitler stubbornly main¬ tained, ‘I will not call off the attack on Czechoslovakia.’ On the twenty-ninth, the last day of this tour, he proclaimed to the generals, ‘Only a scoundrel would not be able to hold this front!’ General Adam stood there with his tail between his legs, according to Keitel’s adju¬ tant Eberhard. Hitler rebuked the unfortunate western front commander, ‘I only re¬ gret that I am Fuhrer and Chancellor, and not Commander in Chief of the Western Front! ’ It was obvious to Keitel that Adam’s days in command were numbered. Munich W hen General Franz I lalder first reported to the Fiihrer as the new Chief of General Staff on board the Grille on August 22, 1938, Flitler had teased him: ‘You will never learn my real intentions. Not even my closest colleagues, who are convinced that they know them, will ever find them out.’ One tiling was certain: that summer Flitler really wanted a war — whether to write out die ‘birth certificate’ of his new Reich in blood or to ‘forge die Austrians into a worthwhile component of the German Wehrmacht,’ as he had explained to the generals on August 1 j. ‘Clausewitz was right,’ he exulted to his adjutants upon leaving anodier military display in East Prussia some days later: ‘War is the father of all diings.’ This was Flitler’s favourite quotation. He repeated it in his secret speeches on May 20, 1942, on January 27, 1944, again on June 22, 1944, and in his war conference of January 9, 1944 — when even his most ardent followers had long grown tired of Hitler’s war. In 1938 he also told his generals that he wanted Germany’s older troops, the thirty- to diirty-five-year-olds, to see some combat action in this Czech campaign; die younger soldiers could taste blood in the next. Opinion at the top level was — and remained — divided as to whether Hitler was bluffing or not. Weizsacker wrote privately on September 1, ‘None of diis would prevent me from laying a (small) wager even now diat we shall preserve the peace in 1938.’ Three days later however Ribbentrop again informed him that ‘Green’ would begin ‘within six weeks.’ For tech¬ nical reasons, ‘ Green’ could not begin before October 1 anyway; but equally, for the best flying weather, it ought not to be delayed after the fourteenth. The leader of die Sudeten German party, Konrad Henlein, was Hitler’s ‘secret weapon’ for breaching die Czech fortifications. ”3 114 i: Approach to Absolute Power Hitler had secretly counselled, several times during July and August 1938, with Henlein and his chief lieutenants. Henlein was by no means enthusias¬ tic about ‘Green.’ At Bayreuth on July 2 3 he vainly tried to dissuade Hitler from using force; Hitler replied that his young Wehrmacht needed a taste of fire. At the Breslau gymnastics festival a week later they again met: Hitler invited him up to his hotel room. He told Henlein he had nothing to add to the instructions he had long since given him. Evidently this was an act for the benefit of the journalists ringing the hotel. In mid-August, Henlein’s coarse deputy, Karl-Hermann Frank, came to tire chancellery and tried to convince Hitler t hat maps showed that t lie distribution of Czech and Ger¬ man population groups was such that ‘self-determination’ alone would even¬ tually bring Czechoslovakia into Hitler’s grasp. He found he was talking to deaf ears. Hitler was out for blood. By this time the Ftihrer had begun examining with his OKW staff ways of controlling the crisis that would unleash ‘Green.’ Goebbels recorded that the problem now was, how could the Ftihrer create ‘a suitable situation to strike.’ On August 26 Hitler ordered Frank to prepare to manufacture incidents in the Sudeten territories. The snag was the British negotiating team now lodged in Prague under a venerable Fiberal peer, Ford Runciman. Outwardly Hitler had to appear to be heeding tire British proposals. He, of course, wanted all Czechoslovakia, not just control of the Sudeten regions. This explains Hitler’s irritation when Henlein’s Berlin agent, Fritz Burger, brought the Runciman proposals to Munich on August 29. ‘What business do the British have, poking their noses in?’ exclaimed Hitler. ‘They ought to be looking after their Jews in Palestine!’ An apprehensive Konrad Henlein appeared at the Berghof on Septem¬ ber 1. Goebbels had also come, and Hitler told them that the gap in their country’s western defences was virtually closed. ‘Britain,’ he prophesied, ‘will hold back because she does not have tlie armed might. Paris will do what Fondon does. The whole affair must unroll at top speed. For high stakes you’ve got to run big risks.’ Goebbels noted these words with ill- concealed apprehension. Hitler showed Henlein over Bormann’s model dairy — built at great expense to supply the SS barracks. (‘God knows the price of a pint of your milk,’ Hitler used to bully him.) He wisecracked to Henlein: ‘Here are the representatives of the National Socialist Cow Club! ’ He was evidently in high spirits — but Henlein was not. Hitler repeated that he was still planning a military solution: Czechoslovakia was to be elimi¬ nated ‘this September.’ Henlein was to keep on negotiating with Prague, Munich 115 and start manufacturing ‘incidents’ from September 4. On the second, Hit¬ ler delivered another little homily to his cronies — Goebbels, Henlein, Ribbentrop, Bormann, Speer, and Hoffmann — on ‘keeping one’s nerve.’ Seeing Henlein off at 3:30 p.m., Hitler is alleged to have laughed: ‘Long live die war — even if it lasts eight years.’ Perhaps it was all bluff. (There are clues that Hitler was using Henlein as a powerful psychological weapon — for instance, a secret directive to die Nazi press a few days later: ‘There’s to be a reception at Nuremberg. . . Henlein is not being mentioned in the official report on this, but there is no objection to the publication of photographs that may show him attending diis reception.’) henlein was not alone in his anxiety. The conservative minister of finance, Count Schwerin von Krosigk, sent to Hitler a memorandum formulated in quite clever terms: the German public lacked the inner resolution to fight a new war. ‘It will not be able to bear for long the hardships of war, large and small — the ration cards, the air raids, the loss of husbands and sons.’ So wrote Krosigk on September 1 in his memorandum. In his speech to Nazi editors two months later Hitler would refer to ‘die hysteria of our top ten diousand.’ He turned an equally deaf ear on his diplomats. The moderate Konstantin von Neurath tried to see him and was refused. When his ambassador in London tried to bring him a private message written by Neville Chamber¬ lain, Hitler refused to receive him too. When his ambassador in Paris quoted to Berlin the French foreign minister’s clear warning diat France would stand by Czechoslovakia, Hitler pushed die telegram aside and said it did not interest him. Hans Dieckhofif, his ambassador in Washington, was given equally cavalier treatment. All diree ambassadors demanded to see Hitler. It was not until the Party rally however diat he condescended — turning to Wiedemann and instructing: ‘Well, show die Arschlocher [arseholes] in! ’ On Ribbentrop’s advice he instructed all three ambassadors not to return to dieir posts for the time being. Weizsacker indignantly wrote for die record, ‘After hearing out Messrs. Dieckhoff, von Dirksen, CountWelczek, [Hans Adolf] von Moltke [ambassador in Warsaw] and [Hans Georg] von Mackensen [Rome] on September 7 ,1 reported as follows to Herr von Ribbentrop on die eighdi: “The opinion of all these gentlemen is, with certain shades of difference, in flat contradiction to diat of Herr von Ribbentrop inasmuch as diey do not believe diat the western democracies will abstain in the event 116 i: Approach to Absolute Power of a German-Czech conflict.” I added that my own opinion is well enough known to Herr von Ribbentrop as it is.’ hitler’s own routine was hardly that of a dictator preparing for war. He was to be seen spending the day visiting galleries in Munich: he inspected t lie models of Speer’s new chancellery building and paintings for the ‘Fiihrer Building’ (Fiihrerbau ), the Party HQ. The evening was passed idly at the Berghof, watching two unsatisfying Hollywood movies — both of which Hitler peremptorily halted in mid-reel. After midnight of August 30—3 1, Major Schmundt brought planning pa¬ pers relating to the phoney ‘incident’ that was to be staged to justify ‘ Green.’ The OKW argued for the main ‘incident’ to be staged when the weather was favourable for the Luftwaffe; and it must be early enough in the day for authentic word to reach OKW headquarters in Berlin by noon of the day before die Nazi invasion. It would put die Germans in enemy territory at the mercy of the Czechs and prevent die issue of any warning to diplomatic missions in Prague before the first air raid. It would however satisfy for Hitler his vital condition for success: surprise. Haider had outlined the General Staff plan to Hitler and Keitel aboard the Grille at Kiel, using a map of Czechoslovakia. The country would be bisected at its narrow waist.To Hitler diis seemed wrong: this was precisely what die enemy would expect. He asked Haider to leave the map, and after returning to Berlin he instructed Brauchitsch that the tanks were to be employed quite differently, concentrated into one force which would drive nordi-eastward from Nuremberg, through the Czech fortifications and Pilsen and straight on to Prague. The political objective was to capture Prague, the Czech capital, in the very first few days. The General Staff disagreed widi Hitler’s plan. He summoned Brauchitsch to the Berghof on September 3, and dinned into him why he insisted on his own plan. Originally, he said, the Czechs had not prepared dieir defences in anticipation of attack from Austria; so their fortifications facing Rundstedt in Silesia were far stronger. ‘The Second Army might run slap into a second Verdun. If we attack there we shall bleed to death attempting the impossi¬ ble.’What the Czechs would not expect would be the attack Hitler planned to deliver with Reichenau and a massed force of tanks. ‘An army plunged into the heart of Bohemia will settle the issue.’ The General Staff simply ignored Hitler’s plan. Haider told Keitel that the orders had already gone out, and it was too late to alter them. Keitel flew to Berlin early on Septem- Munich HI ber 8 and urged Brauchitsch to comply. When however t lie OKW chief returned to Hitler in Nuremberg — where die Party rally was approaching its spectacular climax — die next morning, all he could report was that both Brauchitsch and Haider flatly refused to alter dieir plans.The two reluctant generals were summarily ordered down from Berlin and presented them¬ selves diat night at Hitler’s Nuremberg hotel, the Deutscher Hof. The row lasted five hours. Haider stated the General Staff case. Hitler replied that they should plan with regard to the enemy’s most probable line of action. ‘No doubt,’ he conceded, ‘your planned pincer-operation is die ideal solution. Its outcome is however too uncertain for us to rely on it, particularly since for political reasons we must obtain a rapid victory.’ He reminded them that history alone showed how hard it was to call off an operation that had only half-succeeded — that was the familiar road to hor¬ rors like Verdun. The tanks would be frittered away piecemeal, and when diey were needed for the subsequent operations in depdi they would not be diere. All diis now seems self-evident, but at the time, in September 1938, it was by no means so obvious diat Hitler was right. The two generals still refused to give way. In the small hours of die morning Hitler finally ceased reasoning with them and ordered them to redeploy the tanks as he had said — they had until the end of the month to do it. Haider shrugged; but Brauchitsch startled everybody with an effusive declaration of loyalty. After diev had gone, Hitler ventilated to Keitel his anger about diese cowardly and hesitant army generals: ‘It’s a pity I can’t give my gauleiters each an army — they’ve got guts and diey’ve got faidi in me.’ To shame these defeatist generals, Hitler alluded to them in withering terms at the Nuremberg rally, while diey listened stonily from the front rows. He announced the award of die National Prize to FritzTodt for build¬ ing the West Wall — a gratuitous slight to the army engineers. Only about forty thousand Labour Service conscripts could be spared for the rally — the rest were working on the Wall. For five hours on die elevendi Hitler stood in his car at Adolf-Hitler Platz, hatless under the broil¬ ing September sun, taking die salute as 1 20,000 SA and SS men marched past, breaking into the spectacular high-kicking ‘parade step’ as diey came within sight of dieir Fiilirer. He joked weakly widi the diplomats at their formal reception, and even allowed die French ambassador to press a lily into his hands — the symbol of France. ‘It is a sign of peace as well,’ ex¬ plained Francois-Poncct eloquently, ‘and should be worn by those who de- 118 i: Approach to Absolute Power sire to work for peace.’ Hitler divested himself of the lily as soon as he decently could.The newspaper headlines read: ‘self-determination for THE SUDETENLAND — THE FUHRER DEMANDS AN END TO SLAVERY.’ On September 13, Prague proclaimed martial law around the city of Eger. Things were going just as Hitler planned. The Nazi press proclaimed next day: ‘czech murder terror nears anarchy. Germans slain by Czech guns.’ From the Sudeten town of Asch on the evening of die four¬ teenth Karl Frank telephoned Hitler to appeal for German troops and tanks to intervene right now. Hitler responded: ‘Frank -7 bide your time. The time isn’t right yet.’ indeed, it was not. Fate the previous night, September 13, the British am¬ bassador had handed to Baron von Weizsacker a letter in which Neville Chamberlain, aged nearly seventy, offered to fly at once to Hitler to find a peaceful solution. Hitler could hardly have refused Chamberlain’s offer, and he was nettled to have lost the initiative like this, however briefly. The ‘brown pages’ — top secret wiretaps by Goring’s Forschungsamt — were pouring into the Berghof on the fourtcenth by courier. Only that morning, Jan Masaryk, the volatile Czech envoy in Fondon, had talked to his foreign ministry in Prague. ‘But if he [Hitler] marches,’ Prague had asked him, ‘then everybody else will march, won’t they?’ Masaryk was not so hopeful: ‘I think after a while diey will. People here won’t look me in the eye.They’re just an uncouth rabble!’The voice in Prague exclaimed, ‘No, impossible!’ ‘They’re just stupid people who have got fifteen cruisers,’ ex¬ plained Masaryk, ‘and they’re frightened of losing them.’ He said diat as for France, ‘There are quite a few ragamuffins there too.’ The tone of these remarks told Hitler volumes about morale in Fondon and Prague. Hitler’s illicit knowledge of these conversations explains much of his confidence. The wiretaps showed, significantly, t hat Chamberlain was delaying Masaryk’s incoming telegrams from Prague for days on end.Thus, ironically, Masaryk was obliged to rely even more heavily on die telephone lines to Prague. The daily FA wiretaps showed the Czech envoy mouthing obscene insults about the western statesmen, appealing to Prague for still more cash — urgently — and plotting with Churchill and his Paris colleague the early overthrow of die Chamberlain and Daladier regimes. At 9:1,0 p.m. on September 14, 1938, Masaryk put through an urgent call to Dr. Benes himself. ‘Have you heard about Chamberlain?’ ‘No.’ ‘He’s flying to Berchtesgaden at 8:30 A.m. tomorrow!’The wiretap analysis con- Munich 119 tinued, ‘. . . After a lengdiy pause Benes exclaimed, obviously horrified, “It’s not possible!’” Masaryk replied that Chamberlain would be accompa¬ nied by ‘diat swine’ Sir Horace Wilson. The next day a thirty-man SS guard of honour formed on the terraces outside the Berghof. At six the English party arrived. Chamberlain was in die familiar dark suit and stiff wing-collar, with a light-coloured necktie and a watch chain across his waistcoat. Upstairs in his study Hitler launched into his usual tirade about the mounting Czech terror campaign. He claimed that 300 Sudeten Germans had been killed already. Chamberlain had not however come to talk of war. ‘If Herr Hitler really wants nothing more than die Sudeten German re¬ gions,’ he said in effect, ‘dien he can have them!’ Hitler, taken aback, as¬ sured him he had no interest whatever in non-Germans. In fact Chamber¬ lain had thrown something of a spanner in die works of‘Green.’The Fiihrer however was buoyant as he discussed die conversation that evening widi Ribbentrop and Weizsacker. The latter wrote diis personal record: By making no bones about his brutal intention of settling die Czech prob¬ lem now — even at die risk of a general European war — and by indicating that he would then be content in Europe he [Hitler] had prodded Ch[amberlain] into undertaking to work toward die ceding of die Sudeten regions to Germany. He, the Fiihrer, had not been able to refuse a plebi¬ scite. If the Czechs reject this, the way will be clear for a German invasion; if die Czechs yield, then Czechoslovakia’s own turn will not come until later, for instance next spring. There are in fact distinct advantages in disposing of die first — Sudeten German — stage amicably. In diis confidential discussion the Fiihrer did not conceal that he has taken a future war into account, and is fostering much further-reaching plans. For this he volunteered not only nationalist motives, but what might be termed educational ones as well, or ones of latent dynamism. He radiated self-confidence and fearlessness in war and foreign policy, and spoke quite unambiguously of his own personal responsibility for steering Germany through the inevitable passage of arms with her en¬ emies in his own lifetime. The Fiihrer dien related a number of details of his talk with Cham¬ berlain itself — die little tricks of bluff and bluster widi which he had fenced his conversation partner back into his corner. 120 i: Approach to Absolute Power A year later Weizsacker recalled, ‘From tho Reich chancellery emanated t ho slogan that Germany’s youth needed a war to steel itself.The war against Czechoslovakia took on the character of l’art pour l’art [art for art’s sake].’ In fact Chamberlain and die French proposed to give Flitler all areas widi over <, o percent German population. Not surprisingly, Jan Masaryk was heard frantically telephoning Dr. Benes after Chamberlain’s return to London, complaining that ‘Uncle’ had not yet told anybody anything about his Berghof talk with Hitler. The Czech envoy added delicately, ‘May I ask for money to be sent if I am to do anything? ... I need just enough, you understand?’ Benes did: ‘I will put it in hand at once.’ Weizsacker’s record leaves no doubt that Hitler had no intention of let¬ ting Chamberlain fob him off with just die Sudeten regions. He had to tread very cautiously for a while however. When Canaris telephoned the Berghof to ask whether his guerrilla and sabotage units there should start their dirty work, Keitel instructed: ‘No, not for die time being.’ Hitler had developed a surer mediod — a Free Corps, ostensibly raised spontaneously by the aggrieved Sudeten Germans inside the Czech frontier. In fact about ten diousand of Henlein’s supporters had fled into Ger¬ many over the last week: Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to equip them widi suitable weapons — Austrian-made Mannlicher rifles — and to return the men to Czechoslovakia under cover of darkness. These irregulars would be aided by regular German army and SA officers as advisers, and provided with motor transport by the Party. Hitler disclosed this plan to Karl-Hermann Frank on September 16 in a two-hour conference. The Henlein Free Corps would carry out commando-type sorties into the Czech frontier positions each night. Their aim would be — as Schmundt explicitly telegraphed to the OKW next day — ‘to keep up the level of disturbances and clashes.’ in the summer of 1937, Martin Bormann had observed how his Chief liked strolling down to t lie tea pavilion; he decided to construct for die Fuhrer a new teahouse to rival any other in the world. That August Bormann had selected the craggy peak of the <, oo-foot Kehlstein, not far from die Berghof, and personally hammered in the marking pegs together with Fritz Todt. By September 16, 1938, diis ‘Eagle’s Nest’ was finished. At four p.m. Hitler, Todt, and Bormann drove up to die new eyrie — Bormann proud, but Hitler sceptical. He had known nothing of Bormann’s surprise plan until it was too late to revoke; according to Julius Schaub, Munich 121 Hitler blamed it on Bormann’s folie des grandeurs , smiled indulgently, and let himself be persuaded t hat it would serve to impress foreign visitors. The new road ended some way below tire Kehlstein’s peak. A parking area had been blasted out of the rockface, into which were set massive bronze doors, topped with a granite slab reading ‘Built 1938.’The doors swung open and the car drove on into the mountain along a 1 70-yard tun¬ nel wide enough for two cars to pass. At die tunnel’s end was a circular vault not unlike a church choir: facing them were bronze sliding doors. Bormann invited Hitler into t lie windowless room beyond the doors — an elevator with walls of polished brass, mirrors, and upholstered chairs.They were lifted to the very crest of the Kehlstein. As Hitler stepped out, he found himself looking over a view even more majestic than from the Berghof. Hitler spent an hour up here. He was in fact silently alarmed by the thumping of his heart at this altitude, and he was short of breath (this he told his doctors). On the next day, the seven¬ teenth, he took Dr. Goebbels and his senior henchmen up to this mountaintop retreat and briefed them about the talks with Chamberlain — this ‘ice-cool,’ calculating Englishman. He expressed high praise for their propaganda effort, saying: ‘We’ve half won the war already.’ Goebbels was optimistic that Prague would buckle under the war of nerves, but Hitler disagreed. ‘In 1948,’ he explained, ‘it will be just three hundred years since die Peace of Munster. We’ve got to liquidate that peace treaty by then.’ He visited this lofty eyrie only once more over the next few days, and only seldom afterward. there were now two weeks to go before ‘Green.’ At training grounds on die periphery of Czechoslovakia, carefully phased manoeuvres were begin¬ ning. Chamberlain had promised to return widi his Cabinet’s agreement. Hitler was well-informed on developments in London. He knew that French pre¬ mier Edouard Daladier and foreign minister Georges Bonnet had arrived in London on the eighteenth. At 1:20 p.m. on the nineteenth Masaryk was heard plaintively telephoning Benes, ‘The uncles here are in session and haven’t breathed a word to anybody yet.’ Benes referred to the rumours diat he had heard involving Hungary and die Carpatho-Ukraine. In his view all such plans were quite out of die question, but Masaryk confirmed, ‘They are talking about ceding territories and suchlike, you know.’ After more discussion Masaryk added vehemently, ‘I haven’t the slightest intention of 122 i: Approach to Absolute Power going over t lie re [to Downing Street], They haven’t sent for me, so what I say is, f—ck them, Mr. President!’ During the afternoon the Anglo-French plan was finally communicated to Benes but not to Masaryk. It virtually instructed Benes to surrender: he was to cede to Flitler all areas with more than fifty percent German population. Benes told Masaryk die gist of it on the phone at seven p.m. and asked what people like Churchill thought. Masaryk responded, ‘When I asked them, they . . . hoped we won’t take it lying down.’ He added, ‘Seventy-five percent would be one thing, but fifty percent — that’s impossible.’ Benes sighed, ‘Frightful! ’ For die next two days Prague officially remained silent. Benes was heard explaining to Masaryk that he was searching for some formula, neidierYes nor No, to enable him to keep honourably negotiating. Masaryk referred contemptuously to Chamberlain’s approaching return to Germany: ‘The old man’s packing his bags again, he’s in quite a didier.’ Again he asked for funds to be urgently rushed to him in London: ‘The balloon will soon go up and I’ll find myself widiout a penny.’ By early September 19, Henlein’s Free Corps terror squads had begun operations. The Czech army was moved closer to the border. Hitler’s own generals persuaded him to limit the Free Corps operations, therefore, to twelve-man commandos or smaller. That day he resumed his wooing of the Hungarians. Horthy — by now again in Germany as Goring’s guest on a shoot — had written privately to Hitler expressing alarm over newspaper reports drat Benes was about to cede die German-speaking regions to the Reich, ‘leaving everydiing else as it was.’ (The letter is amongst Hordry's papers in Budapest.) Hitler discussed this widi Imredy and Kanya at the Berghof on September 2 o. At four p.m. the same day, Hitler received Joseph Lipski, Warsaw’s am¬ bassador to Berlin. Hitler had wooed Poland, Czechoslovakia’s other neigh¬ bour, since mid-July; Goebbels had briefed Nazi editors not to report anti-German incidents in Poland ‘for die time being.’ On September 6 Hans Fritzsche had repeated Goebbels’s directive: ‘There are to be no reports published on incidents in Poland . . . however much we may regret it.’ And three days later there had followed this telling explanation: ‘It is a basic principle of Third Reich foreign policy only to tackle one thing at a time.’ Now Hitler had die reward for his forbearance: die Polish ambassador coyly confirmed die Warsaw government’s predatory interest inTesin, and assured Hitler diat die Poles ‘would not shrink at all from using force.’ A day or two later, as Hitler, Ribbentrop and Goebbels set off togedier for Munich 123 Bad Godesberg, Hitler repeated to them that Ambassador Lipski had ‘prom¬ ised’ that Poland would use force against Czechoslovakia. It was all very satisfactory. Hitler and Ribbentrop drove complacently to Pullach and spent the evening at Bormann’s home. By midnight, Hitler knew that Chamberlain would be coming to Bad Godesberg to meet with him on the twenty-second. At two a.m. on September 2 1 the British and French envoys in Prague jointly called on Benes to accept their Anglo-French plan ‘before creating a situation for which France and Britain could take no responsibility.’ Six hours later, Goring’s wiretappers found a cryptic telephone conver¬ sation going on between Prague and Paris.The Prague end announced that t liey had been forced to accept the plan since both Britain and France had threatened to leave Czechoslovakia in the lurch completely otherwise. The wiretaps indicated that Churchill was promising Masaryk that Cham¬ berlain would be overthrown by that afternoon, t hat three ministers in Paris had cabled written protests to Daladier, and that ‘that oaf’ Bonnet was on his way out too. Masaryk’s British friends were urging Prague to delay any formal deci¬ sion on the plan until t he twenty-sixth at least. Masaryk’s voice was heard adjuring Benes: Mr. President, one thing is most important. . . Public support here is growing like wildfire. . . That is what Churchill, Eden, and the arch¬ bishop want you to know. Now Hitler knew too, and forewarned was forearmed. On first hearing that Prague was minded to accept, he had instructed his OKW to consider die administrative problem of an unopposed occupation of the German speaking areas. Now however die FA wiretaps decided Hitler differently. It seemed that Benes was going to play for time. Chamberlain arrived at the Cologne airport on September 2 2. He brought Sir Horace Wilson (‘that swine’) with him, as before. At die Rhine Hotel Dreesen in Godesberg Chamberlain reminded Hitler of dieir Berghof agreement. Hitler solemnly pronounced: ‘Es tut mirfurchtbar leid, aber das geht nicht mehr [I’m frightfully sorry but diat won’t do any longer].’ He now insisted on the Wehrmacht being permitted to occupy die German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia immediately. Chamberlain protested diat Hitler had bro- 124 i: Approach to Absolute Power ken his word. After three hours of listening to Hitler’s verbose arguments he reclined on a sofa and announced he had done what he could — his con¬ science was clear. As neither side would yield, the talks were broken off; and the British delegation returned by ferry to their splendid Hotel Petersberg. In May 1942 Hitler referred to the ‘two-faced’ British behav¬ iour here — from the FA wiretaps he knew of their private willingness to make the concessions he needed, but publicly they still dug their heels in. His annoyance was increased by the studied insolence of die British delega¬ tion and their sloppy attire. He later rebuked Henderson, ‘If any more peo¬ ple in tired suits call on me, I’ll send my ambassador in London to see your King in a pullover: tell that to your government.’ For several hours Hitler delayed die next meeting while his code-breakers deciphered Chamberlain’s secret report to his Cabinet. The prime minis¬ ter’s next step was thus not unexpected: on September 2 3 he sent a note to Hitler explaining that British public opinion would not tolerate the new German demands. Hitler replied diat he mistrusted die Czechs: diey were playing for time. Chamberlain replied tersely, asking the Fiihrer to set down his proposals in a memorandum. The document was handed to Chamber- lain on his return to Hitler’s hotel that evening at ten. Almost at once, at 1 0:30 p.m., a messenger brought a note to Hitler: ‘Benes has just announced general mobilisation over Czech radio.’That galvanised the meeting. Hitler stood up and declared that diat was that. Chamberlain also stood up and calmly prepared to leave. This was not what Hitler wanted at all; he was saved by Ribbentrop, who suggested diat as die British had asked for die memorandum they should at least read it. They sat down. The document laid down a deadline — the Czechs were to begin evacuating die German areas on die twenty-sixdi and complete it by the twenty-eighdi. Chamberlain rightly objected that this was just a Diktat. Hitler smugly replied, ‘It isn’t. Look — it’s headed “memo¬ randum.”’ Under pressure, he did, however, agree to relax the deadline to October 1 (his secret X-day for ‘Green’). ‘You know,’ he flattered Cham¬ berlain, ‘you’re the only man I’ve ever made a concession to.’ (He had used the same words to Schuschnigg at the Berghof in February.) At 1:1 $ a.m. the Fiihrer bade him farewell. This was his last territorial claim in Europe, he assured him. Chamberlain replied, ‘AufWiedersehen.’ Hitler sat in die hotel garden for some time, watching the Rhine swirl past. After a while he turned and thanked Ribbentrop for having inter¬ vened earlier: ‘You saved die day for us.’ Munich 125 Chamberlain reported tire next afternoon to his Cabinet.* Masaryk, in London, was heard sneering on the phone to Benes, ‘The Germans made such mincemeat of him that diis morning he could barely manage a stutter.’ When Masaryk mentioned the rumour diat Hitler was demanding that the Czechs should allow the Wehrnracht in at once, Benes exploded: ‘Out of die question . . . we can’t give up our positions!’ Hitler’s lunch table was dominated by die question whether Benes would give way. He himself was sure that the Czech president would not, while Goebbels argued that he would. Hitler repeated that his army would attack on or after the twenty-eighth. ‘That gives die Fiihrer five days,’ Goebbels realised. ‘He fixed these dates way back on May 28,’ he added.That Prague was standing firm was quite pleasing to Hitler. France had also begun par¬ tial mobilisation however, and Hitler had not bargained for that to happen until X-day itself. Moreover, elements of the British fleet had put to sea. On September it; France, Britain, and Czechoslovakia all rejected Hitler’s Godesberg ‘memorandum.’ As Benes told Masaryk to make clear, in announcing this to London, die map forwarded by Chamberlain widi die memorandum ‘would mean noth¬ ing more nor less than the immediate surrender of our whole nation into Hitler’s hands.’ He added, ‘Show them all, on the map, how our nation is to be destroyed!’ Masaryk replied, ‘So far they haven’t given me the map. It’s a shabby trick.’ on September 26, 1 938 Hitler summoned Keitel and told him that ‘ Green’ would start on die diirtieth. Turning die FA wiretaps on Masaryk over in his hands, with their almost untranslatable obscenities about Chamberlain and Sir Horace Wilson, he saw a possibility of driving a wedge into die enemy camp. He instructed Goring to disclose the intercepts to Ambassa¬ dor Henderson. WhenWilson personally came to Berlin to put to him Cham¬ berlain’s latest proposal Hitler — who already knew of it dianks to Masaryk’s loquacity on the phone — dismissed it as valueless so long as Prague would not accept die Godesberg terms. He bragged to Goebbels diat he had yelled * At 3:30 p.M, Chamberlain told his Inner Cabinet he thought he had ‘established some degree of personal influence over Herr Hitler’; he felt Hitler would not go back on his word. At five p.m. he told the full Cabinet that Hitler was ‘extremely anxious to secure the friendship of Great Britain ... it would be a great tragedy if we lost an opportunity of reaching an understanding with Germany.’ He believed that Hitler now trusted him. 126 i: Approach to Absolute Power at the Englishman, and accused him of evasions. ‘The Fiihrer,’ wrote Goebbels, ‘believes in his mission with the sureness of a sleepwalker. Not for one moment does his hand tremble. A great genius in our midst.’ Elitler now dictated to Elenderson that he would give Benes until Wednesday the twenty-eighth to accept. ‘Midnight Wednesday?’ the British ambassador somewhat ambiguously asked. ‘No, by two p.m.,’ said Elitler.Thus the for¬ mal ultimatum was spoken. The pressure on the Fiihrer was steadily increasing however. Lord Rodiermere privately cabled him to think twice before making his sched¬ uled speech at the Berlin Sportpalast that evening.The speech was rowdy and provocative. Elitler declared that his troops would march into the Sudeten German areas in five days’ time, on October i. ‘Our mind is made up. It is up to Elerr Benes now!’ Shortly after Sir Elorace Wilson left the next morning, Elitler sent Schmundt to Keitel with written instructions that tlie initial shock troops were to move up to a line from which t hey could attack on t lie thirtieth. He ordered the Free Corps to step up its terrorist activities. He also directed that a mechanised division rumble through the streets of central Berlin. Goebbels mingled with crowds in the streets, and found diem baffled and anxious at die martial display. ‘The public is filled with a profound worry,’ he recorded. ‘They know we’re coming in to the last lap now.’ did he still want war? Weizsacker, who appeared after midnight, found die Fuhrer sitting alone widi Ribbentrop. Hitler curtly announced diat he would now wipe out Czechoslovakia. Weizsacker noted some days later, ‘This was said only in the presence of Ribbentrop and myself. . . So it would be in¬ correct to assume that die Fuhrer was just putting up a huge and monstrous bluff. It was his resentment over May 2 2 — when the British jeered at him for “backing down” — diat was propelling him along the path to war.’ It is possible diat Hitler knew from the FA wiretaps diat Weizsacker was con¬ niving with the British diplomats. In die coming hostilities, Hitler wanted die SS to play an important part. He arranged for two Death’s Head battalions to be equipped with antitank and field guns to protect an ‘autonomous Sudeten German govern¬ ment’ being set up at Asch, now wholly occupied by Henlein’s troops. In the Jauernig enclave south of Breslau, Henlein had already seized power. Control over Henlein’s Free Corps would pass to Himmler on die day that ‘Green’ began. Munich 12J Hitler’s ultimatum would expire at two p. m. the next day, the twenty-eighdi. His military attache in Paris estimated that France could assemble her first sixty-five divisions on die West Wall by the sixth day of mobilisation. In an internal conference, Goring grimly conceded diat war seemed inevitable and might well last seven years. Early on the twenty-eighdi, the naval attache telephoned from London diat a reliable source had just informed him that King George VI, upon whose ‘vacilla¬ tion’ Hitler had been relying, had signed die order for mobilisation. Only die date needed to be inserted. At ten a.m. Brauchitsch saw Keitel and begged him to prevail on die Fiihrer not to invade more than just die Sudeten areas. Canaris’s estimation was that war widi die west was certain. General Haider, die new Chief of General Staff, was seen in a state of nervous collapse, sobbing helplessly. Worse, by midday Berlin knew diat die British fleet had mobilised. Hitler undoubtedly realised now diat his blackmail would profit him no more; it was this news of die Royal Navy’s mobilisation, he is said to have frankly admitted to Goring later, that tilted the balance for him. Early on die twenty-eighth, die French ambassador Erancois-Poncet asked to see Hitler to bring secret new proposals from Bonnet of which even die Czechs were still unaware. An interview was arranged for noon. Shortly before noon Hitler was in conference with Ribbentrop when Goring ar¬ rived with word — which his Forschungsamt may have obtained — that Mus¬ solini had telephoned die Italian ambassador in Berlin a few minutes before eleven to say that Chamberlain had just contacted him; Mussolini wanted die Fiihrer to know that he backed him to the hilt, but would Hitler be willing to postpone mobilisation by twenty-four hours? A heated discussion broke out in Hitler’s Cabinet room. Goring accused Ribbentrop of actually wanting a war. Hitler tersely silenced them both. ‘Ribbentrop,’ noted Goebbels, who had arrived for lunch, ‘nurtures a blind hatred of Britain. Goring, Neuradi and I urge Hitler to accept [the ambas¬ sadors’ proposals.] Goring . . . totally shares my viewpoint and gives Ribbentrop a piece of his mind.’ Over lunch Goebbels could contain him¬ self no longer and stated bluntly: ‘Mein Fiihrer, if you think diat the Ger¬ man public is thirsting for war, you are wrong. They watch its approach widi a leaden sense of apadiy.’ At noon Erancois-Poncet was shown in.The new Bonnet plan which he brought was an improvement, but not enough. Almost at once an adjutant handed to Hitler a folded note — die Italian ambassador was outside. Hitler 128 i: Approach to Absolute Power excused himself, saying: ‘I’m wanted on the phone,’ and went out to re¬ ceive the Mussolini message. He agreed to postpone the deadline by one day. The British were also stirring: tlie FA is certain to have intercepted Chamberlain’s sensational telephone message to his Berlin embassy at 11:3 o, announcing that he was ready to come to Germany yet again. Hitler returned to Francois-Poncct, but almost immediately the Italian ambassador was back: Mussolini had telephoned that Chamberlain had a proposal to make that would be a ‘grandiose victory.’ At 12:30 p.m., as Francois-Poncct was leaving, Henderson arrived with Chamberlain’s formal proposal for a Five-Power conference: ‘I am ready,’ wrote die elderly British prime minister, ‘to come to Berlin myself.’ Hitler dictated a brief summary of his minimum demands, for die Ital¬ ian ambassador to forward to Mussolini. Thus peace seemed assured. Hitler was still eating when Ambassador Attolico returned at 2:40 p.m. He welcomed the Italian with his mouth still full. Attolico made a brave effort to speak German: ‘Morgen 11 Uhr Miinchen!’ (1 1 a.m. in Munich.) Hitler laughed out loud. During die afternoon formal invitations were issued to the odier two powers, Britain and France. Neither declined. Czechoslovakia was not in¬ vited. At 8:40 p.m. that September 28, Hitler’s special train hauled out of Ber¬ lin’s Anhalt station en route to Munich for the historic conference. by 9:30 a.m. he was awaiting Mussolini’s train at die small German frontier station.The Duce entered die Iiihrer’s saloon car widi Count Ciano. As die train started back toward Munich Hitler chortled out loud at die way ‘we two revolutionaries’ were managing to set Europe alternately by die ears. Keitel sketched in die military situation confidentially to the Duce. Hitler reassured him — die western powers would not intervene. Mus¬ solini asked for and was given a coloured map showing the present Czecho¬ slovakia. Hitler explained he was not inclined to accept time-consuming plebiscites in die disputed areas. On die other hand, he said, he did not want one Czech village. The events at the Tiihrcr Building’ in Munich, bedecked with die flags of the four powers, were inevitably an anticlimax. Chamberlain’s plane arrived during the morning. Hitler waited for him widi Mussolini and die French prime minister Edouard Daladier in the smoking room. His major-domo had prepared sandwiches and beer there. Munich 129 Since he was asking only for the German-speaking areas, and the other three powers were agreeing to this, all that remained was to discuss the modes of transfer; and since the draft agreement that he had handed to Attolico yesterday was now being dished up by Mussolini in Italian as though it were his own, the result was a foregone conclusion. The only snag was Hitler’s stubborn demand that the Czechs must evacu¬ ate the territories immediately, and Chamberlain’s equally obstinate de¬ fence of the Czech position. Hitler toyed with a watch throughout the morning — he must have borrowed it for die purpose, as he never wore one — as diough to hint diat he mi ght even now order mobilisation at two p.m. Between sessions of this languid and untidy conference the ministers sprawled about on the sofas, or telephoned dieir capitals; at one time Daladier and Hitler were swapping anecdotes from die WorldWar trenches, at another, Chamberlain was regaling him with weekend fishing tales. At three p.m. Hitler retired to his apartment for lunch with Himmler and the Italians. He fumed at Chamberlain’s obstinacy: ‘Daladier — now there’s a lawyer who sees diings as they are and draws the proper consequences.That Cham¬ berlain however — he has haggled over every village and petty interest like a market stall-holder, far worse than die Czechs would have been! What has he got to lose in Bohemia? What’s it to do with him!’ Hitler burst out, ‘I never have weekends — and I hate fishing!’ The taste of victory was turning bitter in his mouth. ‘It’s time Britain stopped playing governess to Europe,’ he complained. ‘If she can’t drop her guardian act, in die long run war can’t be avoided. And I’ll fight diat war as long as you and I are still young, Duce, because this war will be a gigantic test of strength for our two countries.’ The conference resumed later that afternoon. In die small hours of die morning, the Munich Agreement was signed. before he left, Chamberlain asked if he could see Hitler. Hitler waited at his apartment in Prinzregenten Platz with some curiosity — not to say im¬ patience, because the elevator bringing up die Englishman wheezed to a halt between floors. Chamberlain asked Hitler for an assurance diat — if die Czechs were so vainglorious as to reject the Munich Agreement — the Ger¬ man air force would not bomb civilian targets. Hitler gave it. Then Cham¬ berlain produced a sheet of paper containing a typed declaration, and asked if Hitler would sign it, saying that this would considerably ease his position 130 i: Approach to Absolute Power in London. Hitler signed it without noticeable enthusiasm. It concluded with tlie words, We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war widi one another again. After the Englishman had left, Ribbentrop came over to die Fiihrer Build¬ ing. Walking down the long flight of steps with him afterward, Ribbentrop mentioned that he was not sure Hitler had been wise to sign such a docu¬ ment. Reinhard Spitzy overheard Hitler’s muttered response: ‘Ach, diat piece of paper is of no furdier significance whatever.’ Neville Chamberlain at Munich airport with Reich foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, September 1938 (walther hewel) One Step Along a Long Path H itler left Berlin on October 2, 1938 , with Brauchitsch, Milch, andTodt, for a Hying tour of die newly regained Sudeten lands. Tumultuous crowds in die ancient marketplaces of Asch and Eger cheered his victory. ‘Its scale was brought home to me,’ he would crow, five weeks later, ‘only at the moment I stood for the first time in die midst of the Czech fortress line: it was only tlien that I realised what it means to have captured a front line of almost two thousand kilometres of fortifications without having fired a single shot in anger.’ ‘We would have shed a lot of blood,’ he conceded privately to Goebbels. In fact it had not been a bloodless victory for Elitler. Henlein’s Free Corps had lost a hundred men in their two hundred commando raids. As Elitler drove on from Asch and Eger some towns looked as though a full-scale war had hit diem: buildings were wrecked, telephone lines were down, diere was broken glass everywhere, and there were food lines and mobile kitchens. The armed Free Corps irregulars that they met looked tough, to say the least — ‘not die kind of people to run into on a dark night,’ one German officer noted. Elitler’s thoughts were never far from the unconquered rump of Czecho¬ slovakia, out of which Chamberlain and Munich had, he considered, tem¬ porarily cheated him. Prague had been the seat of die hrst German univer¬ sity; Bohemia and Moravia were in the First Reich. The ill-fitting frontiers of Central Europe gave Elitler headaches for some weeks. The Poles not only occupied Tesin but claimed Moravian Ostrau and die important and largely German-speaking towns ofWitkowitz and Oderberg as well. Hungary had hedged her bets until too late. When she now bestirred herself and raised demands on Slovakia and the whole of the Carpadio-Ukraine, Hitler refused to listen. His governing ambition diat 1 3 1 132 i: Approach to Absolute Power winter was to occupy Bohemia and Moravia. Promoting Slovak independ¬ ence was one cheap way of bringing about the disintegration of Czechoslo¬ vakia. Having decided upon this, Hitler was able to use robust language in rebuffing Hungary’s demands on Slovakia. When Koloman Daranyi, the former Hungarian premier, brought a private letter from Horthy appealing for support on October 14, Hitler would only say, in effect, ‘I told you so.’ Hewel’s note of the meeting reads: The Fiihrer recalled how strongly he had warned the Hungarians, both on board ship [in August] and when Imredy and Kanya had visited him at the Obersalzberg [in September]: he had told them specifically that he was planning to settle the Czech problem so oder so in October. Poland had seen her chance, struck out, and got what she wanted.You can solve such problems by negotiation only if you’re determined to fight other¬ wise. It was only this that gained for him, the Fiihrer, everything that he wanted. Mr. Kanya was plagued by misgivings however, even though die Fiihrer had told him that Britain and France weren’t going to fight. By mid-October Hitler was telling Daranyi, ‘The Slovak leaders of every political hue have been besieging us for days, clamouring that they don’t want to join Hungary.’ This was very true. On September 23 die Slovak engineer Franz Karmasin, leader of the Carpat liian German Party, was to be seen at Goring’s forest mansion Carinhall. Karmasin arranged for the Slovak deputy prime minister, Dr. Ferdinand DurCansky, to see Goring on October 1 2; die prime minister assured the German held marshal diat his people never wanted to join Hungary — that only die Slovak Jews opted for Hungary. ‘ Slovaks want complete autonomy with strong political, economic, and military dependence on Germany,’ he said. He assured Goring that Slovakia would deal with die Jewish problem on similar lines to Germany. Goring afterward noted for the record, ‘Slovak aspirations to autonomy are to be suitably supported. A Czecho- without the Slovakia will be thrown even more cruelly onto our mercy. Slovakia will be very important to us as an airfield base for operations to the east,’ meaning into Russia. The Czechs too now turned to Hitler for protection. Benes fled to the United States and moderates replaced his ministers, anxious to curry fa¬ vour with Hitler. Even so, Hitler dismantled ‘Green’ only most reluctantly. Keitel’s adjutant recorded one telephone call from die Fiihrer’s staff thus: ‘Schmundt inquires how soon “Green” could be ready for launching again, One Step Along aLong Path 133 and how long for “Red”?’ (‘Red’ was the build-up against France.) t lie now- hyphenated Czechoslovakia was still a matter of military concern. She could still engage up to twenty-five German divisions. Politically she was not die t hreat she had once been however. On October i 2 die Czech envoy Voyt£ch Mastny assured Goring privately that his country had done a ‘complete about-turn’ — Czecho-Slovakia would realign her foreign policy with Ger¬ many, follow die Reich’s lead on dealing with Jews and Communists, and provide industrial support to Germany. ‘Fate and life of Tschechei are in Germany’s hands,’ Goring wrote afterward in a contented diary entry. ‘[Mastn^] pleads diat die country not be reduced to penury.’ Nonetheless, when the new Czech foreign minister Frantisek Chvalkovsky visited Flitler two days later die Fiihrer put on one of his fa¬ mous acts.The Czech’s own notes read: ‘He [Hitler] did not conceal that he was not one to be trifled widi, and that the final catastrophe would crash down on our state like a clap of diunder if we ever stepped out of line and returned to our old bad ways. Twenty-four — eight; snapped his fingers.’ (Hitler threatened to destroy Czechoslovakia in twenty-four or even eight hours, and snapped his fingers to illustrate his point.) ‘As for a guarantee, he said, die only guarantee worth anything was a guarantee from him: and he was not going to give one [to Czechoslovakia] so long as he saw no point in it.’ hitler had returned diat morning, October 14, 193 8, from a second heavily publicised tour of die West Wall which had begun on die ninth at Saarbriicken. It was there that he had struck his first blow at the spirit of Munich, in a speech to West Wall workers. He had announced that he did not intend to drop his guard since, in democracies, statesmen who worked sincerely for peace could always be replaced overnight by warmongers: ‘It only needs Mr. Duff Cooper or Mr. Eden or Mr. Churchill to come to power in place of Chamberlain, and you can be quite sure that their aim would be to start a new world war.They make no bones about it, they admit it quite openly.’ Coming so soon after Munich die tone of this speech was a setback for the Chamberlain government in London. Hitler expressed regret to Francois-Poncet a week later however diat he had ever signed Chamber¬ lain’s ‘piece of paper.’ Dealing with the French, he flattered die ambassador, you could always expect an honest yes or no. ‘With die English, however, it’s different. You give them a paper. There’s a storm of debate, dien billions for rearmament and you’re no better off dian before.’ 134 i: Approach to Absolute Power For some time he could undertake no further grand adventures anyway. He could not afford to. Despite the economic difficulties however he con¬ tinued the immense new arms effort, suspecting t hat Britain was merely playing for time. The Forschungsamt wiretaps suggested that both Paris and London were trying to sabotage the Munich Agreement. At Munich, Hitler had deduced that Germany would be at war with Britain by 1942. Even before leaving Munich, on September 30, Keitel had telephoned in¬ structions to his chief of arms procurement, Colonel Georg Thomas, to act on this assumption. Ammunition enough could be manufactured when the time came: what Hitler needed to stockpile now were new tanks, guns, and aircraft. He ordered Goring to launch a ‘gigantic Wehrmacht rearmament program,’ one that would put all its predecessors into t he shade. Goring, of course, put his air force first: the Luftwaffe was to be increased five-fold. The Luftwaffe’s plan was approved by Goring later that month. It empha¬ sised the role of the four-engined Heinkel 177 heavy bomber; the goal was to provide four wings — Geschwader — of these by 1942, a total of some five hundred planes. The navy submitted a more cautious plan, for completing two more battleships, more submarines, and various lesser warships by the end of 1943. Admiral Raeder showed the plan to Hitler on November 1. Hitler tore it to pieces, scathingly criticising the puny armament and armour of the two new battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz, and he lost his temper alto¬ gether when Raeder calmly advised him that most of Germany’s other war¬ ships were wholly unsuited to naval war witli Britain. No longer did Hitler fob him off with glib assurances t hat Britain would not fight. He insisted on the strictest adherence to the naval expansion program laid down, ‘as a matter of extreme urgency,’ and warned that he wanted ‘certain additional ship-types of special value and importance for future war operations’ in¬ corporated in t he program. The outcome of their meeting was the startling Z-Plan, under which the navy would build by the end of 1943 six battle¬ ships of 353000 tons, armed with 420-millimetre guns. The Z-Plan would inevitably violate the Anglo-German naval agreement: but by die end of •939 Hitler would long have revoked that ‘piece of paper,’ arguing that it had turned out to be a very one-sided concession indeed. in the solitude of the Obersalzberg that fall of 1938 Hitler collected his thoughts. By October 17 he had mentally drafted his next steps.That evening, according to FritzTodt’s papers, he telephonedTodt in die Sudetenland and One Step Along aLong Path 135 ‘clearly specified how much work was to have been done [on die West Wall] by three target dates: the end of October, December i and March 20.’ Francois-Poncct flew to Berchtesgaden the next day, October 18, and reached the Berghof at three p.m. From there he was driven up to meet Flitler and Ribbentrop in a small side room of the spectacular mountain-top Kehlstein pavilion. The Flihrer now startled him by proposing an immedi¬ ate pact widi France. On this occasion, Fran^ois-Poncet felt, it all rang true. ‘He spoke of our “white culture” as a common and precious asset diat had to be defended,’ reported the Frenchman. ‘He seemed genuinely hurt by the antagonism that persists even after Munich, and in his view Britain’s attitude has made this abundantly clear. It is obvious that he is preoccupied with the possibility of a coming crisis and general war.’ The French ambassador probably deduced Hitler’s intentions correctly, however, when he reported: We can be sure diat despite all this the Fiihrer is sticking to his intention of driving a wedge between the British and French and stabilising peace in die west only so as to have a free hand in die east. What plan is he already hatching in his soul? Is it to be Poland, or Russia? Or is it die Baltic states at whose cost diese plans are to be realised? Does he even know himself? Hitler resumed his playacting. Two days later he set off into die Sudeten territories again. He was to be seen leaving the hotel at Linz with Colonel Schmundt, the latter loudly lamenting that Munich had spoiled their plans for a fight. The whole party descended on a village inn for luncheon & Hit¬ ler surrounded by twenty people, elbow-to-elbow at die horseshoe table, while the villagers and kitchen staff gaped dirough die doors and windows. General Leeb jotted in his diary, ‘Huge excitement amongst die popula¬ tion. Fiihrer ill-disposed toward die British.’A lieutenant colonel, Helmuth Groscurdi, noted in his report, ‘There was a hail of attacks on the British, die French, and above all the Hungarians — who were dismissed as being cowards and skunks.’ Hitler cruelly mimicked the gesticulations of the Hungarian ministers, while loudly praising the Poles. Poland, he said, was a great nation, and Joseph Lipski a fine ambassador. At Krumau that day the roads were lined with delegations from die brewery town of Budweis. It had a large German population, but would be left stranded on die wrong side of the new Czech frontiers. They were 136 i: Approach to Absolute Power waving placards: ‘budweis wants its fuhrer!’ Hitler however had not forgotten them. on October 21, 1938 the Kehlstein tea pavilion witnessed a second re¬ markable scene. Magda Goebbels, the beautiful platinum-blonde wife of the propaganda minister, had come to pour her heart out to Hitler about her faithless husband. Joseph Goebbels had captured Berlin from the Communists in die twen¬ ties; it was he who had created the ‘Fuhrer’ image and converted the news¬ paper and him industries into potent instruments of Nazi policy. Hitler had admitted to Otto Wagener and his own secretaries that he was attracted to Magda; according to Otto Meissner’s wife, Magda had once told her that her son Hellmut was in fact sired by Hitler during a 1934 Baltic vacation. (Judging by the pictures, this is improbable). By 1938, however, Goebbels was in disgrace. Himmler had furnished to the Fuhrer a Gestapo dossier of statements by women who claimed to have been sexually coerced by Goebbels. ‘We used to sound off against Jewish bosses who molested their female employees,’ protested Himmler. ‘Today it is Dr. Goebbels.’ For two years Goebbels had been conducting a secret liaison widi a Czech actress, Lida Baarova, a female of great bearing and physical allure. All Ger¬ many relished the titbits of the affair. In August, Magda had told Hitler that she wanted a divorce, but he refused to hear of such a thing in Nazi Germa¬ ny’s ‘happiest family.’ He had lectured the unhappy Dr. Goebbels on August 1 3, and told him never to see die actress again. (‘It shakes me to die core,’ the little doctor had entered in his diary. ‘I am deeply moved by it. The Fuhrer is like a father to me. I am so grateful to him. I take grim decisions. But they are final.’) Now, on October 2 1, Magda brought her complaints to Hitler again, alone, and demanded permission for a divorce. Up at die Kehlstein pavilion Hitler persuaded her to refrain from taking action.Two days later he invited die Goebbels couple to the same teahouse (Martin Bormann embellished the conciliatory visit in his diary with an exclamation mark) and persuaded diem to persevere for three more mondis, if only for their children’s sake: he would agree to their divorce after that, if they still insisted. ‘The Fuhrer,’ die propaganda minister now penned in his diary, ‘detains me for a long time alone. He confides to me his most pro¬ found and innermost secrets. . . . He sees a really serious conflict brewing in the none-too-distant future. Probably with Britain, which is steadily pre¬ paring for it. We shall have to fight back, and thus will be decided the he- One Step Along aLong Path !37 gemony over Europe. Everything must be geared to that moment. And this must take precedence over all personal hopes and desires. What are we individuals compared with the fate of great states and nations?’ Smarting under Elitler’s reproaches, Goebbels privately resolved to do something spectacular to regain die Fiihrer’s favour. the german army’s reactionary behaviour before Munich was still a source of bitterness to Elitler. (Blomberg had once told him, ‘In the army, obedi¬ ence stops from generals upward.’)That die military hostility should con¬ tinue even after his bloodless triumph at Munich infuriated Elitler, and he decided to act. In mid-October Keitel’s staff drafted a remarkable docu¬ ment designed to bring the Fiihrer’s views to die attention of all officers: The prerequisite for a state’s political and military victory is obedience, loyalty, and trust in its leadership. As every officer knows, any body of soldiers without diese qualities is useless. Indifference or half-hearted obedience are not good enough.They will not fire enthusiasm or inspire sacrifice and the dedication needed to master each successive task. It has always been Germany’s lot to fight against unequal odds. Where we have been successful, dien abstract forces were at work, acting far more power¬ fully dian any numerical or material superiority over die enemy. It would be a remarkable diing if an officer’s only duty were to weigh his own numerical strengdi against diat of the enemy, while ignoring or underrating all those other factors diat have always decided between defeat and victory in die past. In an obvious reference to General Beck’s arguments, die document continued: It is unsoldierly and a symptom of poor military upbringing not to credit one’s own side with what one expects from the enemy as a matter of course, or to minimise one’s own strength while inflating diat of die enemy. To put the military factors in their proper perspective when de¬ ciding die political objective is a task for the statesman alone. Were he to wait until his armed forces were completely ready for war, dien he would never act because armed forces are never ready — nor are they ever to be considered ready. I well know diat in die past mondis die broad mass of officers has done its duty in a spirit of defiant belief and determination. 138 i: Approach to Absolute Power But I expect this fact and its confirmation by our triumph [i.e., at Mu¬ nich] to be accepted once and for all by my officers, and it is to be ad¬ equately emphasised in the training and preparation of new officers. It was in this prickly mood that Hitler summoned Brauchitsch, as Com¬ mander in Chief of the army, to Berchtesgaden on October 24. The frosty interview began at 1 2:3 o p. m . in t lie Great Hall of the Ber ghof, and contin¬ ued after lunch until six up at the Kehlstein tea pavilion. It culminated in Hitler’s demand for the retirement of scores of unreliable senior army officers. The tenor of the interview can be judged from die following entry in the diary of Keitel’s adjutant, Wolf Eberhard: ‘Fiihrer was brutally frank about his contempt for die military commanders: diey need rapid and ur¬ gent reorganisation, show complete lack of confidence in the political lead¬ ership, and apprehensions about their own weakness. Enemy’s strength is exaggerated. A last appeal to the Commander in Chief, Army, to get to grips with his job and act without delay. His “historic mission”!’ Eberhard privately commented, ‘Let’s hope that diis is the last time diat die Fiihrer has to use such language to his soldiers.’ The final list of names was dirashed out between Brauchitsch and Goring on October 28 and taken by die latter to Hitler two days later. Among those blacklisted were diese generals: Curt Liebmann and Wilhelm Adam, Hermann Geyer and Wilhelm Ulex — and, of course, Rundstedt and Beck. On November 1, i 93 8 , Hitler announced diis upheaval in the army. He coupled it, perhaps tactlessly, with a wave of promotions in the Luftwaffe. early in November 1938 Hitler’s uncritical loyalty to his Party henchmen was put to its most severe test — by an incident symptomatic of racial trou¬ bles that had been festering in Central Europe for many decades.The Jew¬ ish problem was at its root. In Czechoslovakia, for instance, there were 239,000 Jews; they were not popular, and die new regime steered a deli¬ cate course, pandering to its powerful neighbour. President Emil Hacha, the venerable lawyer who had succeeded Benes, initiated a series of anti-Jewish measures, obliging Jewish industrialists to resign.The influx of Jewish refugees from the Sudeten territories led to fresh antisemitism, par¬ ticularly among the Czech academics who publicly demanded die removal of these ‘immigrants.’ In Bohemia and Moravia diere were about 99,000 Jews; in Slovakia 87,000, and in the tiny Carpatho-Ukraine no fewer than 66,000 (or 12 percent of the population.) Slovakia eagerly enacted the One Step Along aLong Path 139 anti-Jewish decrees that the Reich demanded. A wave of deportations be- gan. Nobody, however, wanted to house these homeless Jews. When Ribbentrop journeyed to Paris with much pomp in December to sign die joint declaration t hat Hitler had first suggested to Francois-Poncct, foreign minister Georges Bonnet begged him not to flood France with German Jews, as they already had enough Jews of their own. (‘In fact,’ Ribbentrop informed Hitler, ‘they are considering Madagascar for this purpose.’) Poland’s attitude was no more sympathetic. Ambassador Joseph Lipski had assured Hitler as recently as October 21 that if he ever succeeded in solving Europe’s Jewish problem, Warsaw would happily erect a statue in honour of his achievement. The Polish government had followed develop¬ ments throughout 1938 most closely. Fearing, after Hitler’s occupation of Austria, tint he would repatriate the thousands of Polish Jews from Vienna, in March they had speedily enacted a Law of Expatriation designed to de¬ prive such Jews of their native Polish citizenship. The Munich agreement panicked Warsaw into the further ruling t hat: after October 3 1 no expatri¬ ate Poles would be allowed back into their country without a special entry visa.The last days of October t hits saw frenzied scenes on the frontier. While Polish frontier officials slept, tlie Nazis quietly shunted unscheduled trains loaded with Jews across the line into Poland. From Hanover alone, 484 Polish Jews were ‘repatriated’ in this demean¬ ing manner. Among them were the parents and sisters of a Jewish youth of seventeen then living in Paris, Herschel Grynszpan. On November 3, as Hitler was subsequently told, Grynszpan received a postcard from his sis¬ ter briefly describing the family’s ‘repatriation’ to Poland. He swore re¬ venge — and decided to murder the German ambassador in Paris, Count von Welczek. Welczek being not available, on November 7 Grynszpan shot at Counsellor Ernst vom Rath instead. At first t he incident had not unduly aroused Hitler’s temper. He made no mention at all of it in his speeches of the next few days. On the ninth, die March on the Feldherrnhalle was solemnly re-enacted in the annual ceremony at noon. Wreaths were laid in die temples of honour, where Hit¬ ler had decreed that his own body was one day to rest. That evening he was in his modestly furnished Munich apartment in Prinzregenten Strasse when word arrived diat Counsellor vom Rath had now died of his gunshot injury. According to Goebbels, he told Hitler diat there had been anti-Jewish demonstrations in two provinces. His diary 140 i: Approach to Absolute Power records: ‘The condition of the diplomat Rath shot by the Jew in Paris is still very grave,’ and ‘The German press opens up with a will.’ Then he added that the Jews ‘have a few things coming their way.’ He received word of demonstrations in Kassel and Dessau, and of synagogues being set on fire. At five p.m. the official press agency announced that the diplomat Rath had died of his injuries. As Goebbels and Hitler left to attend the Nazi festivities in the old city hall, news arrived that tlie Munich police were cracking down on anti-Jewish demonstrations. Hitler ruled, said Goebbels later, t hat the Party was not to organise any such demonstrations — but under the circumstances it was not to quell them if they should occur spontaneously. We have only Goebbels’s word for this, quoted at a subsequent internal Party inquiry; in his diary he wrote, ‘Colossal activity. I brief die Fiihrer on the affair. He decides: Allow die demonstrations to continue. Hold back the police. The Jews must be given a taste of die public anger for a change.’ Goebbels then left Hitler as he had to speak to an assembly of Party notables in Munich’s old city hall. The minister instructed his listeners, according to one version, diat further such demonstrations were to be or¬ ganised aldiough die Nazi party must not appear responsible. In his diary, he proudly recorded his own leading role in what was to prove one of the most shameful episodes of Hitler’s rule: ‘A few gau officials get cold feet. But I keep pulling everybody together. We must not allow diis cowardly murder to go unpunished. Let things run their course. The Stosstrupp [shocktroop] “Hitler” sallies forth at once to deal with Munich. And things happen right away. A synagogue is smashed to smithereens. I try to save it from die flames, but fail.’ He continued: ‘Over to gau HQ with [Gauleiter Adolf] Wagner. I now issue a detailed circular setting out what may be done and what not. Wagner gets cold feet and trembles for his [Munich’s] Jewish shops. But I won’t be deterred. Meanwhile the Stosstrupp goes about its business. And with no half measures. I direct [Werner ] Wachter [director of die propaganda bureau] in Berlin to see diat the synagogue in Fasanen Strasse is smashed.’ The responsibilities dius seem clearly defined. A subsequent action re¬ port by the leader of die SA Group Nordmark would state: At about ten p.m. on November 9 die need for die operation was put to a number of gauleiters assembled in the Munich Hotel Schottenhammel by an anonymous member of die Nazi Party’s Reichsleitung (Reich direc¬ torate) . I thereupon volunteered the services of my SA Group Nordmark One Step Along aLong Path 141 to the gauleiter [of Schleswig-Holstein], Hinrich Lohse. At about 10:30 p.m. he telephoned his chief of staff in Kiel: ‘A Jew has bred a shot. A German diplomat is dead. There are wholly superfluous places of con¬ gregation in Friedrichstadt, Kiel, and Liibeck; and these people are still trading in shops in our midst. We don’t need eh her the one or the other. There’s to be no plundering, nor any manhandling. Foreign Jews are not to be molested. If there’s any resistance, use your firearms. The whole operation is to be in plain clothes, and is to be over by five a.m. ’ Toward midnight Hitler prepared to leave his apartment for the spec¬ tacular SS swearing-in ceremony. Himmler of course was with him. Himmler’s chief of staff Karl Wolff arrived with an indignant message from Heydrich at the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten: die local Gestapo HQ had just phoned, reporting that Goebbels’s district propaganda offices everywhere were whipping up anti-Jewish demonstrations and ordering t lie police — Himmler’s police — not to intervene. Himmler turned to Hitler for guid¬ ance. Hitler replied that the Gestapo were to protect Jewish property and lives. It was clear to Himmler that the whole affair had come out of the blue to the Fiihrer. After t lie midnight ceremony, back at his apartment, Hitler was informed at one a.m. by one of hisWehrmacht adjutants that die Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten had now telephoned to ask diem to come and retrieve dieir baggage as die synagogue next door was on fire. Julius Schaub, Hitler’s personal aide-de-camp, wrote after the war a graphic account of die ensuing night of horror, but Goebbels’s diary de¬ scribes Schaub as being in top form, ‘his old Stosstrupp past comes flooding back.’ ‘As I drive back to die hotel,’ continues diis entry, ‘there is die sound of breaking glass. Bravo! Bravo! Like gigantic old kilns, die synagogues are blazing.’ Telephone calls began coming from private citizens reporting fresh out¬ breaks of arson and Jewish businesses being looted all over Munich. Per¬ plexed, Hitler sent for SS Gruppenfiihrer Friedrich Karl von Eberstein, die city’s police chief, and ordered him to restore order at once. He telephoned Goebbels and demanded: ‘What’s going on?’ He sent out Schaub and odier members of his staff to stop die looting and arson. He ordered special pro¬ tection for the famous antique dealers, Bernheimer’s. At 2 : <, 6 a.m. a telex was issued by Rudolf Hess’s staff as Deputy of die Fiihrer — and was re¬ peated to all gauleiters as Party Ordinance No. 174 — forbidding the arson: ‘On express orders issued at die highest level of all there is to be no arson 142 i: Approach to Absolute Power or tho like, whatever, under any circumstances, against Jewish businesses.’ * At 3:41, a.m. the Berlin Gestapo repeated this prohibition. Goebbels, now in no doubt where Hitler’s real favour lay, also spent the night on the tel¬ ephone trying to extinguish die conflagration diat his mischievous tongue had ignited. The damage had, however, been done, and Ribbentrop left Hitler in no doubt of this. Hitler responded that he could not get rid of Goebbels now — not when he was about to need him more dian ever. He did send for Goebbels the next morning, November 1 o, to discuss ‘what to do next’ — the minis¬ ter used the word nunmehr, which implied an element of apprehension. Goring protested to Hitler that German insurance firms would have to pay the Jews compensation; the cost in foreign currency would be huge, as die broken plate-glass would have to be replaced widi imports from Belgium. Hitler refused to discipline Goebbels as the Reichsfuhrer SS demanded. Nor, except in the most savage instances, were the humble Party members who had actually committed die outrages brought to book, although ninety- one Jews had been murdered diat night. Goebbels successfully argued, over lunch widi Hitler, diat the pogrom had shown international Jewry diat Germans abroad were not fair game for Jewish assassins. ‘This is one dead man who is costing the Jews dear,’ Goebbels gloated in his private diary. ‘Our darling Jews will think twice in future before simply gunning down German diplomats.’ There was trenchant criticism of this Goebbels extravaganza from every odier leading Nazi (except Hitler himself). ‘The order was given by the Reich Propagandaleitung [Goebbels],’ recorded Himmler, ‘and I suspect that Goebbels, in his craving for power, which I noticed long ago, and also in his empty-headedness, started this action just at a time when the foreign- political situation is very grave. . . .When I asked the Fiihrer about it, I had the impression diat he did not know anything about these events.’ Hitler * Some writers now argue that the Nazis had fallen into a Zionist trap. The Haganah officials with whom Adolf Eichmann negotiated on his trip to Palestine in November 1937 had hinted that it would serve their interests if things were made hot for Germany’s Jews, to accelerate Jewish emigration to Palestine. It deserves comment that Grynszpan, although a destitute youth, was able to reside in a hotel in 1938 and purchase a handgun for 2^0 francs, and that his defence counsel Moro Giafferi was the best that the money of the International League against Anti-Semitism (‘lica’) could buy; lica’s Paris office was around the corner from Grynszpan’s hotel. One Step Along aLong Path H3 post facto endorsed the excesses of his henchman. When Goring sent him a sharp letter of protest Hitler replied that he should drop the matter; but as a sop to him he appointed the field marshal to co-ordinate all further moves in t lie Jewish problem. A collective fine of one billion marks was imposed on the Jewish community for the murder. After Hitler returned to Berlin on November 1 4, Goebbels smugly entered in his diary: ‘He’s in fine fettle. Sharply against the Jews.Thoroughly endorses my,’ a Freudian slip which at once expanded to, ‘and our, policies.’ over the next days, Hitler was frequently seen and photographed with Goebbels. In his eyes Goebbels was one of the unsung heroes of the Munich Agreement. In a long and astoundingly frank secret speech to four hundred Nazi editors in Munich on November 10, he had cynically explained to them just how much he owed to psychological warfare. He spoke of his admiration for Ribbentrop too. ‘Even Bismarck had to battle against bu¬ reaucracy,’ he said. ‘Today’s National Socialist government is still stifled by red tape. It is at its worst in the foreign ministry. Diplomats do not repre¬ sent their own countries, but an international Society clique. This malady in our foreign ministry cannot be rooted out overnight. It will take ten or fifteen years until a new generation of National Socialist-trained diplomats is ready. So far, the first and indeed the only diplomat to do the Third Reich proud overseas has been Ribbentrop. He is die ideal image of what I, as Fiihrer, think a diplomat should be. In diese last few months he has shown diat he has energy, toughness, courage, and nerve.’ Hitler’s innermost dioughts still revolved around Bohemia and Moravia. Occasionally, diese thoughts bubbled like marsh gas to the surface. Over dinner in Nuremberg on November 14 with a dozen local Party officers, die talk turned to die immense Congress Hall being erected nearby; Hitler said diat he needed large slabs of granite, and when somebody remarked diat the richest quarries were in rump Czecho-Slovakia, Hitler chuckled and commented knowingly, ‘One more reason!’ But over their next move he differed from Ribbentrop’s advisers. Weizsacker counselled the foreign minister early in December 1938 to di¬ vert Hitler’s attention from the soudi-east to the nordi-east: let the Reich first acquire Memel and Danzig on the Baltic coast, and a broad strip of land across the ‘Polish Corridor’ to East Prussia. Poland, arguedWeizsacker, enjoyed little or no international sympadiy at present. Hitler could shrink Poland to a manageable size and no other country would lift a finger to 144 i: Approach to Absolute Power assist her. Ribbentrop’s reply was noncommittal, as even he did not know Hitler’s inner intentions. Not diat Hitler was planning to seize rump Czecho-Slovakia by war, as he made plain during yet another tour of die Czech frontier fortifications early in December 1938. After once again lunching in a village inn, with forty Luftwaffe and army generals listening, he loudly discoursed on his intention of bringing Bohemia and Moravia into the Reich — but by political processes short of war. Ten days later, on December 17, Keitel confirmed Hitler’s instructions to the Wehrmacht to prepare unobtrusively for a vir¬ tually unopposed occupation of rump Czecho-Slovakia. hitler was manifestly undecided over what step to take after that. Would he have to deal with the western powers before marching cast?To Goebbels on October 2 3 at die Kehlstein tea pavilion, and again up there on October 24 to Ribbentrop, Hitler had intimated that war in the west seemed inevi¬ table within four or five years. Meeting Keitel and Brauchitsch for secret talks at Goebbels’s island villa on Schwanenwerder on November 16 — die chancellery was in the hands of Speer’s builders — Hitler conjured further widi diis probability. His western plans would depend on signing an alliance widi Mussolini. Germany and Italy would then each tackle the western democracies in a different theatre of war — Italy’s being die Mediterranean and North Africa. Hitler would tackle France first, he mused: her defeat would deny to Brit¬ ain a strategic foodiold on die European mainland. Swiss, Belgian, and Dutch neutrality would, he said, be respected. He was unimpressed by France’s frontier fortifications. ‘It is quite possible to penetrate her Maginot Line,’ he declared. ‘We have demonstrated this with our bring trials against the Czech fortibcations, which were built in die same way as the Maginot Line.’ hitler talked vaguely of plans for a Cabinet meeting in December, only to abandon the idea. He ordered Goring to convene and speak to the ‘Reich Defence Council’ instead. Goring did so, for diree hours, on November 18, 1938: every Reich minister and state secretary was present, as were Brauchitsch, Raeder, Bormann, and Heydrich too. He announced that Hit¬ ler had decided to triple die Reich’s armaments, but warned diem diat due to the events of that summer the Reich’s economy was almost bankrupt. He added, ‘The Fiihrer’s great architectural projects will still be worked on, as they are of moral and psychological value.’The only thing that would One Step Along aLong Path 14s tide the Reich budget over this immediate crisis was, ironically, the billion-Reichsmark fine levied on the Jewish community, explained Goring. The clock was now ticking ever louder for the Jews. On January , talking with Colonel Josef Beck, the Polish foreign minister, Hitler rat her speciously regretted that the western powers had not entertained Germa¬ ny’s colonial demands: ‘If they had,’ he said, ‘I might have helped solve the Jewish problem by making a territory available in Africa for resettlement of not only the German but the Polish Jews as well.’ On the twenty-first, he uttered to the Czech foreign minister Chvalkovsky these ominous words: ‘The Jews here are being destroyed [werden vernichtet]! The Czech replied sympathetically; and Hitler continued: ‘Help can only come from tlie other countries, like Britain and the United States, who have unlimited areas which they could make available for the Jews.’ In a major speech to the Reichstag on January 30, 1939, Hitler uttered an unmistakable threat: During my struggle for power, it was primarily the Jewish people who just laughed when t hey heard me prophesy that one day I would become head of state and thereby assume the leadership of the entire people, and that I would then among other things enforce a solution on the Jewish problem. I expect that the howls of laughter that rose then from the throats of German Jewry have by now died to a croak. Today I’m going to turn prophet yet again: if international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed once more in plunging our peoples into a world war, then the outcome will not be a Bolshevisation of the world and thereby die victory of Jewry, but the destruction of the Jewish race in Europe! Accelerated by diese ugly stimuli, the exodus of Jews from the Reich continued throughout 1939, to stop only in October 1940, by which time Heydrich had successfully evicted about two-thirds of them — about 300,000 from Germany, 130,000 fromAustria, and 30,000 from Bohemia/Moravia; some 70,000 of them reached Palestine, through die unholy community of aims that had briefly existed between Heydrich’s SD and the Zionists. hitler avoided die chancellery area in Berlin for many weeks, because it was teeming widi Speer’s construction workers. He dealt with affairs of state by telephone, usually from the Berghof. He had a constitutional duty to consider appeals for clemency in death sentences and to sign the execu- 146 i: Approach to Absolute Power tion warrants. In bygone times the condemned criminal had had the tradi¬ tional right to see die Kaiser’s signature on die warrant before being led to the scaffold. In Hitler’s era die usages were less picturesque. A telephone call went from Schaub to Lammers in Berlin — ‘The Fiihrer has turned down die appeal for clemency’ — and this sufficed to rubber-stamp a fac¬ simile of the Fiihrer’s signature on die execution warrant. On one occasion the hie laid before Hitler stated simply that the Berlin chancellery would ‘take the necessary steps’ if they had heard no decision from him by ten p.m. that night. Human life was becoming cheaper in Hitler’s Germany. The broader economic problems faced Hitler all diat winter. A serious inflation had begun in May 1938. Blomberg later stated under interroga¬ tion that when he returned from his year’s enforced exile in January 1939 he detected a great deterioration in living standards. By die end of 1938, 8,223 million Reichsmarks were in circulation compared with 53278 mil¬ lion in March 1938 and 3,560 million in 1933. On January 7, 1939, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, president of the Reichsbank, and seven fellow directors signed a stern warning to Hitler about die inflationary pressure resulting from recent ‘foreign operations.’ Hitler was shocked by diis semi-mutiny. In a secret speech to his colonels in February he warned: ‘There must be no possibility whatever for anybody even to diink diat there is some institution or odier in Germany diat has a different opinion from the one expressed by die Fiihrer.’ He already — correctly — suspected Schacht of maintaining clandestine contacts with foreign governments.* He summoned Schacht to die chancellery on January 19 and handed him a document announcing his dismissal.The economics minister, Waldier Funk, a flabby homosexual, was appointed Schacht’s successor. On the same day Hitler also disposed of his personal adjutant, Fritz Wiedemann, whom he suspected of leaking state secrets. Their final interview was brief and cru¬ elly to die point. ‘You always wanted to be consul general in San Francisco,’ Hitler reminded Wiedemann. ‘You’ve got your wish.’ It was at about this time that Keitel sent to Franz Haider, chief of the General Staff, a note that the army would have until 1943 to complete its expansion, and that diere would be no mobilisations before then. On OKW * Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England, 1920—44, told the U.S. ambassa¬ dor in London that Schacht was his constant informant over sixteen years about Germa¬ ny’s precarious financial position (U.S. ambassador Joseph Kennedy reported this to Washington on February 27, 1939). One Step Along aLong Path 1 47 advice, Hitler decided to halt all army weapons production during 1939, to enable the Luftwaffe and naval construction programmes to go ahead.This would bring all three services to the same level by about 1944. On January 17, 1939, Admiral Raeder brought the final draft of die navy’s Z-Plan to Hitler at the chancellery. Ten days later Hitler issued an order assigning to this naval expansion program absolute priority over both other services. He again assured Raeder that he would not be needing the German navy for several years. what would even the finest weapons avail Germany however if the gener¬ als were loath to use them? ‘The brave will fight whatever t lie odds,’ Hitler said on January 18. ‘But give the craven whatever weapons you will, they will always find reason enough to lay them down!’ This was the damage, Hitler felt, that Beck and his General Staff had inflicted on the officer corps. Early in 1939, he decided to repair it himself using his greatest gift — his power of oratory. All his generals and advisers admitted that he had this power. He cast the same spell over mass audiences, whether he spoke from a carefully pre¬ pared script, which he had polished and trimmed far into the night, or ex tempore, timing every gesture and comic pause to ride the mood of his lis¬ teners. Nobody who attended Hitler’s speech to newly commissioned officers in Berlin in February 1942, at the climax of tlie German army’s desperate travails on the frozen Russian front, and witnessed the affection t hat he commanded — a grim-faced Hitler, checked in mid-exit by a sudden storm of cheering from die ten thousand army officers, which itself gave way to the spontaneous singing of die national anthem — nobody could doubt that Germany’s leader cast a spell like few odiers in die past and certainly none since. By rare fortune, die three secret speeches of January and February 1939 by which Hitler prepared his officer corps for war have survived. No brief extract can reproduce dieir flavour. They were of brutal frankness. Hitler set out die blood-racial basis of the Nazi Weltanschauung , the economic rea¬ sons obliging Germany to push furdier into Central Europe, and the inevi¬ tability of war. In this war he would expect his officers to serve him un¬ swervingly, to die honourably, and to show true leadership to dieir men. His contempt for the old Reichswehr spirit was openly expressed, even in die first speech — to 3,600 army lieutenants packed into the Mosaic Hall of Speer’s new chancellery on January 18, 1939, with the diree Commanders 148 i: Approach to Absolute Power in Chief and Keitel in attendance. He demanded of them that they cultivate optimism, because pessimism was their worst enemy — it bred defeatism and surrender. ‘What belief do I demand of you?’ he challenged diem. ‘I demand of you, my young officers, an unconditional belief that one day our Germany, our German Reich, will be die dominant power in Europe, diat no other power will be in a position to stop us, let alone to break us! ’ Ten minutes later he went even furdier: ‘It is my unshakeable will diat the Ger¬ man Wehrmacht become the most powerful force on earth.’ Finally, he told them: ‘Above all, my officers, you must be capable and inflexible even in adversity.True soldiers are not recognized by dieir victories, but after their defeats.’ His second speech was more of a lecture, delivered to 217 officers in¬ cluding all of Germany’s senior generals and admirals on January 23. He held out the British Empire as an example to diem, and the human qualities in die British diat had won it. All of the world’s empires have been won by deeds of daring, and lost through pacifism. If, in all the centuries of its existence, the British Em¬ pire had been governed by the forces and trends that it is now claiming to preserve, die Empire would never have been won in die first place. Hitler held out to this audience the same fixed and final target — the new Reich as it would be someday. His legions would have one advantage over all the preceding German generations of warriors: ‘They marched off to¬ ward a Dream Land which probably few could visualise and none was ever to see; while we have that target already in sight.’ The third speech was one that his chief adjutant Colonel Schmundt had urged upon him. Hitler spoke at six p.m. on February 10, 1939, to all the army colonels widi active commands, behind closed doors at the Kroll Opera-house in Berlin. This time even his staff was astounded by his open¬ ness in revealing his future intentions.The Fiihrer described his disappoint¬ ment at some officers’ lack of understanding for his actions in 1938, and he tried to show that Munich was just one of a carefully planned sequence of events. ‘Even though 1938 has ended with perhaps die biggest triumph of our recent history, gentlemen, it is of course only one step along a long path that stretches out ahead of us.’ Some of his arguments were familiar — the need to prevent future Ger¬ man generations from starving, the fact that no future leader would possess VOLKISCHER^BEOBACHTER A tattered portent of things to come. The Nazi party newspaper of January 3 T 1939 headlines ‘One of the Greatest Speeches of Adolf Hitler,’ who had uttered a ‘PropheticWarning to the yews’( author’s collection) 1 50 i: Approach to Absolute Power even a semblance of his authority and that, numerically superior though Germany’s opponents might be, they were not racial entities. Their task now, he said, was no less than to repair three centuries of decay. Since the Peace ofWestphalia, Hitler argued, Germany had declined to political im¬ potence. Now, in 1939, he had brought Germany once more to the very threshold of a new age. ‘Take my word for it, gentlemen, my triumphs these last few years have only resulted from grasping sudden opportuni¬ ties. ... I have taken it upon myself to solve the German problem.’ He continued, ‘That is, the German space problem. Take good note of that: as long as I live, this ideal will govern my every action. Take heed too: the moment I believe that I can make a killing I shall always strike immediately, and I shall not hesitate to go to the very brink. I am convinced this problem has to be solved so oder so, and I shall never shrug my shoulders and say, “Oh dear, I’ll leave that for whoever comes after me”.’ He told these Wehrmacht colonels that he wanted his officers to go into battle with sword and Weltanschauung as once they would have brandished sword and Bible: So don’t be surprised if over the coming years I seize every opportunity to attain these German objectives, and please give me your blindest sup¬ port. Above all, take it from me that I shall always have scrutinised these matters from every possible angle first — and that once I announce my decision to take this or that course of action, that decision is irrevocable and I shall force it dirough whatever the odds against us. Thus spake Adolf Hitler to his Wehrmacht in February 1939. Part ii: Toward the Promised Land COLONNA ( heimlich ): Er ist der Gotze diesesVolks, das er durch Trug verzaubert halt. richard wagner’s opera Rienzi The Nazi party rally of 1934 i n Nuremberg: Hitler and Himmler review the troops of the SS Leihstandarte (hoover library) In Hitler’s Chancellery W hen Hitler had returned to Berlin on January 8, 1939, Speer’s new Reich chancellery was complete. The long frontage of yellow stucco and grey stone dominated a quarter-mile stretch of Voss Strasse. Dwarfed by its tall square columns, the motionless grey-uniformed sentries melted into the buildings, invisible until they pre¬ sented arms to passing officers. The four hundred rooms housed the Civil Service and the Party’s organisation. To the left were die offices of Hans Lammers, to die right Otto Meissner’s Presidential chancellery. On die top floor was Philipp Bouhler’s ‘chancellery of die Fiihrer of die Nazi party.’ Everywhere yellow signs pointed to air raid shelters. Little trace of Hitler’s chancellery now remains except die occasional red-marble planter or tabletop anonymously gracing the home of a former general or member of his staff. The State Rooms were on the ground floor. Visitors arrived by limou¬ sine at the reception area, and were conducted through a flight of halls of ascending grandeur until die Fiihrer’s Study itself was reached, a large room widi ponderous chandeliers and an immense pastel-coloured carpet.Three heads adorned die front panels of his great desk: one of them was Medusa, complete with wridiing snakes emerging from her hair. Yet Hitler himself was rarely seen in die new chancellery. He continued to live and work in die old building, which survived at right angles to Speer’s new structure. Here, in the first floor of the old chancellery, he had his Residence. An entrance hall and ‘garden room’ widi four more rooms opened onto an old garden of almost monastic solitude. Here was his equestrian statue of Frederick the Great — given to him by Francois-Poncct — and die Lenbach portrait of Bismarck. In diis building too was Hitler’s real study. Its walls were hung with wallpaper of a heavy red velour. A sturdy suite of !£3 154 11 : Toward the Promised Land chairs byTroost had replaced the fragile Louis XIV furniture after a misfor¬ tune with a bulky Indian maharaja four years before. On January i 2, 1939, an episode of some significance occurred in Speer’s new building during the New Year diplomatic reception which — with Goring’s birthday celebration — opened the year for Berlin officialdom. Wearing his brown Party tunic Hitler waited in his Cabinet room. He could hear the diplomats arriving — the drill of t lie guard of honour and the famil¬ iar sounds of protocol. He had begun to relish this foppery; in July 1938 he had instructed that die Egyptian minister was to be received with a full guard of honour, while die Soviet ambassador was to be accorded no hon¬ ours at all, as befitted die pariah that he was. At noon Hitler now walked dirough to the great reception hall, where the diplomats had drawn up in a self-conscious semicircle, and stationed himself beneath the two crystal chandeliers so that he could read his speech widiout spectacles. He briefly shook hands with each diplomat in turn, but when he reached die Russian, Alexei Merekalov, he paused and began a conversation. In the jealous diplomatic world the content was unimportant — it was time elapsed diat mattered. Hitler talked to Merekalov for several minutes. In this way he hinted to Moscow diat he could easily let bygones be bygones. (Hitler would brag to his generals on August 2 2, on die eve of his historic deal with Stalin, diat he had begun working for it at this very reception.) For two decades Russo-German relations had been marked by mutual distrust. The cautious co-operation launched in 1922 at Rapallo had sur¬ vived until 1933: Germany had furnished special equipment and know-how; Russia, raw materials and space for the clandestine training of the Reichswehr. The Reichswehr had supplied die Russians with German train¬ ing manuals, weapons prototypes, and staff college training in Germany. The Nazi revolution of 1933 had momentarily thwarted Moscow’s aspira¬ tions in Germany — Adolf Hitler was, after all, die author of Mein Kampf and Chapter 14 continued to appear unamended, laying bare his undimmed hatred of die Soviet Union and his aims for conquest diere. Hitler quietly admired Stalin — how Bolshevism had subjected the Slav sub-humans, as he called diem, to ‘die tyranny of a Jewish ruling clique,’ and established pre¬ cisely die kind of elite leadership with which he was struggling to invest Germany. Each side continued however to prepare for war with the odier. In March 1936 Hitler openly told the Reichstag about the unending fertile plains of In Hitler’s Chancellery 155 the Ukraine in which t he Germans would one day ‘wallow in plenty.’ In his 1938 secret speeches, he always referred to the Soviet Union’s military power as a quantite negligeable. But with the realisation that Poland was un¬ willing to become an accessory, it dawned on Hitler that Stalin’s aid might become useful. Since Munich, Hitler had cautiously stated his first demand on Poland — for the return of Danzig and overland access to East Prussia. But Poland had rebuffed him. Hitler could not shelve die Polish problem permanently. East Prussia was vital to his Ostpolitik — his future crusade into die east. Its capital, Konigsberg, was German through and through: in its fourteenth-century cathedral rested die bones of philosopher Immanuel Kant and many a Hohenzollern prince. But die province had an impover¬ ished and declining population (a consequence, he redected on May 1 2, 1942, of earlier Prussian governments’ folly in regarding it as a penal colony for teachers, civil servants, and officers who had failed to make the grade at home). It is significant that Hitler tackled this deficit on February 1, 1939, widi a secret decree on die ‘Reinforcement of the Eastern Borderlands,’ and with economic measures calculated to reverse the drain of manpower and capital from East Prussia. Meanwhile he had long since sworn to recover Danzig, a ‘northern Nu¬ remberg,’ for Germany. He wore the Danzig emblem — a silver ship sailing on blue waves — engraved on his cufflinks. He had nurtured die hope since September 1938 that he could do a deal widi Poland for die bloodless re¬ turn of Danzig in exchange for the Carpatho-Ukraine coveted by Poland. Ribbentrop had aired diis idea to the Polish ambassador, Joseph Lipski, on October 24. Lipski had replied evasively. Undismayed, Hitler had invited die Polish foreign minister, Colonel Josef Beck, to come in die New Year. Their secret meeting took place at die Berghof on January 5, 1939: Beck refused to rise to his bait. This was why Hitler left for Berlin two days later resolved to play for Stalin’s hand instead. His protracted dalliance with Merekalov was die first move; a conspicuous abstinence from attacking die USSR in his anniversary speech on January 30 was die second. in Berlin Hitler kept relatively regular hours, receiving individual Cabinet ministers during the morning, then lunching as late as three or four. He joked diat his dining room ought to be called ‘The Cheerful Chancellor’s.’ Women were excluded. This lunch-table assembly was in fact die closest diat he came to holding a Cabinet meeting after 1938 (though once, in ig 6 n: Toward the Promised Land February 1939, he did agree to Lammers’s suggestion that one should be called: but Goring was away in Italy, recovering from a slimming cure, and the project was abandoned).Todt’s diary shows he came nine times (includ¬ ing once, on January 27, 1939, to show Flitler tlie planning for the im¬ mense Flamburg suspension bridge). After lunch Flitler read newspapers, bought by an aide each day from a kiosk at the nearby Kaiserhof Flotel. In earlier years he had taken tea in the Kaiserhof: as he entered, the little orchestra would strike up the ‘Donkey Serenade,’ his favourite Hollywood movie tune. He was, he confessed, a fan of ShirleyTemple and Jeannette Macdonald. He saw whatever films he liked, but he kept up a running commentary of invective unless the movie found his favour right from the first reel: ‘What filth this is! It should be sup¬ pressed.’ ‘How can the Doctor permit a film like tins! Who directed it?’ The Fit lire r’s SS adjutants dutifully compiled a list of his pithy one-line reviews and sent t hem to die propaganda ministry. His edicts had the weight of law — and woe betide a film that attracted die Fiihrer’s ultimate reproof ‘broken off in mid-film.’ Prairie Hyenas, Tip-Ojf Girls, King of Arizona, Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, The Great Gambini, Shanghai — all these movies came to an unscripted end in Hitler’s chancellery. When Marie Antoinette was shown, he got up and stalked out. He was uncertain over his next move. ‘Perhaps,’ wrote Goebbels on February 1, 1939, ‘it’s the Czechs’ turn again.’ Over lunch die next day the minister observed Hitler thinking out loud: ‘He is hatching new plans again,’ he recorded. ‘A real Napoleon!’ On the thirteenth Hitler’s special train bore him toward Hamburg. Here the largest Nazi battleship, 33,000 armour-plated tons, was waiting to be launched. First, in quiet homage, he visited in nearby Friedrichsruh the tomb of Bismarck, the statesman whose name he had selected for die Reich’s first super-warship. Next morning, as bands serenaded the fifty diousand spectators, a green ferry carried the Fiihrer across the Elbe from the Saint-Pauli pier to the Blohm & Voss shipyard. In Hamburg a public holiday had been declared.The bands fell silent as Hitler marched to the tall scaffold and delivered his set speech, praising his great predecessor’s works in found¬ ing die Second Reich. Hitler had himself positioned every newsreel camera, and forbidden foreign newspaper reporters to attend. After ten minutes of his speech, a small red lamp glowed in his rostrum, warning that die last props were being hammered away and that the colossus was about to move. The new In Hitler’s Chancellery 157 battleship Bismarck rumbled down into the Elbe, to die strains of die Ger¬ man national anthem. how revealing is Baron von Weizsacker’s private note on die Fiihrer’s fireside remarks after an intimate meal at die Bismarck shrine at Friedrichs- ruh on that day, February 13: For those of us who know that die rest of Czecho-Slovakia will be dealt its death blow in approximately four weeks’ time, it was interesting to hear die Fiihrer declare that he himself used to prefer surprise tactics but has now gone off them as he has exhausted dieir possibilities. The Fiihrer sketched out die September crisis of last year thus: ‘I owe my triumph to my unflinching stand, which left die other side with a whiff of war if I felt it necessary.’ The sequence for die likely invasion of Czecho-Slovakia had now evolved, and along with it a formula to make it palatable to the western powers. Weizsacker himself, in an undated note, described die likely scenario: an artificially induced squabble splits Slovakia from the Prague government; Germany advises Hungary ‘to restore order’ in the Carpadio-Ukraine; Slovak government asks Hitler to guarantee its frontiers; Germans in Bohemia appeal for protection; ultimatum to Prague to sign treaty widi the Reich, failing which the Wehrmacht will invade. Goebbels’s propaganda machine puts die blame on the Czechs — stressing the moderation of the German action and listing similar episodes in history. Since Munich Hitler’s agents had burrowed deep into Slovakia’s struc¬ ture. Nameless agents of Himmler’s SS, Goebbels’s ministry, Goring’s Four-Year Plan office, and the Nazi Foreign Organisation (AO) had fanned out across Slovakia. By January 21, 1939, when Hitler had a tough inter¬ view widi die Czech foreign minister Chvalkovsky, it was obvious that his decision had been taken. He demanded absolute Czech neutrality, and a considerable reduction in Czech forces. Chvalkovsky promised compliance. VoytSch Tuka, a Slovak agitator who had suffered long years of Czech imprisonment and had only recently been amnestied after die flight of Benes, telegraphed to Hitler a fulsome appeal to protect die Slovaks, and accept diem as die economic and cultural colleagues of die ‘illustrious German nation.’ On about February 10, Karmasin’s men in Bratislava were confidentially tipped off diat Hitler would topple die Prague regime in a l$8 n: Toward the Promised Land month’s time.Tuka visited Hitler on the twelfth, and formally placed the destiny of Slovakia in his hands. ‘My people,’ he said, ‘await their total lib¬ eration by you.’ Hitler dropped a series of powerful hints that Slovakia should declare her independence of Prague — t lie first stage in t he scenario outlined (if not actually proposed) by Weizsacker. Wilhelm Keppler sent his close associate Dr. EdmundVeesenmayer to Bratislava to tell the Slovaks to hurry, as ‘oth¬ erwise Hungary will get our permission to occupy Slovakia at any time after March i <, .’When Durtansky and his economics minister visited Goring on February 28, the field marshal greeted them with: ‘Now what’s it to be? When are you going to declare independence, so we don’t have to turn you over to the Hungarians!’ What happened on March 10, 1939, found Hitler by no means unpre¬ pared. At 20 a . m . Walther Hewel was telephoned from Vienna with word that Czech troops had marched into Bratislava. FatherTiso, the Slovak prime minister, had taken refuge in a Jesuit college. Goebbels appreciated that this was the opportunity Hitler had been waiting for to ‘solve the problem we left half-solved in October.’ Hitler sent for him at mid-day, then for other ministers — Hewel’s notes list conversations all morning between Ribbentrop, Heydrich, Schmundt, and Keppler. At 1 1 : go a.m.: ‘Keppler telephones:Tuka arrested.Telephones cut off. Martial law.Troops marching in. Karmasin may have been arrested too.’ At 11 :g g: ‘I go to the Fuhrer, inform Schaub.’At twelve noon: ‘Phoned Chief [Ribbentrop]: is to come to Fuhrer at once.’ Keitel was also sent for, at one p.m. Hitler revealed that he had decided to march in to the rest of Czecho-Slovakia on the fifteenth and seize Prague. ‘Our frontier must extend to the Carpathians,’ recorded Goebbels, and he remarked: ‘The Ides of March.’ We’re all very pleased [Goebbels continued in his previously unpub¬ lished diary], even Ribbentrop.The Fuhrer shouts with joy.This is going to be a pushover. . . Late in the afternoon over to the Fuhrer again. We infer from one report that before its arrest the Tiso regime appealed in despair to the German government. The actual text can always be obtained later. The Fuhrer says, and rightly so, that you can’t make history with lawyers. You’ve got to have heart, head, and courage — just what lawyers lack. In the evening, at my suggestion, the Fuhrer visits the People’s Theatre, to put up a facade. In Hitler’s Chancellery 159 To dampen foreign press alarm, Nazi editors were secretly briefed that morning to devote no more than two columns to die Czech crisis. During die coming night, Hitler’s SS Lifeguards regiment ( Leibstandarte ) was alerted and issued widi field-grey uniforms. In a secret speech to staff college gradu¬ ates late on the elevendi Hitler explained, ‘The structure of a state de¬ mands diat the Herrenvolk does die organising, while a somewhat inferior mass of people — or let’s call diem an undominating kind of people — pros¬ trate diemselves to diat leadership.’ History, ventured Hitler, afforded more dian one example of a relatively thin stratum of dominators organising a broad mass of slaves. For some days there was confusion in Czecho-Slovakia. ‘The attempt to whip diings up with our SS has only partly succeeded,’ wrote Goebbels. ‘It looks as if Slovakia’s not playing along.’ He talked over tactics with Hitler on die twelfth. They agreed to keep die crisis off the newspaper front pages until Wednesday, die day chosen for die invasion. ‘If only we had ... an appeal for aid or military intervention,’ sighed Goebbels. ‘That would make it all so simple.’ They stayed up far into the night talking over dieir next steps. Ribbentrop warned Hitler that there was bound to be a conflict with Britain eventually. ‘The Fiihrer,’ noted Goebbels, who played no part in the sometimes heated argument, ‘is preparing for it, but does not consider it inevitable.’ The Czech president, Emil Hacha, appointed Dr. Karol Sidor to replace Tiso in Slovakia. Hitler sent his agent Keppler to its capital Bratislava. Keppler salvagedTiso and brought him back to Berlin on March 13 .Without beating around the bush, Hitler told Tiso to proclaim Slovakia’s independence of Prague, and to do it now. Over to die Fiihrer in the evening [wrote Goebbels]. He has received Tiso. Explained to him that Slovakia’s historic hour has come. If diey don’t act diey’ll be swallowed up by Hungary. He is to think it over and go back to Bratislava. No revolution, it must all be constitutional and above board. Not that we expect very much from him. But diat doesn’t matter now. The Fiihrer goes over his plan once more. Within five days die whole operation will be over. On the first day we’ll already be in Prague. Our planes within two hours in fact. I think we’ll pull it off widiout significant bloodshed. And dien the Fiihrer intends to take a lengdiy political breather. Amen! I can’t believe it, it’s too good to be true. i6o ii: Toward the Promised Land Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to stand by to invade at six a.m. on the fifteenth. The OKW drafted an ultimatum to present to the Czechs. At noon on March 14 Keitel reported to Hitler that the Wehrmacht was poised on the Czech frontier. Hitler debated witli Goebbels the new statute estab¬ lishing ‘Bohemia and Moravia,’ the old name Czechoslovakia was to vanish forthwith. Goebbels in turn instructed his staff to bone up on Germany’s historic claim to these provinces, noting: ‘We shall speak of Bohemia and Moravia as ancient German territories.’ To stifle foreign criticism Hitler informed Prague that it would be to their ‘great advantage’ if Dr. Hacha, despite his age and infirmity, would travel to Berlin. At 2:1 j p.m. the Ger¬ man legation in Prague confirmed that Hacha would come to Berlin that evening, but by train —' his heart would not stand the strain of flying. Hitler confidently ordered the army to invade at six a.m. , and instructed Keitel to return to the chancellery at nine p.m. Colonel Eduard Wagner voiced the relish of all the General Staff in a private letter that evening: ‘I don’t think that much will happen, and the foreign powers have expressed themselves disinterested. End of Czecho-Slovakia! — And they have been asking for it!’ Hitler ordered full military honours for the Czech president’s arrival. Hacha’s daughter was accompanying him as a nurse; Hitler sent an adjutant to fill her room at the Adlon Hotel with yellow roses, and placed a note there in his own handwriting. Under cover of darkness, the first German armed units crossed quietly into Czecho-Slovakia. The SS Leibstandarte had instructions to infiltrate Moravian Ostrau before the rapacious Poles could lay hands on the modern steel mills atWitkowitz. after dinner that evening, March 14, 1939, Hitler retired to the music room to watch the latest movie, Ein hojfnungloser Fall (A Hopeless Case ). Shortly, Ribbentrop reported that Hacha’s train had arrived. Hitler examined his fingernails and remarked that the old fellow should be allowed to rest an hour or two. It was not until about eleven p.m. that Meissner ushered in the diminutive Czech president. ‘The Fiihrer has them wait until midnight,’ observed Goebbels. ‘Slowly and surely wearing them out.That’s what they did with us at Versailles. The tried and tested methods of political tactics.’ Hitler ordered everybody out except Ribbentrop and Hewel, who took a written note of tlicit' discussion. In a voice trembling with emotion Hacha delivered a long-winded speech on his career as a lawyer in die Viennese civil service; he had read of and In Hitler’s Chancellery 161 admired Hitler’s ideas, he said, and he was sure diat Czecho-Slovakia would be safe in the Fiihrer’s hands. As die monologue continued, Hitler grew uneasy: ‘The more Hacha rambled on about how hardworking and conscientious die Czechs were,’ he would recall in May 1942, ‘the more I felt I was sitting on red-hot coals — knowing that die invasion order had already been issued.’ Hitler told him diat at six a.m. the Wehrmacht would invade Bohemia and Moravia; but die country’s autonomy was assured. If Hacha would sign on the dotted line, diere would be no bloodshed. ‘I’m almost ashamed to admit diat we have one division standing by for each Czech battalion.’ Twice Keitel came in to interrupt him; twice Hitler nodded curtly. The playacting had effect. Hacha and his foreign minister retired to anodier room to consult Prague by telephone. The line was poor, the old man had to shout, and toward diree a.m. he suffered a heart failure; it took an injection from Hitler’s personal physician Professor Morell to revive him. The min¬ utes were ticking past. Hitler reminded Hacha of die military situation; die Wehrmacht was already moving up. Goring, who had arrived hurriedly diat evening from his vacation in San Remo, interjected that at daybreak his Luftwaffe would appear over die streets of Prague. Finally Hacha caved in. The main agreement was signed shortly before four a.m. In a second document Hacha agreed to surrender all Czech aircraft and weapons im¬ mediately to the Germans. But diere were still problems. Hitler demanded diat Chvalkovsky must countersign; Hacha obstinately refused. The Full re r would later recall having diought to himself, ‘Look out, this is a lawyer you have facing you. Perhaps there’s some law in Czechoslovakia diat makes an agreement like this valid only if it is countersigned by die minister concerned!’ Hitler’s guests left his study by one route, while FatherTiso, the Slovak prime minister, was ushered in by anodier and informed of the result. After that Hitler must have sent for Wilhelm Keppler. Keppler wrote a few hours later to Himmler: ‘When we were togedier with die Fiihrer last night after the agreement had been signed, die Fiihrer paid his particular respects to the men who risked their lives in highly dangerous missions at die front. Whereupon Ribbentrop declared that the whole job had been magnificently performed by the SS alone. . . .’ For a few moments Hitler was alone. He turned, opened the invisible door behind his monolidiic desk, and walked into the tiny office where his secretaries, Christa Schroeder and Gerda Daranowski, had been waiting for the all-night conference to 162 ii: Toward the Promised Land end. His eyes sparkled, and he laughed out loud. ‘Well, children! Now put one here and one here,’ he said, and shyly tapped his cheeks: ‘One peck each!’The startled secretaries complied. ‘This is die most wonderful day of my life,’ Hitler explained. ‘I have now accomplished what others strove in vain for centuries to achieve. Bohemia and Moravia are back in the Reich. I will go down in history as die greatest German of all time.’ As his invasion of Czecho-Slovakia began, at 8:02 a.m. Hitler’s special train pulled out of Anhalt station. Hacha and his party were still sound asleep at the Adlon. Lieutenant Colonel Kurt Zeitzler of Keitel’s staff kept Hitler briefed on the army’s progress. By nine a.m. the German army was in the streets of Prague. There was no bloodshed. One road-bridge was barred by Czech patriots singing the national ant liem; the German com¬ pany commander tactfully halted his column until die anthem ended, and ordered the Present Arms. At 2:03 p.m. Hitler’s train reached die little Bohemian frontier station of Leipa, where Panzer Corps Commander General Erich Hoepner awaited him widi Colonel Erwin Rommel (who was to command die ‘Fiihrer HQ’). To the consternation of Himmler and die security staff, Hitler decided to drive right on to Prague. At four p.m. the frontier barrier was raised for him to cross into Czecho-Slovakia, and in a snowstorm his convoy headed on to the capital. He stood in his open car, saluting as he passed his regiments. It was dusk when he arrived in Prague. At first nobody knew where Hacha’s official residence, die Hradcany Castle, was. Hitler’s drivers finally entered it dirough a gate in die rear. A palace flunky was found to guide them to a wing where these unexpected visitors might sleep, but Hitler did not rest yet. He began dictating a law establishing a German ‘Protectorate’ over Bohemia and Moravia. At two in the morning a cold buffet arrived, pro¬ vided by the local German Centre. There was Pilsen beer: Hitler was pre¬ vailed upon to sample a small glass but he grimaced, did not finish it, and went to bed. The first diat die citizens of Prague knew of his presence in dieir midst was next morning, when diey espied his personal swastika stand¬ ard beating from a flagpole atop the snow-bedecked palace roofs. The initial reaction from London was that this was an affair diat need not concern them. The British public however refused to swallow Hitler’s ‘an¬ nexation’ of Bohemia and Moravia, and Chamberlain was obliged to deliver a strongly worded speech in Birmingham, demanding: ‘Is this in fact a step in the direction of an attempt to dominate die world by force?’ About a week later, however, Chamberlain reassured Hitler through a third party In Hitler’s Chancellery 163 that he quite sympathised with Germany’s move, even though he was un¬ able to say so in public, as he was being exposed to intemperate attacks by tlie Churchill clique. The benefits of this new conquest well outweighed the western powers’ opprobrium: control of Prague brought to Hitler the gold reserves needed to overcome the Reich’s huge budget deficit, airfields to threaten Poland and Russia, and a front line shorter by one thousand miles to defend. It furnished to him Czech tanks, artillery, and aircraft; moreover it put Ro¬ mania andYugoslavia in his thrall, because their armed forces were largely equipped by the Skoda arms factory at Pilsen. Hitler’s officers marvelled at his fresh accomplishment, and many of the weaker fry, who in harder times would sidle over to the ‘resistance movement,’ in March 1939 wrote ad¬ miring words in their private diaries and letters to their friends. Surprisingly, the ‘protectorate’ brought blessings for the Czechs as well. Their economy was stabilised and unemployment vanished.Their menfolk were not called upon to bear arms in Hitler’s coalition.Their armed forces were dissolved, and their officers were given state pensions on Hitler’s or¬ ders, to purchase their dependence and complicity. The industrious Czechs accepted rich contracts from tire Reich and learned eventually to cherish the pax teutonica enforced by Reinhard Heydrich in 1941. It was the peace of the graveyard, but Heydrich won the affection of the Czech workers to such an extent — for instance, by introducing the first ever Bismarckian social security and pension schemes — that 30,000 Czechs thronged into Wenceslas Square in Prague to demonstrate against his murder in 1942. The Czechs had not been required to sell their souls, and this was what Hitler had promised Hacha in Berlin. Hacha himself never felt any griev¬ ance. He inquired of Morell about the prescription he had been injected with and thereafter obtained a regular supply from Morell’s pharmacy. He would die, forgotten, in an Allied prison in 1 941,; Tiso andTuka were both hanged. ON march 16, 1939, Hitler’s propaganda minister issued another confi¬ dential edict to Nazi editors: ‘The use of the term Grossdeutsches Reich is not desired. This term is reserved for later eventualities.’ The next objects on Hitler’s list of acquisitions were, of course, Memel, Danzig, and the Polish Corridor. Late on March 21, while Dr. Goebbels escorted Hitler to the t Ik 'at re to camouflage what was going on, Ribbentrop issued a crude ultimatum to Lithuania to hand back Memel; the Lithuanian 164 n: Toward the Promised Land foreign minister, Juozas Urbsys, was hurriedly summoned to Berlin and he signed the necessary papers after Ribbentrop and Weizsacker had tightened the screw. Ribbentrop simultaneously summoned the Polish ambassador, Lipski, and restated the offer of October concerning Danzig. He even hinted that Slovakia might be die subject of later discussions with Poland — after the Danzig issue had been settled. While still awaiting Lithuania’s response, Hitler meanwhile discussed with Goebbels die moves diat would follow the return of Danzig: first he would seek a respite, to restore public confidence; and dien he would raise the question of Germany’s erstwhile colonies. ‘Always die old one-two,’ noted Goebbels admiringly. Lipski betook himself to Warsaw to obtain a reply. ‘He’s going to try out a little pressure on die Poles,’ wrote Goebbels, after talking widi Hitler on March 24. ‘And he hopes diey’ll respond to that. But we’re going to have to swallow the bitter pill and guarantee Poland’s other frontiers. It will all be decided very soon.’ On die twenty-fifth Hitler privately reassured General von Brauchitsch that he did not want to resort to force against Poland. Brauchitsch’s aide-de-camp noted Hitler as saying, ‘The possibility of tak¬ ing Danzig by military action will only be examined if L[ipski] gives us to understand that die Polish government will be unable to explain to its own public any voluntary surrender of Danzig, but that a fait accompli by us would help diem to a solution.’ It is evident that Hitler really did expect such an under-the-counter deal. On March 27, Admiral Raeder initialled a draft plan for Hitler to embark in the cruiser Deutschland and appear off Danzig with virtually the entire battle fleet: Hitler would go ashore by tor¬ pedo boat and proceed in triumph to the city centre. So much for planning — his actual entry into Danzig six months later looked very different. Lithuania proved more accommodating over Memel.The ancient Teu¬ tonic city had been annexed by Lithuania after die Great War. Hitler an¬ chored off Memel aboard Deutschland early on March 2 3, symbolically toured the city — with Rommel as HQ commandant, and Milch in lieu of Goring, who had returned to San Remo — and dien went back to Berlin. ‘What a week that was,’ recorded Goebbels. The Poles reacted to diis new Hitler triumph truculently, by partially mobilising, as Canaris reported on March 24. When Hitler left Berlin that evening he explained, according to Brauchitsch, ‘I don’t want to be around when L[ipski] gets back. R[ibbentrop] is to deal with diem initially.’ Lipski duly returned from Warsaw on the twenty-sixth with a brusque rejection of the German demand for Danzig, to which he added the verbal warning In Hitler’s Chancellery 165 that if Hitler persisted it would mean war. ‘The Polacks,’ recorded an angry Dr. Goebbels, ‘will always be our natural enemies, however keen in die past they have been, out of pure self-interest, to do us the odd favour.’ On March 27 Weizsacker summarised in his diary: It will no longer be possible to solve the Danzig problem, now that we have used up foreign political goodwill over Prague and Memel. A German-Polish conflict now would trigger an avalanche against us. For die time being the only way we can deal with the Poles’ insolent attitude and their high-handed rebuff to die offer we have made to them is by breaking die Polish spirit. Strolling on the Obersalzberg mountainside, Hitler pondered his next move, just as here in 1938 he had wrestled with ‘Green.’ On March 23 he had assured Brauchitsch that he would not tackle die Polish — as distinct from the Danzig — problem yet. There would first have to be particularly favourable political conditions: ‘I would dien knock Poland so flat that po¬ litically speaking we wouldn’t have to take any account of her for many decades to come.’ The Reich would thereby regain its 1914 eastern fron¬ tier, from East Prussia to eastern Silesia. Meanwhile Stalin had delivered a stinging rebuke to the western de¬ mocracies at a Moscow congress. Hitler studied die newsreel dims and pronounced that Stalin looked quite ‘congenial.’ Late on March 30 he re¬ turned to Berlin. in Berlin a rude shock awaited him: die next morning news arrived from London diat Neville Chamberlain was about to announce in Parliament diat ‘in the event of any action which clearly direatened Polish independ¬ ence and which the Polish government accordingly considered it vital to resist . . . His Majesty’s Government would feel diemselves bound at once to lend die Polish government all support in their power.’ This was the first of a sheaf of ill-considered guarantees to be uttered by die British. Its effect was not what Chamberlain had hoped for. At 1 2:43 p.m. Hitler sent for Keitel. Whatever die origins of England’s guarantee, by die time Hitler left Berlin — that is, by 8:47 p.m. on March 31 — he had given the OKW orders to make all due preparations for war with Poland, under die code name ‘White.’ At Wilhelmshaven the next morning he launched a second 353000-ton battleship: the Tirpitz. 166 n: Toward the Promised Land It is to be emphasised that he had still not issued any actual instruction for war. This new OKW directive on ‘White’, issued on April 3, merely outlined a political situation which might make an attack on Poland neces¬ sary on or after September 1. Meanwhile, t lie OKW ruled, friction with Poland was to be avoided, a difficult injunction since the Poles had certainly not behaved kindly toward their own ethnic German minority. During April — and again in May —1939 explicit directives went out to every Nazi editor not to draw comparisons between what was happening in Poland and what had happened in 1938 in Czechoslovakia. Hitler probably hoped that ‘whetting die blade’ alone would force the Poles to think again. As General Walter von Reichenau had admiringly com¬ mented on October 3, 1938: ‘If the Fiihrer was a poker player, he’d win thousands of Reichsmarks every night! ’ In April 1939 diis poker image also came to Baron von Weizsacker’s mind — the diplomat believed diat Hitler was playing a game for high stakes, but would know how to pick up the winnings at just die right moment and quit. In mid-April he forecast pri¬ vately, ‘A creeping crisis, but short of war. Every man must do his duty.’ Curiously, Hitler had not consulted Goring over ‘White.’The field mar¬ shal did not return from his Italian Riviera leave until six p.m. on April 1 8. He then appeared at Hitler’s dinner table looking bronzed and fit. Hitler told him of his determination to force a settlement over Danzig. Goring was taken aback: ‘What am I supposed to understand by diat?’The Fiihrer replied diat if all else failed to regain Danzig, he was going to use force. Goring warned that world opinion would not stand for it. Hitler calmed him down, saying he had handled odier situations skilfully in the past and Poland would be no exception. At about the same time, Goring’s aide, the Luftwaffe general Karl Bodenschatz, dropped a broad hint to the Polish military attache that if Hitler believed that Germany was being encircled, then he would make an alliance with the Devil himself. ‘And you and I are well aware of who diat devil is,’ threatened Bodenschatz, in a scarcely veiled reference to the So¬ viet Union. Initially, Hitler used his approach to the Kremlin only as diplo¬ matic leverage against Poland, but there was no doubting Stalin’s interest. One of Ribbentrop’s Berlin officials, Rudolf Likus, reported onApril 1 that the Soviet war minister, General K. E. Voroshilov, had suggested in a con¬ versation with die wife of the German ambassador diat Hitler and Stalin revise their attitudes toward each other. Shortly, Ribbentrop learned from the same official that a high Soviet embassy official had remarked diat Ger- In Hitler’s Chancellery l 6 j many and the Soviet Union could pursue a great policy ‘side by side.’ Hitler still hesitated to inch out further onto dais thin ice, and Ribbentrop in¬ structed his man not to pursue this dialogue. At the end of April however Hitler omitted from yet another major speech the usual hostile references to the Soviet regime. Stalin responded on May 3 by dismissing Maxim Litvinov, the Jewish foreign minister who would have been an obvious obstacle to any settlement with Nazi Ger¬ many. At dais, Hitler really sat up and took notice. He ordered key Moscow embassy officials back to Germany to report to him. The outcome of these consadtations was an instruction to dae German ambassador, CouiatWerner von der Schulenburg, to throw out cautious feelers to Vyacheslav Molotov, dae new foreign minister, as to a possible rapprochement and the resump¬ tion of trade negotiations. On the fifda Goebbels confideiatially instructed all Nazi editors that there were to be no diatribes against Bolshevism or dae Soviet Union ‘until further notice.’ On the following day Karl Bodenschatz again dropped a curious hint — dais time to dae French air attache, Paid Stehlin. ‘You’ll soon find out,’ dae Luftwaffe general said, ‘that somedaing is afoot in the east.’ Hitler in the 1930 s; a self-portraitfound in his desk at the Berghof in 1945 by secretary Christa Schroeder (author’s collection) Fiftieth birthday parade, April 20, 1939 (author’s collection) Fiftj M ost people measure their ages in years expired. Hitler men¬ tally measured his in terms of the years still remaining to him. As he watched the weekly ‘rushes’ of tlie movie newsreels, he noticed tint he was ageing. On April 20, 1939, he reached that plateau in life: fifty. Seldom had the world seen such a vulgar display of muscle as Nazi Germany staged to celebrate the Fuhrer’s birthday, with 1,600 Party nota¬ bles crowding into die Mosaic Hall at one moment, and die Wearers of die Blood Insignia — veterans of the 1923 putsch attempt — milling around in die Marble Gallery at anodier. While bands played die Badenweiler March diat evening, in die mis¬ taken belief that it was his favourite tune, Hitler drove widi Speer along die fine new East-West boulevard and opened it as fireworks embroidered a huge image of die swastika flag in the sky. At one vantage point were mus¬ tered die surviving ex-soldiers of Germany’s nineteenth-century wars — survivors of generations who had marched vainly toward diat dreamland diat was ‘now in sight.’ When Hitler returned to his chancellery, hundreds of gifts were on dis¬ play, including a model of the triumphal arch that he planned to erect on die new North-Soudi axis. The names of all die German and Austrian dead of die Great War would be carved into its stone. His secretary Christa Schroeder wrote the next day: The number and value of this year’s presents is quite staggering. Paint¬ ings by Defregger, Waldmiiller, Lenbach, and even a magnificentTitian, wonderful Meissen porcelain figurines, silver table services, precious books, vases, drawings, carpets, craftwork, globes, radios, clocks, etc., etc., etc. . . . Of course diere are model ships and aircraft and odier 169 ljo n: Toward the Promised Land military paraphernalia too — those are the things he’s happiest about. He’s just like a boy with them. From all over Germany units converged on Berlin for the birthday pa¬ rade. Six army divisions, some 40,000 men widi 600 tanks, were to parade past him. At eight a.m. he was awakened by the Lifeguards band playing a serenade outside his window. The children of the doctors and adjutants shyly came forward to wish him well, to give him posies of flowers that they had confected with Frau Anneliese Schmundt, his chief adjutant’s wife, and to recite poems to him. Hitler wanted these children to have a day that they could remember to their grandchildren. Before die military parade began, Hitler briefly received his three Com¬ manders in Chief — Goring, Raeder, and Brauchitsch — with Keitel in his lofty panelled study. He stood with his back to his big desk as the officers were ushered in. Keitel stumbled slightly on the thick ochre-coloured car¬ pet as they stationed themselves in line. Hitler’s speech cannot have lasted more titan ten minutes but, when he ended, all of this select audience rec¬ ognised that Germany was heading inevitably toward war, not necessarily in 1939 — but soon. The birthday parade itself gave vivid proof of Hitler’s powers of physical endurance. For four hours t he troops, personnel carriers, artillery, and tanks stomped, rumbled, and rattled past his saluting base. Secretary Christa Schroeder wrote afterward, ‘Yesterday’s parade was enormous and dragged on endlessly. ... I keep wondering where on earth he finds the strength for it all, because to be on your feet for four hours on end, saluting, must be damned exhausting. We got dog-tired just from watching — at least I did.’ there is no doubt tlint: in 1939 Hitler had the physical constitution of a horse. His medical files show that his veins were filled with type A blood. His skin was pale and fine in texture; on his chest and back it was quite white and hairless. His skull was of the kind that doctors classify as ‘slightly dolichocephalic.’ His face was pale and symmetrical, and his expression was regarded by his doctors as having ‘an intense quality that subdued and captivated.’ The left eye was slightly larger than die right, his eyes were blue, faintly tinged with grey. A minimal degree of exophthalmia, a protru¬ sion of the eyeballs, was always present. When questioned in 1943, die doctors who had treated Hitler were unanimous diat he had been sane until the very end. One of them, Profes- sor Hanskarl von Hasselbach, would subsequently observe, ‘The German public would have been lunatic to have given their virtually unanimous sup¬ port to any man such as Hitler is portrayed today.’ There were virtually no clinical symptoms of abnormality. He showed no mental faults like inap¬ propriate euphoria, incontinence, anosmia (loss of smell), or personality changes. Brain examinations disclosed no ‘sensory aphasia’ and no ‘dream states.’Tests on his reflex centres and spinal root functions revealed no ab¬ normalities. The doctors would put on record that his orientation as to time, place, and persons was excellent.Their report adds: ‘He was change¬ able, at times restless and sometimes peculiar but otherwise co-operative and not easily distracted. Emotionally he was very labile — his likes and dislikes were very pronounced. His flow of thought showed continuity. His speech was neither slow nor fast, and was always relevant.’ Common symp¬ toms of insanity were absent. The doctors concluded that in Hitler ‘no hal¬ lucinations, illusions, or paranoid trends were present.’ Who were t hesc doctors? Dr. Karl Brandt had attended him since 1934. A handsome, dark-haired young surgeon with well-proportioned features, Brandt was born in the German Alsace but had been deported by the French as a boy of fifteen when they occupied the province in 1919. Brandt had a strict sense of propriety, refusing to discuss Hitler’s sex life with his later American interrogators. He had studied surgery at a Ruhr hospital. His fiancee was the champion swimmer Anni Rehborn, one of die stars in die feminine firmament around Hitler in die twenties; she introduced him to Hitler in 1932. Hitler realised that a travelling surgeon might prove useful, and Brandt accompanied him to Venice in 1934. Brandt in turn introduced his Ruhr colleague, Professor Werner Haase, as his stand-in, and appointed Hanskarl von Hasselbach as his deputy on Hitler’s staff in 1936. Later that year another physician entered Hitler’s circle, one who was to become the most controversial of Hitler’s medical men. Three years older than Hitler, Dr. Theodore Morell was corpulent, with a bald head and swarthy complexion. His dark-brown eyes blinked myopically through diick-lensed spectacles; his hands were large and hairy. He had established himself as a leading doctor in the Kurfiirstendamm world of stage and film stars. The film world introduced him to Hitler’s photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, and it was in Hoffmann’s home that Morell first met Hitler in May 1936. He found Hitler upset over the death from meningitis of his chauffeur, Julius Schreck, a few days before. Morell gave him die distinct impression that he, Morell, might have saved Schreck’s life. 1 J 2 ii: Toward the Promised Land Hitler suffered from acute stomach cramps almost to t lie end of his life. On December i, 1944, Morell would summarise this difficult patient’s medical history thus: ‘He has had really major spasms after violent emo¬ tional upsets — e.g., the 1924 [treason] trial, a matter of life and death; the 1929 due date on die loan to die Volkischer Beobachter and the Eher Publish¬ ing House; the 193 j/ 36 crisis of military unreliability.’ * In May 1936 Pro¬ fessor von Eicken examined him, and his consultation notes survive. May 20. Consultation at the Reich chancellery in conjunction widi Dr. Brandt. [Fiihrer suffering from] a roaring pain in die ears for several days, widi high-pitched metallic sound in the left ear at night. Obviously over¬ worked. Preoccupied (chauffeur Schreck!). Sleeps very little — can’t get to sleep. [I recommend:] evening strolls before retiring to bed, hot and cold foot baths, mild sedatives! Time off. Always feels better atWachenfeld [i.e., the Berghof]. At Christmas 1934, Dr. Ernst-Robert Grawitz treated M.F. [mein Fiihrer] for acute food poisoning with Neo-Balestol, which contains fusel oil. Headaches, giddiness, roaring in the ears. That Christmas, Hitler invited die Morells to stay on die Obersalzberg widi him. While the house party was distracted by a noisy contest at the Berghof’s bowling alley, Hitler took Morell aside and recounted his sorry tale — how nobody could cure his terrible stomach cramps. ‘You are my last hope,’ he told Morell. ‘If you can get rid of my stomach pains I’ll give you a fine house.’ Morell promised, ‘I’ll have you fit and well again inside a year.’ The cure worked. Morell got die house, a fine villa on Schwanenwerder Island. And to Morell’s subsequent detractors — who were legion — die Fiihrer loyally pointed out: ‘Morell made me a promise: one year . . .’ Morell’s first clinical examination of Hitler on January 3, 1937, sug¬ gested diat die stomach cramps were not of hysteric origin. There was se¬ vere eczema on die left leg, probably in consequence of Hitler’s dietary * A reference to the rivalry between the SS and the Wehrmacht in 193^ and the remilitarisation of the Rhineland in 1936. Morells 1944 diary continued the summary: ‘Added to this were the dysbacteria that the spasms probably generated. Further spasms in 1943 before his meeting with the Duce at Feltre [on July 18] at which time he already had a foreboding, or even foreknowledge, of the forthcoming betrayal by the Italian army; and more spasms in 1944 after the Bomb Plot.’ Fifty 173 problems. ‘Morell,’ recalled Flitler in 1944, ‘drew up a healthy daily rou¬ tine for me, he controlled my diet, and above all he permitted me to start eating again. He went right back to first principles. First he examined my intestinal bacteria, then he told me my coli-bacilli would have to be re¬ placed.’ Professor A. Nissle, director of a bacteriological research institute at Freiburg, prepared a commercial medicine for treating this condition, called ‘Mutaflor,’ an emulsion of a certain strain of coli communis bacillus which had the property of colonising die intestinal tract. ‘I was given these coli capsules and large quantities of vitamins and extracts of heart and liver,’ Hitler recounted. He began to feel better. Morell moved in to the Berghof. ‘After about six months,’ said Hitler, ‘the eczema had gone and after nine months I was completely well again.’ In September 1937, Morell was an honoured guest at the Party rally: Hitler could wear boots again. Morell began treating Hitler with medicines that he had devised himself and was manufacturing in one of his pharmaceutical companies.* Hitler paid him an annual retainer of 36,000 Reichmarks. Hitler’s coterie rushed to become Morell’s patients — Funk, Ley, Speer, Goebbels, the Ribbentrops, all Hitler’s older adjutants, generals like Kleist, Jodi, and Heusinger, and famous theatre names like Richard Tauber (a Jew) and O. E. Hasse too. The hostility that this situation aroused is easily conceived.The younger adjutants made life uncomfortable for him, and Morell found himself left out of their birthday greeting lists and other invitations. It is true that Morell’s personal habits were unbecoming. He rarely washed, and was in that sense not very approachable. Hitler defended him: ‘I don’t retain Morell to sniff at,’ he once said, ‘but to keep me fit.’ In July 1939 the doctor was among the guests at Frau WinifredWagner’s house at Bayreuth. When Hitler inquired of one daughter why she was not eating she pointed to the disturbing spec¬ tacle of the fat doctor noisily devouring a whole orange with both hands, sucking its contents through a small window that he had scooped out of its peel. As Morell described it, the Fuhrer’s medical history was not unusual. As a child he had displayed a pulmonary apical pathology that had disappeared in later years. Morell noticed a scar on Hitler’s left thigh, caused by war- * In September 1981 this author found the long-missing diaries of Dr. Morell in the US National Archives; he published an annotated edition as The Secret Diaries of Hitler’s Doctor (Munich, London, and New York, 1983). !74 ii: Toward the Promised Land time shrapnel. During the 1923 Munich putsch, the dying Scheubner-Richter had pulled Hitler down, resulting in a fracture of the left shoulder blade. In 1938 and 1939, Hitler was unquestionably at the peak of his health. From Morell’s own records, it is clear that most of his medicines were administered by hypodermic syringe. Morell was usually just giving shots of harmless dextrose, hormones, or vitamins. He also administered liberal quantities of sulphonamide drugs to treat even the common cold. Hitler certainly was impressed. ‘Without Morell,’ he once said, ‘I would not be able to achieve half so much. I would never be able to endure the mental and physical burden.’ Morell’s controversial daily injections of glucose and of his own proprietary compound, Vitamultin — it consisted of ascorbic acid, calcium, and nicotinamide, with either caffeine or cocoa as a sweet¬ ener — left Hitler with a short-lived euphoria. In this way the body’s normal built-in powers of resistance were replaced by injected substances — not narcotics, but just as habit-forming. In a prison camp in 1943, Brandt would rebuke Morell: ‘Your behaviour has brought disgrace upon the entire medi¬ cal profession!’Yet Morell’s patient, Hitler, would outlive both Neville Chamberlain and Franklin D. Roosevelt. it is to t he actions of Chamberlain and Roosevelt in April 1939 that we now return, as — late that month — Europe took another lurch toward war. On April 2 3 Hitler informed Goebbels over lunch that Britain was trying to mend her fences with Nazi Germany, and that Prime Minister Chamber- lain had again put out secret feelers to Berlin. For reasons of domestic poli¬ tics however Chamberlain reintroduced National Service in Britain three days later. In London a strident press campaign against Hitler began. Am¬ bassador Henderson informed the Foreign Office on April 2 j in a telegram, intercepted by the Forschungsamt: ‘The British press is making my life very difficult.’The next day’s FA wiretaps showed that the Foreign Office told him to give Hitler advance warning of Chamberlain’s conscription announce¬ ment and to reassure him that National Service was not to be construed as directed against Germany. Hitler hitherto had felt able to ignore President Roosevelt’s forays into European politics. He blamed Roosevelt’s posturing on Jewish influences, and believed that isolationism was still a powerful force in the United States. In April 1939 Hitler was the recipient of an open letter from Roosevelt, appealing to him to give public assurances that he would not attack any of thirty-one specified countries. Wiretaps on the U.S. embassy in Berlin re- vealed t hat staff there regarded this appeal as a gaffe. Hitler gave these as¬ surances in a sarcastic Reichstag speech on the twenty-eighdi. The Kroll Opera-house rocked with laughter as he added sardonically his own per¬ sonal promise that the Reich was not planning to invade the U.S.A. either. The FA wiretaps noted that U.S. embassy staff conceded that the Fitlirel¬ it ad won ‘the match.’ In die same Reichstag speech he revoked die 1934 non-aggression pact with Poland and die 1 9 3 5 naval agreement with Brit¬ ain too. In private, he justified his stiffer attitude toward Britain by the se¬ cret documents now found in Prague archives. ‘One day we’ll publish diem to all the world, to prove Britain’s dishonesty,’ Bodenschatz told a French diplomat. Informed Germans still doubted that there would be war. Baron von Weizsacker commented in one letter on April 29, ‘Evidently we are not going to escape a degree of drama. But I don’t believe that die Axis powers have any aggressive intentions, any more than diat die odier side will launch a deliberate preventive war. There is only one danger — and diat is die un¬ bridled Polish lesser minions, who are banging and crashing up and down die European keyboard with true Slav megalomania.’ On Goebbels’s express orders, the newspaper editors continued to soft-pedal their reports on these ‘incidents’ in Poland. ‘The Poles,’ wrote Goebbels privately on May 1, ‘are agitating violently against us. The Fiihrer welcomes it. We are not to hit back for the time being, but to take note. Warsaw will end up one day die same way as Prague.’ A couple of days after diat diary entry, Goebbels ordered all his editors to go easy on Moscow until further notice. The German army continued its preparations for ‘White.’ Late in April Haider showed to Hitler a first rough timetable for invasion. The General Staff suggested that troops should be moved up to die Polish frontier under the camouflage of working on die East Wall project and conducting autumn manoeuvres. Furdier forces could be transferred into die East Prussian enclave, ostensibly for a big military parade to mark die twenty-fifdi anniversary of die Battle ofTannenberg — August 27, 1939. Goebbels’s radio engineers had now begun building some of the biggest propaganda transmitters in the world; he ordered editors however to keep Poland on page two of dieir newspapers. In die diird week of May, Hitler set out on a further inspection of die army’s West Wall and the Luftwaffe’s flak zone from the Belgian frontier right down to Switzerland. Again hordes of Party notables and newsreel cameramen followed. The fortifications had made significant progress, and General Erwin von Witzleben, Adam’s sue- Ij 6 n: Toward the Promised Land cessor as western commander, spoke loudly to this effect. Hitler’s contacts with die labourers and the local Rhinelanders had a restorative effect on him. He lunched in the village inns, while his adjutant Bruckner went out and calmed die milling crowds and assured diem diat dieir Fiihrer would shortly reappear. The women held out dieir children to him — a simple act diat was the greatest mark of respect a leader could be shown, as Hitler remarked to his adjutants. This was the shield that protected Hitler in 1939: he was dictator by consent; an assassin would neither be forgiven nor understood. This mono¬ lithic solidarity of Fiihrer and Volk persisted right to the end, despite what subsequent generations have assumed. a month earlier die USSR had opened talks with Britain and France, but Stalin knew that Hitler had more to offer. On May 2 <, the FA wiretaps on The Times correspondent in Berlin, Mr. Janies Holburn, showed that he had learned while in London diat Chamberlain did not have his heart in an alliance with Stalin — he still hoped one day to resume his direct contacts widi Hitler. On May 17 the Soviet charge in Berlin, Astakhov, had hinted that ‘on present form’ the talks were going against die British. Three days later Molotov himself declared to Hitler’s ambassador that trade talks with Germany could be resumed just as soon as the necessary ‘political basis’ had been established: Ribbentrop discussed at length with Hitler how this vague remark might be interpreted.The outcome was diatWeizsacker was instructed by Hitler to put this carefully worded message to Astakhov: ‘You can be our friends or our enemies.The choice is yours!’ A few days later, on May 23, Hitler delivered a four-hour speech to his Commanders in Chief in his cavernous study. He stood at a lectern and addressed altogether a dozen officers seated in three rows: Raeder, Milch, Brauchitsch, and Keitel formed die front row (Goring was away), and their chiefs of staff and adjutants die two other rows. Hitler stated once again that Danzig was not his ultimate objective — that would be to secure Lebensraum in die east to feed Germany’s eighty million inhabitants. ‘If fate forces us to fight in the west,’ Hitler told them, ‘it will be just as well if first we possess more in the east.’This was why he had decided to ‘take on Poland at die first suitable opportunity.’ His immediate purpose now, he explained, would be to isolate Poland. ‘It is of crucial importance that we succeed in isolating her.’ Fifty 177 The only surviving note is one by Colonel Schmundt, but it lists as present officers — including Goring and Warlimont — who were not there and it contains various anachronisms. Flalder, questioned in mid-1945, well re¬ membered Flitler’s assurances that he would keep die western powers out of‘White’: ‘I would have to be a complete idiot to slither into a world war — like the nincompoops of 1914— over die wretched Polish Corridor.’ Since Flitler had left Mussolini in the dark about ‘White’ die Italians were not unwilling to sign a formal alliance with him. On May 6 Ribbentrop assured die Italian foreign minister Ciano that Italy could assume there would be peace for diree more years at least. Ciano came to Berlin to sign the ‘Pact of Steel’ on the twenty-second, and General Milch signed a separate air-force pact in Rome two days later. Milch, however, returned to Hitler widi a warning that Mussolini had emphasised diat Italy would not be ready for war until 1942; in a memorandum to die Fuhrer, die Duce even talked of 1943. Hitler also briefly courted the Reich’s other southern neighbour,Yugo¬ slavia. On June 1 die Prince Regent Paul and his English-born wife were welcomed in Berlin with a military parade. A banquet was dirown in their honour, followed by a gala performance of Wagner at die Prussian State Opera-house. Later, Hitler showed them the models of Germany’s new official buildings and monuments. To his displeasure, Paul travelled on to London afterward widiout hav¬ ing even hinted at diis in Berlin; Hitler did not like being tricked, and harrumphed about it for some days afterward — Prince Paul was barely suited for a curator’s job in the House of Art, he said, and had proven slip¬ pery as an eel: each time Hitler thought he could extract a firm agreement from him, die prince had claimed sanctuary behind his Parliament. His English-born wife Olga for her part had totally succumbed to Hitler’s wiles. The U.S. envoy in Belgrade reported: Princess Olga quoted Herr Hitler as saying he could not understand why he was so misunderstood in England and diat he wished that rela¬ tions between Great Britain and Germany might be restored. . . . When die conversation turns to children, she said, tears come to his eyes. She described his eyes as being remarkable, clear blue and honest-looking. He told her that he had a dual personality, that his real personality is diat of an artist and architect, but diat fate had decreed that he should also be a politician, a military man, and the builder of a new Germany. Ij 8 11 : Toward the Promised Land in may 1939, a study group under General Gerd von Rundstedt had pre¬ dicted that the Poles would have to design their defence campaign so as to hold die Germans long enough until Russian or western aid could come. The Wehrmacht’s main strategic problem was to prevent a withdrawal of the Polish army, but it was felt diat the Poles would not adopt such a strat¬ egy for political reasons. Rundstedt’s final plan, dated June 153 accepted Hitler’s demand for surprise attacks to open ‘White.’ The Polish armies west of die Vistula and Narev rivers would be destroyed by attacks from Silesia in the south and from Pomerania and East Prussia in die north; the East Prussian element, a dirust toward Warsaw, was included on Hitler’s insistence against General Staff advice. Reinforcements began moving across to East Prussia by sea. On June 7 Hitler left Berlin for the summer and settled on the Obersalzberg. Once he drove to Vienna, and on June 1 2 he paid a melan¬ choly private visit to Geli Raubal’s grave (her remains have since been placed in an unmarked grave). A week later a circular went to all die ministers and gauleiters widi the request that ‘you should refrain from any manner of visit (to the Berghof) unless a firm invitation has been issued.’ One such invitation did go however to Dr. Goebbels, and another to generals von Brauchitsch and Ernst August Kostring; Kostring was die military attache in Moscow. Goebbels gleaned the latest information from the Fiihrer at the teahouse on June 20: ‘Poland,’ Hitler predicted, ‘will offer resistance at first, but upon the first reverse she will pitifully collapse. The Czechs are more realistic. The Poles are quite hysterical and unpredictable. London,’ added Hitler, ‘will leave Warsaw in die lurch. They’re just bluffing. Got too many odier worries. . . .The Fiihrer says, and he’s quite right, diat Britain now has die most rotten government imaginable. There’s no question of their helping Warsaw. They led Prague up the garden padi as well. This is provided by the hies we have captured in die Czech foreign ministry.’ The two generals, Brauchitsch and Kostring, came on June 2 1 to discuss planning progress on ‘White ’ and the Anglo-Soviet stalemate. After the two generals had left, Hitler relaxed widi a sketching pad, deftly drawing a Party Forum that should grace Munich after his death — a parade square, Nazi Party office buildings, a bridge across Gabelsberger Strasse, and his own mausoleum, dwarfing the city’s famous Frauenkirche and built to ‘last until the end of time.’ It was a concrete sign of his optimism about the future. Hitler liked familiar faces. He tolerated die blue-blooded officers like Below and Puttkamer die longest. His chief adjutant, Wilhelm Bruckner, Fifty 179 aged fifty-four, was a burly ex-machine-gunner who had marched with him in 1923. Another senior personal adjutant was ex-druggist Julius Schaub, aged forty, an undistinguished cripple whom Flitler had noticed years ear¬ lier hobbling into the Party meetings on his crutches; he had given him a job and had later grown to esteem him. Plead of Flitler’s private chancellery was Albert Bormann, a quiet, open-faced man of thirty-six. His older brother Martin thought Albert had married beneath the family station, and had not spoken to him since. If Martin wanted to tell Albert something an orderly was summoned and a written note was passed. If Albert told a joke, only Martin refused to laugh. Hitler’s favourite secretary was Johanna Wolf, aged thirty-nine; she had worked for him since 1930, but she was often ill. She alternated with Christa Schroeder, thirty-one, who was stolid and sharp-tongued — her feline com¬ ments on the progress of Hitler’s war often made her colleagues gasp. Since 1938 the Fiihrer had also employed a third secretary, Gerda Daranowski, aged twenty-five: she was beautiful and bright, and Hitler appreciated both qualities. All the girls stayed with him until the end, proving more steadfast than many of Hitler’s ministers and generals. The only other private staff member of consequence wasWalther Hewel, a handsome Rhineland bachelor of thirty-five. He was a fellow Landsberg prisoner, like Bruckner and Schaub. He had emigrated in 1926 for ten years, working first in Britain and then as a quinine, tea, and rubber planter in the Dutch East Indies. He had returned at Hitler’s personal request in 1936 — voyaging back via China, Japan, Hawaii and the west and east coasts of the U.S.A., and had become Ribbentrop’s liaison officer to Hitler in 1938. In that capacity he wrote private diaries, which we have been fortunate enough to obtain. For twenty years Hewel never lost faith in Hitler, and at his chief’s dictate he would die as he did. hitler’s military staff had been controlled since February 193 8 by Rudolf Schmundt. Aged forty-two, a jug-eared army colonel born in Metz, which was now part of France, Schmundt had had an impeccable upbringing in a famous Potsdam regiment, and showed a pronounced sympathy toward Na¬ tional Socialism. He had revered Ludwig Beck until the general’s vendetta against the OKW command concept made reverence no longer possible. Since June 1937 Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant had been Captain Nicolaus von Below, aged thirty-one, a quiet Pomeranian who had undergone secret flying training at Lipetsk, USSR, and became die Richthofen squadron’s adjutant l8o n: Toward the Promised Land in 1935. Since March 1938 Hitler’s army adjutant had been Captain Gerhard Engel, aged thirty-three; his good humour ingratiated him to lower ranks but not always to Hitler (who would send him to the front in 1943). Fourth man in this team was the naval adjutant. In June 1938 Hitler’s naval adjutant had been replaced by Lieutenant Commander Alwin-Broder Albrecht, aged thirty-five. In 1939 he had married a young schoolmistress of Kiel who was ‘well-known’ to die local naval garrison; when the navy’s other wives raised an outcry Grand Admiral Raeder sent him on ‘married leave,’ then insisted on his dismissal. To Raeder’s chagrin, Hitler refused. The ensuing argument at die Berghof raged for two hours. Raeder indig¬ nantly described the case as a new Blomberg affair. Hitler, however, had been caught before, and demanded proof. He sneered, ‘How many of the navy wives now flaunting dieir virtue have had affairs of dieir own in the past! . . .The Blomberg case was quite different.’Admiral Raeder announced that he would resign unless Albrecht went. The Fiihrer replied diat Raeder might do as he pleased. He invited Frau Crete Albrecht to present herself on the Obersalzberg for his personal inspection. Captain Engel escorted her from die Berchtesgadener Hof hotel the next day. Hitler could not fail to notice that die tall, blonde schoolmistress had considerable female charm, and he decided that Albrecht had done well to marry her. All diis had an extraordinary consequence. Raeder still protested, and dismissed Albrecht as Hitler’s naval adjutant. Hitler retaliated by making Albrecht his personal adjutant (die officer’s records show that he left the navy on June 30, 1939, becoming an Oberfuhrer or brigadier in the Nazi Motor Korps the next day). Raeder responded by refusing to appoint a new naval adjutant in his place. Hitler in turn retaliated by petulantly declining to attend the navy’s next launching ceremony at Bremen on July 1. The navy rallied around their commander in chief: social invitations went to Albrecht, but not to his new wife Crete. (She completed the farce by re¬ turning to a previous lover, and in 1940 the unfortunate adjutant had to divorce her.) Albrecht never forgot Hitler’s loyalty to him; he became a convinced National Socialist and put duty above all else, as his last moving letters from Berlin in 1943 would show. He would die wi t h a machine gun in his hands when the Russians stormed the Reich chancellery in 1943. Raeder refused to swallow Hitler’s June 1939 ‘insult.’ He ensconced himself for two months in the admiralty in Berlin, and refused to confer with the Fiihrer any more. It would take the outbreak of war in September to persuade him to resume personal contact again. Extreme Unction A dolf hitler’s attitude toward die Church was ambivalent. Even though now absolute dictator he still hesitated to launch a termi¬ nal crusade against it. He had expressly forbidden newspapers to print any reference to schisms between die various religions, and trans¬ gressors were heavily punished. In April 1938 all editors had been circular¬ ised by the propaganda ministry, ‘The embargo on polemics against Chris¬ tianity and the Church is still in force.’When in 1939 a squabble broke out over die desire of the churches to mark the Fiihrer’s fiftieth birthday by peals of bells, Hitler ruled, ‘The churches are not to be prevented from celebrating the event. But nor are they to be compelled to.’ For twenty years, he had tried to keep die Party aloof from all matters of interdenominational conflict. ‘We must learn to strive for that which unites us, and discard every argument that divides,’ he had said as a diirty-one-year-old speaker in 1920. Admittedly, an element of mischievous cynicism did creep in over die years. In his speech to Party officials on November 23, 1937, he had ruled diat the churches were free to portray the Ford in whatever image they wished, since neither they nor die Nazi party could be certain who was right or wrong: ‘But let me make one thing quite plain.The churches may decide what happens to Germans in die Hereafter — but it is the German nation and its Fiihrer who decide about diem now. Our nation,’ he thun¬ dered, ‘has not been created by God to be torn asunder by die priesthood.’ Hitler’s views on life after death were regularly aired in his private con¬ versation. He believed in what he usually referred to as ‘Providence,’ to which he attributed die same mystic powers of explaining die inexplicable as Christians do to God. Hitler’s profound loathing for die clergy can prob¬ ably be traced back to the religious teacher at his school, about whom he 181 182 ii: Toward the Promised Land had a fund of distasteful anecdotes. His alert mind thrived on t lie anomalies of religion. His religious teachers had been unable to explain why at ten a.m. the story of the Creation should be taught from t lie Old Testament, and at eleven a.m. a wholly different version should be tendered by their science teacher. Admittedly, since the teachings of Charles Darwin the nu¬ ances were different, and religious teachers were now permitted to tender explanations for which — Hitler would remark with a chuckle — t hey would four hundred years earlier have been roasted ‘to the chant of pious hymns.’ In 1939, Hitler regarded die Church as a vast and impersonal corpora¬ tion surviving by unscrupulous methods and drawing colossal state subsi¬ dies. He privately pilloried its cunning amalgam of hypocrisy and big busi¬ ness. ‘God made man,’ he once said, ‘and man was made to sin. God gave man die liberty to do so. For half a million years God looks on while men tear each other’s eyes out, and only then does it occur to him to send his only begotten Son. Now, that’s a devil of a long way around. The whole thing seems colossally ham-handed.’ And, a few days later: How absurd it is to make Heaven seem a temptation, if the Church itself tells us tliat: only those who haven’t done so well in life are going to get in — for instance, the mentally retarded and t he like. It’s not going to be very nice if when we get there we find all those people who — despite the Beatitude: ‘Blessed are they that are poor of spirit’ — have already been a blessed nuisance when t hey were alive! And what kind of temptation is it supposed to be, if all we’re going to find up there are die plain and men¬ tally insipid women! As for die Bible, ‘that Jewish artefact,’ Hitler regretted that it had ever been translated into German. ‘Any sane German can only clutch his head in dismay at how this Jewish outpouring, diis priestly babble, has persuaded his fellow Germans to cavort in a manner diat we used to ridicule in the whirling dervishes ofTurkey and die Negro races.’ Hitler would comment in 1942, ‘We merely enforce die Commandment “Thou shalt not kill” by executing die murderer. But die Church — so long as it held die reins of government — always put him to deadi by hideous tortures, by quartering him and die like.’ now that he was in power, the whole problem left Hitler no peace. Christa Schroeder wrote in a private letter on April 21, 1939: Extreme Unction 183 One evening recently the Chief was very interesting on the Church prob¬ lem. . . . Christianity is founded on knowledge two thousand years old — knowledge blurred and confused by mysticism and the occult (like the Bible parables). The question is, why can’t Christian ideas be updated using the knowledge of the present day? Luther strove for a Reformation but this has been misunderstood, because reformation is not a once-only affair but a process of constant renovation — not just marking time but keeping up with the developments of the age. The Chief knows full well t hat the Church problem is very tricky and if war breaks out it could well rebound on him domestically. My own feeling is he’d be happy if some decent way of solving it could be found. In earlier years the only way of solving it that occurred to Hitler in¬ volved die use of dynamite. But widi maturity came a recognition that he might equally let the churches ‘rot away like a gangrenous arm,’ until diere were only simpletons standing in the pulpits and old maidens sitting in the pews before them: ‘The healdiier youth will be with us,’ Hitler confidently predicted. Providence, he said, had given man a judgement of his own: ‘That judgement teaches me that diis tyranny of the lie is bound to be smashed. But it also teaches me that that can’t be done yet.’ On June 29, 1941, Hewel noted yet another conversation widi Hitler about religion. ‘ One ought not to combat religion but to let it die of its own accord.’ In August of that year he assured Goebbels that he had only post¬ poned the settling of die score; and in February 1942, referring to die ‘seditious parsons,’ he commented to his circle: ‘I can’t make my reply to diese people yet. But it’s all going down in my little black book.’ Hitler often talked about religion. Anneliese Schmundt would write in her diary on June 8, 1941, Long conversations in die evening on religion and Christianity: cultural retrogression since Greek and Roman art.’ Hewel wrote a much lengthier note diat evening: Over dinner this evening, a wonderful talk on the Roman Empire and its displacement by Christianity. . . . Christianity has been one long act of deceit and self-contradiction. It preaches goodness, humility, and love-thy-neighbour, but under this slogan it has burned and butchered millions to the accompaniment of pious proverbs. The ancients openly admitted diat diey killed for self-protection, in revenge, or as a punish¬ ment. The Christians do so only out of love! . . . Only Christianity has 184 n: Toward the Promised Land created a vengeful God, one who commits man to Hell the moment he starts using the brains that God gave him. The Classical was an age of enlightenment. With the onset of Christi¬ anity scientific research was halted and there began instead a research into the visions of saints, instead of the tilings that God gave us. Research into nature became a sin. The tragedy is that to this very day there are thousands of‘educated’ people running around believing in all this claptrap — diey deny that Nature is all-powerful, they glorify the weak, the sick, the crippled, and the simpleminded. In the ideal world of [Pastor Friedrich von] Bodelschwingh the healthy find everlasting life only if they have devoted their lives to the weak, to the idiot and suchlike; the sick are there so that we can do Good Deeds. If this goes on much longer, there will soon be more sick than sound.Today there are already a thousand million of them. As for cruelty, Christianity holds all world records. Christianity is the revenge of t he wandering Jew. Where would we be today if only we had not had Christianity — we would have the same brains, but we would have avoided a hiatus of one-and-a-half thousand years. . . .The terrible thing is that millions of people believe, or act as though they believe, all this: they feign belief in it all. If we had all been Mohammedans, today the world would have been ours. Excerpts from unpublished records like these show that Hitler was in¬ spired by purely Darwinian beliefs — the survival of the fittest, with no use for the moral comfort that sound religious teaching can purvey. ‘Liberty, equality, and fraternity are die grandest nonsense,’ he had said that evening. ‘ Liberty automatically precludes Equality — because liberty leads automati¬ cally to die advancement of die healthier, die better, and die more proficient, and thus diere is less equality.’ Yet Hitler still prevented die Party from taking its persecution of the Church too far. Not even he had contracted out of die Cadiolic church. Once Bormann had the misfortune to order the closure of a convent in which an aunt of Eva Braun was a nun. Hitler cancelled the order, and commented to Schaub afterward diat Bormann was ‘a bit pigheaded.’ on papen’s advice he had normalised Nazi relations widi the Vatican in July 1933 by means of a Concordat. This, die first international agreement he signed, brought die Nazi regime great prestige. Over the years however Extreme Unction 185 the convents and monasteries were dissolved and expropriated. Only the Benedictines enjoyed a certain immunity at first, deriving from Hitler’s private affection for tire Abbot Albanus Schachleitner: they had met at a demonstration against die French occupation of die Ruhr, on Konigsplatz in Munich, and Schachleitner became a supporter of the Party. His church cast him out and Schachleitner died in penury: Hitler ordered a state fu¬ neral in Munich (which ensured diat the Church reburied die bones in less hallowed ground when Hitler was no longer able to intercede). Individual Catholic leaders impressed Hitler by their diplomacy or die courage of their convictions. There was Michael, Cardinal von Faulhaber, Archbishop of Munich, whom he received privately at the Berghof to hear his manly appeal against die series of trials of clergy on homosexual charges. And there was Theodore, Cardinal Innitzer, of Vienna, whom Hitler had received on his triumphal entry in 1938: die Cardinal had swept into die foyer ofVienna’s Imperial Hotel, and when Hitler dutifully kissed his ring he responded with the sign of the cross, struck above die Fiihrer’s head widi a crucifix. He could not help admiring die panache of these Cardinals. it was die Futheran and reformed Churches in Germany that gave Hitler his biggest headaches. His early years of power were marked by futile at¬ tempts to reconcile die diirty warring Protestant factions and bring diem under one overriding authority. A hostile faction had formed on one wing of die Church, die ‘Confessional Church’ led by Pastor Martin Niemoller. Niemoller was a former U-boat commander, who had preached since 1931 at Dahlem in Berlin. He was ‘the first Nazi priest.’ His was among die first telegrams of congratulation to die Fiihrer after Germany walked out of die Teague of Nations in 1933. His ambition was to become Reich Bishop, appointed by the Nazis for die Protestant Church in Germany. Throughout die summer of 1933 the various Protestant factions had bickered over a suitable Reich Bishop; none of the names diey put forward — including diat of Bodelschwingh — was acceptable to the ruling Party. Eventually, in Sep¬ tember 1933, a synod at Wittenberg had elected Ludwig Muller to die position. Midler had been garrison chaplain at Konigsberg and was recom¬ mended by General von Blomberg from personal acquaintance. Schwerin von Krosigk heard Niemoller propose to Bodelschwingh and others one evening diat winter that their only solution was to visit Muller one dark night with a few strong-arm boys from his Dahlem congregation and ‘beat up die Reich Bishop so his own mother wouldn’t recognize him.’ 186 n: Toward the Promised Land Tired of the sniping against Muller, Hitler invited a dozen of the Protes¬ tant leaders to his chancellery on January 233 1934. Goring had by then begun furnishing Hitler with wiretaps on Niemoller. One recorded a very recent conversation between Niemoller and a brother clergyman, discuss¬ ing an audience they had just had with Hindenburg to campaign for Muller’s replacement. ‘We sure gave tlie old fellow the extreme unction this time,’ Niemoller had guffawed. ‘We ladled so much holy oil over him that he’s going to kick that bastard [Muller] out.’ Listening to the dozen bickering Protestant clergy in his chancellery study, Hitler’s patience left him. He allowed them to make their demand for Muller’s resignation — ‘with mealy mouths and many quotations from the Scriptures,’ as he described on one occasion, or ‘with unctuous language’ as he put it on another — and then he motioned to Goring to recite out loud from the FA wiretap transcripts. Niemoller denied that he had spoken t lie words concerned. According to Lammers, Hitler expressed indignation that a man of the cloth should lie. After that, t lie re was open war between Niemoller and the Nazi regime. In July 1934, Hitler made one last attempt to calm these troubled wa¬ ters, setting up a Reich Church Ministry under Hans Kerri. Kerri in turn established a Reich Church Council that October, but again these efforts were frustrated by the squabbling between the German Christians and Niemoller’s Confessional Church. Over the months that followed, a wave of police raids and arrests befell the latter. Niemoller himself was spared at first, but from his pulpit he launched such verbal torpedoes at Kerri t hat Franz Giirtner, Minister of Justice, warned him to cease fire. Hitler was loath to make a martyr of the man, but on July 1, 1937, Niemoller was arrested for sedition. The trial, in February 1938, was a noisy affair. Brilliantly defended by three lawyers, Niemoller used the witness box to denounce Hitler and his regime. ‘In future,’ Hitler groaned, years later, ‘I shall allow duelling only between the gentlemen of the clergy and the legal profession!’ In a snub to the regime, t he court sentenced Niemoller to t he seven months already served; to Hitler’s pleasure, however, he refused to give the court the cus¬ tomary assurances of good behaviour and he was re-arrested and interned in a concentration camp. Here this turbulent priest would languish, t hough comfortably housed and fed, until 1941,. At Munich in September 1938, Mussolini interceded for him; Hitler replied with a steely refusal: ‘Within the concentration camp Niemoller has t lie maximum of liberty and he is well looked after,’ he said. ‘But never will he see the outside of it again.’ The Major Solution O verwhelmingly german in history and inclination, the port of Danzig was put under League of Nations mandate by the vic¬ tors at Versailles.The Poles as protecting power had certain rights, including diplomatic, passport, and military offices. The railway system, about i 20 customs officials, and a large post office building were Polish too. If Hitler did launch ‘White,’ Danzig would be vulnerable for several days, as General Fedor von Bock — commanding Army Group North — warned. He recommended on May 27, 1939, to die General Staff diat a secret brigade should be illicitly raised from the 12,000 Germans with military experience in Danzig and from the city police; he also suggested diat on the actual day of‘White’ a German naval force might ‘happen to’ be visiting Danzig — it could disembark a battalion of troops to secure die city. Hitler approved Bock’s outline on June 11. A major general, Friedrich Georg Eberhardt, was sent in plain clodies to organise a ‘Free Corps’ there. Shiploads of guns and ammunition, ostensibly bound for Konigsberg, suffered ‘engine problems’ en route and docked for repairs at Danzig — where Eberhardt’s gear, everything from a shoe-nail to a 1 jo-millimetre gun, was unloaded under cover of darkness.The SS came for a sports display in Danzig, but die SS troops stayed on afterward. By die time of‘White,’ Eberhardt would command two infantry regiments, an artillery battalion, and SS ir¬ regulars too. Bridges were strengthened, barracks built, pontoon sections stockpiled. Hitler boasted in private, ‘I was owed 100 Reichsmarks; I’ve already collected 99 and I’m going to get the last coin too! ’ He audiorised Goebbels to deliver a powerful and provocative speech in Danzig on June 17. Goebbels confidently briefed Nazi editors: ‘This is to be a trial balloon, to test die international atmosphere on die settlement of the Danzig question.’ 187 188 n: Toward the Promised Land Berlin began to swelter. On July 3 Hitler and Goring visited a secret display of new Luftwaffe equipment at Reclaim air station. They showed Hitler an experimental Heinkel rocket-propelled lighter. A Heinkel 111 bomber, heavily overloaded, was lifted seemingly effortlessly into the air by rocket-assisted takeoff units. He saw die latest early-warning radar and pres¬ surised cabins for high-altitude planes; in the laboratory they demonstrated to him simple mediods of starting motor engines in subzero temperatures, and the new 30-millimetre cannon installed in a Messerschmitt 1 1 o fighter in the firing-butts. It was all just a grandiose self-deception and it had fatal consequences. Hitler decided to grab a much bigger bite of Poland, apart from just Danzig and the Corridor. In May 1942, Goring would exclaim: ‘The Fiihrer took die most serious decisions on die basis of diat display. It was a miracle that things worked out as well as they did, and diat the conse¬ quences were not far worse.’ as the sun climbed higher that summer Hitler’s ministers fled Berlin. Over dinner on July 4 he agreed widi his propaganda minister that diey should now nurture hatred towards Britain, and that die German people must learn to recognise the British as their principal obstacle. On the ninth Ribbentrop left to vacation at Lake Fuschl, near the Berghof. Brauchitsch attended Army Day celebrations at Karlshorst that day, dien left for several weeks’ furlough. Goring was cruising down the canals in his yacht. Hitler could afford to wait. He knew diat die Reich had most to offer Stalin in return for a pact. In mid-June 1939 die Soviets had again obliquely hinted H this time through die Bulgarian envoy in Berlin — diat they would prefer dealing widi the Reich, provided diat Hitler would sign a non-ag¬ gression pact. He told Goebbels on July 8 diat it was unlikely diat London and Moscow would ever reach agreement. ‘That leaves the way open for us,’ concluded die propaganda minister. Meanwhile, Hitler took direct control of every phase of the strategic preparations, dealing widi Heydrich, Goebbels, and — as he lacked a naval adjutant — die admiralty in person. Albert Forster, gauleiter of Danzig, ap¬ peared several times at die Berghof. On July 13 he had what his newspaper Danziger Vorposten called ‘a lengdiy discussion’ widi Hitler; after another meeting a week later Forster told his own staff, The Fiihrer says diat ... he was inclined just to tackle Danzig this sum¬ mer. But common sense has now dictated that the settlement of this The Major Solution 189 matter should be linked to a solution of the German-Polish problem as a whole, at a suitable time. Forster described the solution now desired as being to regain t lie Reich’s eastern frontiers as they had been in 1914. On July 22 Flitler telephoned die admiralty and ordered it to be ready to send die elderly cruiser Nurnberg to Danzig at short notice. two days later, on July 24, 1939, he drove to Bayreudi for his annualWagner pilgrimage. Here he wallowed in a Wagner orgy — The Flying Dutchman, Parsifal, and the whole of die Ring. In his youdi Hitler had been a chorister at Lambach in Upper Austria. As a romantic, rootless youdi of seventeen he had scraped and saved to visit die opera at Linz, and it was seeing Wagner’s early opera Rienzi in 1906 that had first stirred Hitler’s alter ego, die dema¬ gogue slumbering within the artist. In a way Rienzi was almost destined to become Hitler’s own story. He recognized diis in 19434 and he recited to Schaub the lines from the opera which he desired to be inscribed on his mausoleum. Rienzi is a true story of die Roman plebes, who are suppressed by die unscrupulous nobili until die young notary Rienzi (1313 - 13 34) rises from their midst, an unknown citizen who rallies and liberates and leads them, until the very nobili them¬ selves proclaim him their master. ‘Rienzi, hail! Hail to you, die people’s tribune!’ Later the nobili conspire, even the faithful desert Rienzi, and die hand diat strikes him down conies from his own ranks. Hitler had been electrified on first hearing die Rienzi drama in 1906: he left the dieatre long after midnight widi his school friend, August Kubizek, and scaled a hill outside Linz. Here Hitler suddenly spoke of a pact that die people would one day make with him — to lead them out of their subjuga¬ tion, to the pinnacles of freedom. He spent die night in the open air. His friend Kubizek might well have challenged him: ‘Rienzi, hey! What do you plan? / I see you mightily before me — tell / Wherefore needst thou this new might?’ He did not, but he met Hitler again thirty-three years later, in Bayreudi in July 1939, when they dined togedier at FrauWinifredWagner’s home ‘Wahnfried’ and here he reminded Hitler of that night on the Aus¬ trian hillside. Hitler interrupted, turned to Frau Wagner, and poured out die whole story. ‘That was when it all began,’ he told them. Hitler patronised the arts as had few of his more recent predecessors. He had heard Die Meistersinger forty times — Schaub believed it was Hitler’s igo ii: Toward the Promised Land favourite because it was a paean to German craftsmanship. ‘Wahnfried’ in Bayreuth was like a home away from home to Hitler: Frau Wagner, a ma¬ tronly Englishwoman, widow of the great composer’s son, was like a sec¬ ond mother to him. From 192^ to 1933 Hitler had kept away from Bay¬ reuth to spare her any embarrassment; then he had re-established the friend¬ ship, frequently telephoning her under his private nickname of‘Bandleader Wolf.’ This remarkable dowager’s admiration for Hitler would not diminish until her death. Sometimes she used their friendship to intercede on behalf of Jews or persecuted musicians. Hitler explained t hat she would have to write to him through Dr. Karl Brandt. ‘If your letters fall into the hands of Reichsleiter Bormann,’ he said, ‘there’s no guarantee that they’ll reach me.’ while hitler stayed at Bayreuth in July 1939 the foreign clamour mounted. Ambassador Herbert von Dirksen reported from London that the British press had been crying rape ever since the annexation of Austria. What inter¬ ested Hitler more was that authoritative voices could now be heard from London indicating that Chamberlain was casting around for ways of divest¬ ing himself of the awkward guarantee given to Poland. Hitler had mentioned to Walther Hewel as recently as June — after King George VI had replied warmly to Hitler’s condolences on t lie loss of the submarine Thetis — that if only he could meet some Englishman of standing with whom he could talk in German, he could soon settle their countries’ remaining differences. By late July the signs were that Chamberlain and his advisers were preparing for a second Munich. On a British initiative, there had been talks between Sir Horace Wilson, one of the main appeasers among Chamberlain’s advisers, and one of Goring’s economics staff, Dr. Helmuth Wohlthat. Wilson had proposed a sweeping political, economic, and mili¬ tary agreement wit It Hitler, in return for certain assurances. ‘Perhaps I’m too much of an optimist,’ the Englishman said, ‘and perhaps the solution does seem unrealistic to many observers in the present situation. But I have had the opportunity of studying the Fuhrer and I believe that t lie Fuhrer, acting as a statesman for peace, can manage even greater achievements than he has already in his construction of Grossdeutschland.’ The OKW timetable for ‘White’ would soon come into force: admit¬ tedly, no military decisions of significance were required until August 1 2, but the General Staff had determined that the optimum date for attacking Poland would be August 23-, and Hitler was required to decide for or against The Major Solution 191 ‘White’ on the fifteenth.This left barely two weeks for him to obtain Sta¬ lin’s signature on a pact, and nobody believed that Ribbentrop would man¬ age such a feat in time. ‘I don’t believe the Moscow talks will prove a flop,’ wrote Weizsacker in his diary on July 30. ‘But nor do I believe they can be concluded in the next fourteen days, as we are now attempting. My advice is that we should resort to blunter language in Moscow about the partition of Poland; Ribbentrop suggests talking to Moscow about sharing the Baltic states so diat nordi of the latitude of Riga should be Russia’s Lebensraum and south of it ours, but I advise against this!’ Hitler stayed at Bayreuth, troubled only by the affairs of his Party hench¬ men. He predicted to Goebbels on July 2 5 that die democracies would shrink back from war, step by step; and diat Warsaw too would crumble, when push came to shove. Goebbels was in a state of high nerves, but for family reasons — his wife Magda had thrown herself into a sorrowing liaison widi his young and handsome state secretary at die propaganda ministry, Karl Hanke. Hitler again angrily forced a reconciliation between die cou¬ ple, and required them to attend die next day’s opera together; but of all operas diat night’s offering was the romantic tragedy Tristan und Isolde, and Frau Goebbels openly blubbered while Hitler and his white-faced propa¬ ganda minister affected not to notice. Robert Ley, the Labour Front leader, tormented Hitler in a different way. In Winifred Wagner’s exquisite drawing room he proposed diat at die coming Nuremberg Rally diey should dispense with the customary fanfare from Verdi’s Aida and play instead a little piece which he, Ley, had com¬ posed for the occasion. He modestly played a gramophone record of die fanfare. After the last fearsome strains died away, Hitler tersely announced: ‘We’ll stick to Aida!’ it was here at Bayreuth that Hitler jovially buttonholed Neuradi widi die words ‘You’re going to be astonished by what I am going to tell you: what do you say we come to an agreement widi Russia?’ Neurath was indeed stunned, but responded favourably. Hitler ventured, ‘It will probably be hard to reconcile my Party stalwarts to the move.’ Neurath flattered him: ‘The Party is like putty in your hands, mein Fiihrer.’ Hitler still feared a snub from die Soviet dictator however, and time was running out. Acting on his instructions, on August 2 Ribbentrop hinted to die Soviet charge d’affaires that Moscow and Berlin ought to decide Po¬ land’s fate between them — and he added the tempting bait that diere was ig2 11: Toward the Promised Land ‘no problem between t he Baltic and the Black Sea’ that could not be solved between them. Ribbentrop emphasised t hat: Germany was in no hurry yet — a poker-faced assurance that must have been torture to utter, given the rigid timetable already imposed by tlie OKW’s planning. The clock was already ticking, but Moscow must not hear it. Hitler left Bayreuth on August 3, toured the Nuremberg arena — as t hough nothing would prevent tlie Party rally from opening here in one month’s time — and drove down the autobahn to Munich on die fourth. At his Mu¬ nich apartment he changed into a dark-blue suit and received General Keitel in the drawing room. The OKW chief had brought with him the final time¬ table for ‘White.’ The army still wanted X-day to be on August 24, as mid-September rains might bog down panzer operations in Poland and set the German air force at a disadvantage. Hitler motioned Keitel and his staff officer Major Bernd von Lossberg into easy chairs, and explained to diem once more, in an affable Austrian dialect which rather surprised Lossberg, just why the Polish problem had to be settled now. He blamed Chamberlain’s thoughtless guarantee to Po¬ land for stiffening Warsaw’s opposition. ‘The gentlemen in London and Paris won’t undertake anything against us diis time eidier,’ he assured die officers. Then his Austrian dialect vanished, submerged in a sudden cresting wave of familiar guttural Hitler-German: ‘I will see to diat.This Polish conflict will never, never, never result in a European war.’ He drove on that evening to the Berghof, and this was to be the scene of the next three weeks’ momentous events. from London the signs were again conciliatory. Neville Chamberlain had adjourned Parliament on August 4 for two mondis. Simultaneously, he risked a strange move that further convinced Hitler that Britain was not yet ready to fight: Sir Horace Wilson invited Ambassador Herbert von Dirksen to call at his private flat in Chelsea — specifying diat he should come on foot so as not to attract attention — and outlined an offer for a ‘full-bodied political world partnership’ between Britain and Germany. If Hitler would accept the terms, Wilson indicated, then Britain would put pressure on Poland to agree to Germany’s demands. Thus the awkward British guarantee to Po¬ land would become inoperative. Ribbentrop received Dirksen’s astounding telegram on this talk soon after. Weizsacker noted on die sixdi, ‘Under¬ ground feelers from Chamberlain toward a compromise (via HoraceWilson) prove that a dialogue widi Britain could be got going if we so desired.’ The Major Solution 193 Hitler was not inclined to bend, however. Secret directives went to the Nazi press on the twelfth and thirteenth, forbidding diem even to mention Britain’s apparent change of heart. ‘Britain incited die Poles, now she must pay die price,’ was the official line to be taken. Editors were commanded to observe ‘absolute discipline’ on this posture. Britain’s talks with Stalin must have reached a deadlock, of this Hitler was convinced. He detailed a Nazi agent to stand by at Croydon airfield, London, as the British chief negotiator, William Strang, flew back from Moscow on August 7. Strang’s dejected look betrayed diat Hitler’s surmise was probably correct. On die ninth, Halifax himself spoke to Dirksen.This time he promised diat Britain was willing to go ‘a long way’ toward meeting Germany’s de¬ sires. But Hitler’s central desire now was to have what he called his little war with Poland. After his Intelligence chief Canaris conferred on August 1 o with Keitel and Schmundt at Salzburg, and dien widi Ribbentrop at Fuschl, Lieutenant Colonel Erwin Lahousen wrote in his diary: ‘Intima¬ tions of a Non-Aggression Pact widi R.,’ meaning Russia. on august 11 , Hitler ordered the anti-Polish propaganda volume turned up to ‘eighty percent’ of its full volume. After months of maintaining a studied silence in the Nazi press about die Polish ‘atrocities,’ on the six- teendi editors were secretly circularised: ‘The time has come for die Ger¬ man press to abandon its reserve.’ Goebbels ordered Polish ‘terrorist inci¬ dents’ moved from page two to page one — though still only modestly dis¬ played, and there was to be no mention yet of Germany’s territorial claims. Hitler needed reliable staged ‘incidents’ at a closely defined place, time, and date — he had a tight OKW schedule to meet. Two diabolical schemes had been drafted by SS Obergruppenfiihrer Reinhard Heydrich, ‘following long-standing patterns set by our western neighbours,’ as he explained to SS commanders on about the eleventh. In one, his agents would masquer¬ ade as Polish insurgents, seize the German transmitter station at Gleiwitz, broadcast a proclamation, and then escape. In the other, more complex, incident a company of Polish-speaking idealists would be recruited from die Upper Silesian work-force, dressed in Polish uniforms on the eve of ‘White,’ and ordered to ‘seize’ a German customs post near Hochlinden; a mock battle would be staged widi SS troops, while real Polish troops would be lured into the fray from their garrison at nearby Rybnik by a Polish officer who had recently defected to Germany.The Gestapo chief, Heinrich 194 ii: Toward the Promised Land Muller, also hit on the macabre idea of strewing fresh corpses — condemned convicts from Dachau — on the ‘battlefield,’ equipped with genuine Polish soldiers’ passbooks. When Hitler talked with Professor Carl Burckhardt, the League of Na¬ tions high commissioner in Danzig, on the eleventh he had prepared the way by underlining tlie point: ‘If there’s the slightest provocation I shall shatter Poland without warning into so many pieces t hat t here will be nothing left to pick up.’ He boasted that whereas in 1938 he had had to whip his generals on, this year he was having to hold them back. Hitler continued (recalled Burckhardt years later): ‘Everything I’m doing is directed against Russia. If the West is too obtuse to grasp this, then I’ll be forced to come to terms with die Russians and turn against the West first, after which I’ll direct my entire strength against the USSR.’ The next day, Hitler made much the same point to Count Galeazzo Ciano, Mussolini’s foreign minis¬ ter — that he proposed one day to tread the old Teutonic road toward the east, as he had told the Duce himself aboard the Conte Cavour in May 1938. the Italians were still unaware of‘White,’ the plan to invade Poland. For the first time [wrote Weizsacker in his diary] we’re finding the Italian alliance a nuisance. Because over die last week our [i.e., Hitler’s] will to war has become much stronger. Himmler, Ribbentrop, and Gauleiter Forster have each been promoting the idea of war in their own spheres. Ribbentrop is guaranteeing diat the British and French will remain neu¬ tral provided we can deal annihilating blows to Poland in the first three days. This he thinks is certain. Count Ciano was received at the Berghof on August 12. Eva Braun, confined upstairs, later pasted a sequence of snapshots into her album show¬ ing the swirl and flourish of arriving limousines, black-shirted Fascist lead¬ ers greeting Hitler, and some of them even glancing up to her window (she girlishly captioned the photos: ‘Up there, there’s something forbidden to behold — me!’). Hitler had little time or liking for Ciano; he told Schaub that the Italian was ‘too brilliantined and dandified’ to inspire trust. Hitler spoke about Germany’s strength and Britain’s overwhelming vulnerability to air attack. (This was all probably meant for English ears. He would say at a conference on May 20, 1943, ‘Every memorandum I wrote to the Duce reached Brit- The Major Solution 195 ain immediately after: so I only wrote him what I wanted t lie British to know without fail.’) It seems clear that Hitler‘confidentially’ informed Ciano that ‘White’ would start in two weeks’ time, because die British foreign office learned of diis a few days later. Ciano was astounded. Hitler assured Ciano that die West would not intervene, but he did not explain why: die Nazi-Soviet pact. Even as Ciano was uncomfortably remonstrating widi Hitler in die Great Hall, a door was flung open and Walther Hewel hurried in. He whispered to Ribbentrop; Ribbentrop took Hitler aside and whispered to him: Molo¬ tov had just agreed in principle to receive a German negotiator in Moscow. Hitler’s mood changed. Widi a broad grin he invited the Fascist guests to accompany him up to his teahouse eyrie, the Eagle’s Nest. Curiously, Baron von Weizsacker also appears to have been left in die dark at first about the news from Moscow. The likely reason was that Weizsacker was communing treacherously closely widi die ambassadors of Britain, France, and Italy. On the thirteenth he wrote, ‘My own formula remains unchanged: if Poland commits a provocation of such effrontery diat Paris and London will also recognize it as such, then we can set about her. Odierwise we should keep our hands off. ... I am still not quite clear,’ continued Weizsacker in some puzzlement on die fourteenth, ‘just what has brought about this somersault at Fuschl [Ribbentrop’s summer home] and the Berghof. A week ago they still inclined to the view that the western powers would not drop Poland, so we could not tackle her.’ Hitler hesitated for several days before responding to Moscow. But die OKW timetable had him in its vice; important decisions were due on die fifteendi. The latest Intelligence reports showed that Britain had offered Poland an eight-million-pound loan, and diat Polish mobilisation prepara¬ tions were far in advance of his own. On August 14 Hitler called his diree commanders in chief to die Berghof and explained why ‘White’ was still on, and why he was sure diat the west¬ ern powers would not declare war. General Sir Edmund Ironside had sub¬ mitted a scathing report on Polish combat readiness — Hitler guessed diat Chamberlain would use it as an alibi to ditch the Poles. Were Britain really in earnest, she would have offered Poland more than a measly eight-million-pound loan (‘The British don’t sink money in an unsound business’) and the Poles in turn would be more insolent than FA intercepts of late revealed. Hitler said that his only worry was that die British might yet cheat him of‘White’ by making some last-minute offer; he told Goring, ig6 ii: Toward the Promised Land Brauchitsch, and Raeder on dais day t hat he had hinted to the British t hat he would approach them again with an offer of his own later — after he had dealt with Poland. Raeder — still in a huff over die Albrecht affair — did not speak, nor did Brauchitsch: Canaris wrote in his diary, ‘Commander in Chief army didn’t get a word in edgeways.’ Hitler now took a further fateful step. At 10:^3 p.m. that evening, Au¬ gust 14, Ribbentrop cabled these dramatic instructions to die embassy in Moscow: Molotov was to be informed that he, Ribbentrop, was willing to come to Moscow in person. His State Secretary Weizsacker correctly reflected, ‘If Ribbentrop manages to conclude a pact . . . they [the Rus¬ sians] will thereby be inviting us to attack Poland.’ On die fifteenth Hitler authorised all die timetable steps consistent with an attack on Poland on the twenty-fifth.The armed forces were ordered to assume that ‘“White” will be on.’The navy ordered the pocket battleships Graf Spee and Deutschland and fourteen submarines to stand by for opera¬ tions into die Atlantic. The Nuremberg Rally was secretly cancelled, to release railroad capacity for die Wehrmacht; but foreign diplomats were still fed with the impression that the rally was on. Less well documented are the murkier operations planned by die Abwehr and SS. They had prepared commando-style operations to secure vital bridges, tunnels, and industrial plants behind die Polish lines on the very eve of‘White .’The Abwehr had trained a taskforce to seize die 300-yard-long railroad tunnel at Jablunka, on the main line from Vienna to Warsaw. If die Poles could detonate die demolition charges in die twin tunnel it would bar the entry into soudiern Poland ofWilhelm List’s Fourteendi Army, now massing in Slovakia. Hitler piously insisted on a clear distinction between these ‘illegals’ and regular German army units: when Manstein asked per¬ mission to operate three assault groups in Polish uniforms during Army Group South’s attack, Hitler turned him down; Himmler then asked per¬ mission for the SS to use Polish uniforms in precisely die same area, and on August 1 7 Hitler gave him his blessing and ordered the Abwehr to release 1 30 Polish uniforms from its stocks to Heydrich for die purpose. At die northern end of die Polish front Hitler personally conceived an adventurous operation to secure die two strategic bridges across die river Vistula at Dirschau. Each bridge had its eastern end on Danzig soil and its western end footed on Polish ground, Pomerania. Obsessed with the Dirschau bridges, Hitler studied air photographs and models, and devised plan after plan. Eventually he agreed widi Goring, Himmler, and Brauchitsch The Major Solution 197 on a heavy dive-bomber attack on the Polish bridge garrison, the local power station, and the demolition fuses themselves, followed up immediately by a ground assault: a goods train would arrive from East Prussia in the last minutes before ‘White’ began, laden with concealed sappers and storm troops under Lieutenant Colonel Gerhardt Medem. Hitler briefed him personally.Timing was crucial, since the attack had to coincide exactly with die Luftwaffe strike against the Polish naval base at Gdynia — the first overt act of ‘White.’ The elderly warship Schleswig-Holstein was moved to Danzig. When ‘White’ began, she would immediately bombard the Polish stronghold emplaced (illegally) on the Westerplatte — the sliver of land commanding die entrance to die harbour. Inevitably, the Russians began to dither. After Molotov formally pro¬ posed — on August 16 — a non-aggression pact, Ribbentrop promptly re¬ plied with die suggestion that he visit Moscow in two or diree days’ time to sign it. The Russians dragged their feet. On August 18 Ribbentrop tel¬ egraphed his ambassador urging speed, and mentioned alluringly that he would be authorised to sign a secret additional protocol codifying aspects too delicate for public consumption. Even so, Molotov seemed unwilling to receive him in Moscow before August 26 or 27. As Ribbentrop well knew, the OKW timetable was geared to launching ‘White’ on or soon after the twenty-hfdi. The political effect of die pact would be nil if it were not signed well before then. In fact die A-movement, die initial transfer of 220 train-loads to assemble military equipment and troops in the east, was already beginning. to hitler it seemed a proper occasion for taking a personal risk. ‘Our opponents still hoped,’ he bragged two days later, ‘that Russia would emerge as our enemy after we had defeated Poland. But our opponents had not taken my power of decision into account. Our opponents are little worms — I saw diem all at Munich! ’ On August 20 he took the unprecedented and flattering step of writing a personal note to Stalin, asking him to accept Ribbentrop’s presence in Moscow not later than three days from now. frightened by his own boldness, Hitler could not contain his nervous¬ ness after diat. He telephoned Goring in the small hours; he snarled uneas¬ ily at Ribbentrop for having tempted him out onto this trembling limb of high diplomacy. But during the afternoon of August 21 word came from ig8 ii: Toward the Promised Land Moscow: his ambassador had been summoned to see Molotov at three p.m. More anguished hours passed. At last Ribbentrop brought the ambassador’s report. A smile lit up Hit¬ ler’s face. A photographer was summoned to capture die moment as he read the telegram: die Kremlin would be happy to receive Herr Ribbentrop in two days’ time, as Hitler had requested. An air of celebration gripped the Berghof, as diough a great victory had been won. And in a sense it had, for when German radio interrupted its programmes at 11:15 p.m. to broadcast diis chilling news to the world, nobody could doubt diat it spelled die end for Poland. ‘Now,’ Hitler said triumphantly to his commanders the next morning, ‘now I have Poland just where I want her! ’ The Reichsjuhrer SS, Heinrich Himmler, inspects prisoners at Dachau concentration camp, April 29, 1939 (author’s collection) Pact with the Devil ^ ^ o his adjutants Hitler truculently claimed that he wanted only to be allowed his ‘First Silesian War’ and nothing more. He would ^ explain to his commanders that from now on the German public would just have to get used to fighting. The Polish campaign would be a good introduction. On August i 8 he had word telephoned to Dr. Goebbels in Berlin to turn up the propaganda volume to full blast by Tuesday the twenty-second. With Poland totally isolated by the Nazi-Soviet Pact, Hitler was jubilant. He phoned Goebbels on t lie twenty-second, and the minister congratulated him on his masterstroke. He still had no clear idea of the sequence of events after ‘White’ — no doubt the Goddess of Fortune would see to that. All that was constant was his long-term goal — the goal that he had set out in Mein Kampf in 1924, in secret to his Commanders in Chief on February 2, 1933, again on Novem¬ ber 4, 1937, May 28, 1938, and more recently in his secret speeches of January and February 1939. ‘White’ was just one more step toward Ger¬ many’s 300-year-old dream of a Reich ruling Central and Eastern Europe, and thereby dominating the world. What means were not justified to that end? Britain, he would cajole and win with blandishments: he would offer his Wehrmacht to defend her far-flung Empire against the Asiatic hordes and other predators. Germany’s other neighbours, Hitler would cheat, threaten, bribe, or deceive. ‘As a private person I would never break my word,’ he would confide to Hewel in June 1941. ‘But if it is necessary for Germany — then a thousand times! ’ without waiting for Stalin’s reply he had already ordained on the nine- tecnth that all his senior commanders were to meet him three days later at 199 200 ii: Toward the Promised Land the Berghof. The invitation issued by the OKW emphasised: ‘He particu¬ larly wants the conference to remain absolutely secret and no word what¬ soever to leak to the foreign press.’ It would be disguised as a harmless tea party, witli half the guests fetched by Hitler’s motor pool from Salzburg and half from Munich. All were to come in plain clothes. When he appeared in t lie Great Hall at noon on August 2 2 Hitler found about fifty officers arrayed in four or five rows of chairs — army-group and army commanders, their chiefs of staff and t heir navy and air force equiva¬ lents. Prominently to the fore was Field Marshal Hermann Goring, who had interpreted the words ‘plain dot lies’ less literally than the others. He was wearing a sleeveless green leather jerkin with thick yellow buttons over a white silk blouse, while his ample lower extremities were sheathed in grey knickerbockers and long grey stockings. A gold dagger dangled nonchalantly from an exotic sword belt. Hitler spread out his outline notes on the grand piano, and launched into his first speech. His argument was simple but persuasive: theWehrmacht was about to embark on ‘White,’ a campaign they could not lose.There was no time like the present. Neither he nor Mussolini would live for ever: ‘At any moment I might be struck down by a criminal or lunatic!’ He had no fears of any second front. Britain and France might posture menacingly, but they would not really fight. Hitler then described how he had set the ball rolling toward rapprochement with Stalin by his ‘particularly cordial’ wel¬ come for the Soviet ambassador at the New Year’s reception. ‘That same evening,’ he said, ‘the ambassador expressed his thanks to me for this and for not having given him second-class treatment at the reception.’ With a gesture toward Ribbentrop he announced triumphantly that the foreign minister was flying to Moscow immediately to sign the pact. ‘Now I have Poland just where I want her!’ Now Germany could not be blockaded, because the USSR would supply all the cereals, cattle, coal, wood, lead, and zinc that Germany needed. ‘I am only afraid that at the last moment some Schweinehund might put to me a plan for mediation!’ A buffet lunch was served on t he terraces. Afterward Hitler spoke for another hour as a storm gathered outside tire big picture window. He ad¬ jured die commanders to display an iron nerve, even if Britain and France prepared for war. ‘Each and every one of you must act as though we have, all along, been spoiling for a fight with the western powers as well.’ It was vital to crush every living spark out of Poland rapidly and, if needed, bru¬ tally. ‘I shall provide a propaganda motive for launching dais war, whether Pact with the Devil 201 plausible or not: the victor is not challenged afterward as to whether he has told the truth.’ Hitler concluded with the appeal, ‘I have done my duty. Now go out and do yours!’ Goring rose, importantly mounted three shallow steps, and assured the Fiihrer that the Wehrmacht would do its duty. Brauchitsch confidently dis¬ missed his generals with these words: ‘Gentlemen: to your stations!’The Luftwaffe generals Milch and Kesselring were seen in a broad good hu¬ mour. Only Grand Admiral Raeder came briefly to remind Hitler of the vulnerability of a sea-cadet ship permanently berthed in the Gulf of Danzig. The Fiihrer was overheard to reply: ‘What if the old tub does go down!’ The Grand Admiral coldly reminded him that there were several hundred sea cadets on board. It was the only time he saw the Fiihrer in these last remaining days of peace. Ribbentrop set out t hat afternoon for Moscow, armed with Hitler’s pri¬ vate instructions to yield to every Soviet demand: if necessary to secure Molotov’s signature, Ribbentrop was to deny any German interest in south¬ eastern Europe, ‘right down to Constantinople and the Dardanelles Straits.’ That evening, August 2 2, he repeated that his only real fear was that some imbecile might oblige him, by ‘subtle proposals,’ to give way again. This was no idle fear: since about August 1 6 the FA had been monitoring furtive phone conversations between the British ambassador in Berlin and Sir Horace Wilson in London. Wilson was searching desperately for a formula that would give Danzig back to the Reich. On August 20 he had secretly told the German press attache in London that he was willing to ‘come secretly to Germany’ if need be. Late on August 22, the British ambassador phoned, asking to see the Fiihrer the next day. He had a personal letter from the British prime minis¬ ter to Hitler: ‘It defines our position exactly,’ the FA wiretap quoted Henderson as saying. ‘How we are bound by our obligations to the Poles and how we shall live up to these obligations should Poland be attacked.’ According to the wiretap, the Chamberlain letter would propose a cooling-off period while the questions of Danzig and the German minority in Poland were settled. By the time Henderson reached the Berghof with this letter at noon on die twenty-third, Hitler had already drafted a reply. Weizsacker wrote in his diary, ‘The Fiihrer’s purpose is to bully die British government into dropping its guarantee obligations to Poland.’ When Henderson tried to explain diat Britain was bound to honour her obligations, Hitler coarsely 202 ii: Toward the Promised Land replied: ‘Then honour them! If you hand out blank cheques you must ex¬ pect to have to pay out on them.’ He asked Henderson to come back later that afternoon to collect his reply to Chamberlain. before returning, at three p.m. Henderson telephoned his Berlin em¬ bassy from Salzburg. ‘I hope to be back in Berlin about eight p.m.,’ the FA wiretappers heard him report. He [Hitler] is entirely uncompromising and unsatisfactory but I can’t say anything further until I’ve received his written reply. Roughly, the points made by him were: Poland has been warned that any further action against German nationals and any move against Danzig, including economic stran¬ gulation, will be met by immediate German action. If Britain takes fur¬ ther mobilisation measures, general mobilisation will take place in Germany. . . I asked whether this was a threat. His reply was, ‘No, a measure of protection.’ Hitler’s written answer was intransigent. In their second conversation, that afternoon, Henderson argued that it was proof of Chamberlain’s good intentions that he was still refusing to take Churchill into his Cabinet; the anti-German faction in Britain mainly consisted of Jews and anti-Nazis, he said. After he left the Berghof, Weizsacker caught Hitler briefly alone and warned t hat Italy was only lukewarm about war, while the British were t lie captives of their own foreign policy. ‘Britain and France are bound to de¬ clare war.They aren’t people you can deal with logically or systematically — they’re labouring under a psychosis, a kind of whisky intoxication. . .To¬ morrow Chamberlain will rally the whole Parliament behind him the mo¬ ment he talks of war.’ Hitler disagreed, though evidently without conviction because Weizsacker noted that day: ‘He still thinks he can localise the war, but he’s also talking — today at any rate — of being able to fight a general war as well. Until recently, his view on this was very different.’ alone or in t lie company of his adjutants, Hitler paced t lie Berghof ter¬ races. Goebbels flew down from Berlin. ‘The Fiihrer,’ he recorded ‘greets me very cordially. He wants me to be with him over tlie next few days. In the afternoon he gives me a broad overview of t lie situation: Poland’s plight is desperate. We shall attack her at the first possible opportunity.The Polish state must be smashed just like t lie Czech. It won’t take much effort. More Pact with the Devil 203 difficult is the question whether tire West will intervene. At present one can’t say. It depends. London is talking tougher than in September 1938. So we’re going to have to box cunning. At present Britain probably doesn’t want war. But she can’t lose face. . . Italy isn’t keen but she’ll probably go along widi us. She’s hardly got any choice.’ Late that evening Ribbentrop came faintly on the telephone from Mos¬ cow: Stalin was demanding that die tiny but ice-free ports of Libau and Windau in Latvia should be assigned to his sphere of interest. Hitler sent an orderly for an atlas, and replied diat the USSR was welcome to the ports concerned. Later still, at dinner, a paper was handed to him. Hitler excit¬ edly rapped the table for silence and announced that the pact with Stalin had been signed. After dinner, the whole party strolled out onto the darkened terraces. Across the valley the night sky was lightened by a phenomenon not nor¬ mally seen in these soudiern latitudes — an aurora borealis, of bloody red. He sat up with Goebbels and several others until four a.m. talking things over. He had now decided that ‘White’ should begin at 4:30 a.m. on the twenty-sixth. The second phase, the Y-movement, had just begun (at eight p.m.): 1,300 trainloads of materiel and troops were moving eastward, and 1,700 toward the west. Raeder’s warships were already at sea. Across the Atlantic a German supply ship, the Altmark, was just weighing anchor to rendezvous with the German raider Graf Spee. What could still go wrong? Weizsacker wrote in his diary that evening, August 24: ‘Italy is acting as t hough the whole affair does not concern her. . . The thought that [Hitler] may have to fight the West as well is causing him more concern than I sus¬ pected.’ At 3:30 p.m. Hitler and Goebbels had flown back to Berlin, to meet Ribbentrop, who would arrive back atTempelhof airport from Moscow at 6:4 3. In Berlin sobering news awaited him: Chamberlain had just publicly reaffirmed in the reconvened House of Commons t hat Britain planned to stand by her guarantee to Poland, despite the Moscow pact. Hitler analysed die position with Ribbentrop, Goring, andWeizsacker. Ribbentrop was full of his impressions of die Kremlin. Stalin, he said, had toasted each member of die German delegation in turn. ‘Stalin is just like you, mein Fiihrer,’ Ribbentrop gushed. ‘He’s extraordinarily mild — not like a dictator at all.’ More cursorily diey discussed Italy. Hitler still ignored every sign diat his Axis partner was ill-disposed toward war. The only risk diat Hitler would admit was diat the Italians might bluster that events had taken an ‘unex- 204 n: Toward the Promised Land pected turn.’ So, after midnight, he had Ribbentrop telephone Count Ciano to advise him that ‘White’ was now imminent.To Ribbentrop and Hitler it seemed a pure formality: they assured Ciano that the Moscow pact would rule out any western intervention. when hitler rose the next morning, August 23, 1939, his official resi¬ dence was already crowded. ‘White’ was now less than twenty-four hours away.The brown Nazi Party uniform was everywhere. Everyone knew that at two p.m. Hitler was due to give the code word, and none of his followers wanted to miss the historic moment. The photographs show Bormann, Goebbels, Ribbentrop, and Himmler all hanging around. Telephone wires snaked across the priceless carpets in tangled profusion. Ribbentrop dic¬ tated by telephone a formal letter from the Ftihrer to Mussolini hinting t hat war might come at any hour; Hitler asked for an early response. By noon there was still no reply, so he inquired of the OKW how long he could postpone t he attack decision: t he General Staff agreed to a one-hour exten¬ sion, until three. Hitler invited Ambassador Henderson to come over at 1:30. (Weizsacker observed in his diary, ‘ Most of the day in t he Reich chan¬ cellery. Efforts are still being made to split tlie British from the Poles.’) At 12:30 p.m. Lieutenant Colonel Nikolaus von Vormann reported to Hitler as liaison officer. Colonel Erwin Rommel reported as commandant of t lie Ftihrer HQ: Hitler sent him on ahead with t lie HQ unit to Bad Polzin — a railroad station in Pomerania, where Bock’s Army Group North had es¬ tablished its HQ. Captain von Puttkamer also arrived back at the chancel¬ lery. The admiralty had apprehensively recalled him from die destroyer force to act as naval adjutant. Hitler took him aside to talk about his destroyer experiences until 1:13 when Bormann announced diat lunch was served. Barely had Hitler settled widi his nine-man staff at the round lunch table when a roll of drums from die courtyard heralded die arrival of Sir Nevile Henderson. For over an hour, speaking with apparent sincerity, Hitler put to die ambassador die folly of Britain’s throwing away her Empire for Po¬ land’s sake. He followed widi his now-familiar offer: after he had settled the Polish problem, he was willing to conclude agreements with Britain which ‘would ... if necessary assure the British Empire of German assistance, regardless of where such assistance should be necessary.’ He offered partial disarmament and even hinted that if Britain waged a ‘sham war’ to preserve face he would not begrudge it. Once die war was over he would return to his beloved architecture. ‘I’m not really a politician at all,’ he said. Pact with the Devil 205 The FA intercepts show that Flenderson was not taken in. Fie reported in cypher to London that it was plain to him that Flitler was trying to drive a wedge between Britain and Poland. there was still no formal reply from Mussolini, but the FA had now inter¬ cepted Count Ciano’s instructions to the Italian ambassador to see Ribbentrop at once and inform him of the Duce’s statement in the event of war: ‘If Germany attacks Poland and the conflict remains localised, Italy will afford Germany any kind of political and economic aid requested of her.’ To Flitler, this seemed satisfactory. When Attolico thereupon asked urgently for an audience, he was asked to come at two p.m. Attolico had to wait while Flitler talked with Henderson — and even as he waited he was urgently informed by Rome that his instructions had been cancelled. Hitler sent Ribbentrop out impatiently to telephone Ciano.The word from Rome was tliat Ciano and Mussolini had both left for the beach. It was now 2:45 p.m. There were only fifteen minutes to go to the Gen¬ eral Staff’s deadline. Hitler crossed to the music room with Ribbentrop and closed die door behind them. After fifteen minutes, Hitler decided he could not wait for the Duce’s reply any longer. At 3:02 p.m., pale but otherwise composed, he opened the door and announced to the throng: ‘CaseWhite! ’ So the attack would begin next morning. Hitler’s special train, Amerika, was shunted into Anhalt station to await him. Telegrams went out to every Reichstag deputy ordering an emergency session at five the next morning. The public telephones to London and Paris were cut off. From Brauchitsch’s headquarters the 3:02 p.m. code word was cabled, teletyped, telephoned, and duplicated; camouflage was stripped, engines tested, ammunition cases broken open — for at 8:30 that evening die advance toward the Polish fron¬ tier would begin. one, two hours passed. Suddenly one of the many telephones rang: a voice said diat the British government was going to ratify its pact widi Poland diat evening — die news had come from the press office. Ribbentrop urged Hitler to halt die attack, but Hitler was no dilettante. He knew diat an army is an amorphous and fluid animal, with many brains and many claws. He summoned Colonel Schmundt; Schmundt called for General Keitel; Keitel sent for General von Brauchitsch — but he was nowhere to be found. Schmundt fetched the OKW timetable, die long pages were unfurled and calculations made. It seemed diere was still time. 206 ii: Toward the Promised Land Even as they were talking, at about six p.m. the Italian ambassador hur¬ ried in. He brought a further bombshell — the reply from Rome. Mussolini attached such fearful conditions to any Italian aid — for instance, ‘immedi¬ ate war material and raw material deliveries from Germany’ — and it was couched in such language (‘I consider it my absolute duty as a loyal friend to tell you the whole truth . . .’) that Hitler could only treat it as a stinging rebuff.To Colonel vonVormann he hissed, ‘Cunning! That’s what we’ve got to be now. As cunning as foxes! ’ He was stunned. Goebbels saw him brood¬ ing and thinking things over —‘It’s a hard blow for him. But he’ll find a way out, even from this devilish situation. He’s always found one before, and he’ll do so this time too.’ Hitler ordered the army colonel to summon his chiefs, Brauchitsch and Haider, Chief of General Staff, to die building. But Haider was on die road somewhere widi his entire operational staff, transferring from the war de¬ partment in Bendler Strasse to General Staff HQ at Zossen, outside Berlin. Brauchitsch arrived at Hitler’s residence at seven p.m. Sober and unexcitable, he agreed that ‘White’ could be postponed. In fact he welcomed the delay, as it would shift die emphasis to a properly planned mobilisation. He now told Hitler, ‘Give me a week to complete mobilisation as planned, and you’ll have over a hundred divisions available. Besides, diis way you gain time for your political manoeuvring.’ He promised: ‘I can halt the army before it hits the frontier at 4:30 A.m.’ At 7:45 p.m. Vormann was dispatched by car to rush die written Halt order personally to Haider. When Hitler telephoned Goring, die field mar¬ shal asked him how long he intended to postpone ‘White.’ Hitler replied, very significantly, ‘I’ll have to see whether we can eliminate this British intervention.’ Goring was sceptical: ‘Do you really think four or five days will change filings much?’ hitler appeared downstairs looking more relaxed on August 2 6 .The news was that die army had managed to halt its attack on Poland virtually in mid-leap. The Halt order had reached all but one army patrol: it had at¬ tacked Poland by itself and suffered accordingly. A small task force of Abwehr agents under Lieutenant Herzner, sent into Poland ahead of zero hour to hold open the Jablunka railroad tunnels, could not be recalled. A padietic message came diat diey were now being encircled by regular Polish troops. Hitler ordered die little band of desperadoes to hold out as long as possi¬ ble. To the Polish audiorities, meanwhile, die Germans coolly disowned Pact with the Devil 20 7 Herzner’s force as an irresponsible Slovakian gang. Heydrich’s planned provo¬ cations in Upper Silesia were called off at the last moment: the ‘Polish corpses’ supplied by Dachau were given a reprieve. A telegram had arrived during the night from the German ambassador in Rome. It described vividly Mussolini’s response at 3:20 p.m. the previous day, on reading Hitler’s first letter: the Duce had ‘emphatically stressed’ that he would stand unconditionally at Hitler’s side. That tallied with die first version of his reply as intercepted by die FA. Italy’s attitude had however dramatically changed. At 1 1:^2 A.M., die Forschungsamt intercepted Count Ciano’s telephone call from Rome to Attolico in Berlin, dictating what he described as Mussolini’s demands from Germany: 1 jo flak batteries, millions of tons of coal, steel, and oil and impossible quantities of molybdenum (600 tons!), tungsten, zirconium, and titanium. At noon Keitel, Brauchitsch, and Goring came. Keitel confirmed that the OKW saw no prospect whatever of meeting die Italian demands. At about 1:30 p.m. Attolico brought the list. New was Attolico’s demand diat all die material must reach Italy ‘before die beginning of hostilities.’ Attolico complacently assured Hitler that all die figures were correct. At 2:30 p.m. Hewel phoned Ambassador von Mackensen in Rome to ‘verify’ die figures widi Ciano; Ciano also insisted that there was no possibility of error. Mackensen was then instructed to see Mussolini and show him die figures — an instruction he found ‘puzzling,’ since the figures were supposed to have emanated from die Duce in the first place. Controlling his anger, Hitler began drafting yet anodier letter to Musso¬ lini. He said he would do what he could to meet the demands. Where die Italians had asked only for flak batteries, Hitler proposed in his early draft to promise them flak battalions (Abteilungen). Goring was shocked and ob¬ jected diat diat was quite out of die question. Hitler cynically replied, ‘I’m not concerned with actually making the deliveries but widi depriving Italy of any excuse to wriggle out of her obligations.’ Shortly before lunch General Milch arrived from Carinhall. It was he who candidly suggested that Italy’s benevolent neutrality would be far bet¬ ter during ‘White.’ Hitler slapped his thigh and brightened. The letter diat was finally telephoned to Rome at three p.m. reflected this change of em- ph asis: Hitler asked only diat Italy should make sufficient military clatter to contain some of the West’s forces. Who needed Italian military assistance anyway? 208 n: Toward the Promised Land Mussolini confirmed that evening that since Germany could not supply the materials he had requested, Italy herself could not actively participate. Hitler replied with two lame requests: he asked his friend not to give the world any clue to Italy’s disappointing attitude; and he asked for Italian industrial and agricultural workers for t lie Reich. Mussolini readily agreed. That day the FA intercepted a report by die Italian embassy in Berlin. Canaris had gleefully described to his crony, the military attache, how Hit¬ ler had revoked ‘White’ on the previous evening. Hitler angrily sent for his devious Intelligence chief and reprimanded him for his inexplicable talka¬ tiveness. France’s faintheartedness was apparent in a letter from the prime min¬ ister, Edouard Daladier, which the ambassador brought to Hitler at seven p.m. that evening, August 26: ‘You were like me a soldier in the front lines in the last war. You will know as I do what contempt and condemnation the devastations of war aroused in die consciences of nations, regardless of how die war ended. . .’ Coulondre followed the letter widi an emotional speech, begging the Fiihrer who had built a whole empire without bloodshed to hesitate before shedding the blood of women and children now. Hitler re¬ mained silent, and kicked himself later for not having advised Coulondre that, since he would never start die bombing of civilians, he would not be to blame if the blood of‘women and children’ flowed. Coulondre telephoned to Daladier in Paris diat the message had fallen on deaf ears. Daladier re¬ sponded, ‘Then I put my trust in God and the strength of die French na¬ tion.’ (The FA recorded the exchange.) Unlike September 1938, diis time die voices against war were in the minority. The army General Staff anticipated ‘White’ with barely disguised relish. The only influential voice of warning, diat of Goring, was not heeded. Goring was maintaining contacts widi high British officials through in¬ termediaries and a Swedish businessman, Birger Dahlerus. That morning, August 26, Lord Halifax had given Dahlerus a letter for Goring; it confirmed the British desire for a peaceful settlement, but stressed the need for a few days to reach it. Was diis again the spirit of appeasement? It required the most cunning cultivation; Hitler asked Dahlerus to join diem, gave him several proposals to convey to London, and sent him back. afterwards, he lay awake in the darkness of his chancellery bedroom, and brooded on whether to take die plunge now or postpone this war for two Pact with the Devil 209 years more. All his instincts told him that he must attack now. Admittedly, die FA intercepts showed little sign of the western powers ditching Poland yet; but perhaps diey were counting on Flitler backing down again, as he had on the twenty-fifdi. It was now Sunday August 2 7. A flak battery mounted guard on the Adlon Flotel where most of the Reichstag deputies were staying. During die day, die Nazi wiretappers heard Flolman, die secretary of die absent British ambassador, reassuring an American colleague diat Henderson was urging London to avoid a war; but Holman predicted diat Polish truculence might still be a big obstacle. Goebbels brought his State secretary Leopold Gutterer, wearing die black uniform of an SS Brigadefuhrer, and bearing a one-page propaganda ministry report on German public opinion: die public was unani¬ mously against war. Hitler was furious, but Himmler backed Gutterer, say¬ ing diat die Gestapo reports were painting the same grim picture. ‘It is very grave,’ recorded Goebbels. ‘But the Fiihrer will pull us dirough. On Poland our minimum demand is Danzig and a corridor across dieir corridor. Maxi¬ mum — that’s a matter of record. The Fiihrer can’t abandon our minimum demand. And he’ll get his way. It’s become a matter of honour. Nobody can say what will transpire. The Fiihrer is glad we don’t have a monarchy any more. The Italy business has been declared top state secret. Death penalty for treason.’ Hitler finally met die disgruntled Reichstag deputies in the ambassa¬ dors’ suite of die chancellery at j :3o p.M.They recognised that he had spent a sleepless night. His voice was hoarse and his movements and expressions were loose and disjointed. Bormann noted in his diary, ‘For die time being die Reichstag will not sit. After a brief speech die Reichstag deputies were sent home by the Fiihrer.’ Hitler told diem that things looked grave, but he had resolved to settle the eastern problem so oder so. His minimum demand was for die return of Danzig and a solution of the Corridor problem; his maximum demand was for whatever a war would bring him — and he would fight that war ‘with the most brutal and inhuman methods.’ Like Frederick die Great he was willing to stake everything on one gamble. Mussolini’s attitude was, he suggested, in their best interests. War would be hard, per¬ haps even hopeless: ‘But as long as I live there will be no talk of capitula¬ tion.’ He regretted that his pact with Stalin had been so widely misinterpreted. The USSR was no longer a Bolshevik state, he argued, but an authoritarian military dictatorship like dieir own. He had made a pact widi the Devil to drive out Beelzebub. ‘If any one of you believes diat my 210 11: Toward the Promised Land actions have not been inspired by my devotion to Germany, I give him the right to shoot me down.’ The deputies applauded, but only thinly. food rationing was introduced on August 28, 1939, without warning. The rationing was evident at Hitler’s own breakfast table that morning. But he came downstairs in brilliant mood, because he had learned during the night that the Swedish businessman Dahlerus had returned from London with news t ha 11 lie British were seriously considering his offer. Hitler boasted to his staff that he had managed to knock Britain out of the game. When Brauchitsch reported to him, Hitler made no bones about his strategy: he would demand Danzig, right of transit across the Polish Corri¬ dor, and a Saar-type plebiscite there. Britain would probably accept these proposals, Poland would reject them, and the split would then be wide open. Hitler instructed the foreign ministry to draft a set of formal propos¬ als along these lines, for the British government to study. The proposals — sixteen in all — were so moderate that one of his diplomats termed it ‘a real League of Nations document.’ He read diem out to Keitel in the conserva¬ tory. The general naively replied, ‘I find them astoundingly moderate.’ At 3:22 p.m. Brauchitsch telephoned the General Staff from tlie chan¬ cellery to the effect that the provisional new date was September 1. Colo¬ nel vonVormann wrote that afternoon: ‘Hitler is in a brilliant mood. He’s confident that we can position Britain so that we only have Poland to deal with. Everybody’s guessing at what Henderson is bringing back with him. He took off from London at 4:30 p.m. Not a hint has reached us so far.’ Henderson arrived at 10:30P.M. Meissner and Bruckner conducted him to tlie Fiihrer’s study. He handed over the British reply to Hitler’s ‘offer’ of t lie twenty-fifth. It was not what Hitler expected at all: t lie British announced that they had received a ‘definite assurance’ from the Poles that they were prepared to negotiate. Hitler replied that he was still minded to deal with Poland on a ‘very reasonable basis’ — no doubt thinking of the still-unrevealed sixteen-point proposals. He told Henderson that he would examine the British reply the next day. Henderson assured him, ‘We took two days to formulate our answer. I’m in no hurry.’ ‘But I am,’ said Hitler.* A fragment of Heinrich Himmler’s typescript diary casts an unsavoury shaft of light on die tenebrous inner workings of Hitler’s mind diat evening: * ‘Henderson,’ wrote Colonel vonVormann the next day, ‘did not bring what we ex¬ pected, at least so they say. What follows now lies darkly in the future’s womb.’ Pact with the Devil 211 Ambassador Henderson came to see the Fiihrer at 10:30 p.m. and left die Reich chancellery at 11:4^ p.m. Afterward Goring, Hess, Bodenschatz, and I joined die Fiihrer in die conservatory. The Fiihrer was accompa¬ nied by Ribbentrop. He told us what die British offer contained. It was very courteously phrased, but contained nothing of real substance. Altogether he was in a very good mood and mimicked in his inimitable way what Henderson had put forward — speaking German widr a drick English accent. The Fiihrer then indicated drat we now have to aim a document at die British (or Poles) that is little less than a masterpiece of diplomacy. He wants to spend tonight Blinking it over; because he always gets most of his best ideas in the small hours between five and six a.m. At this Goring inquired, ‘Mein Gott, don’t you get any sleep even now? Or have you got insomnia again?’The Fiihrer replied diat he often dozes from three to four o’clock in the morning and dien suddenly wakes up to find the problems arrayed in pristine clarity before his eyes. Then he jumps up and jots down a few key words in pencil. He himself doesn’t know how it happens — all he does know is that in the wee hours of die morning everything diat might confuse or distract disappears. Sure enough, by die time Hitler awoke the next morning, August 29, his stratagem was clear. He would ‘accept’ the British proposals for negotia¬ tions with Poland — but he would give Warsaw just one day to send a pleni¬ potentiary to Berlin. They would, of course, refuse. Alternatively, if diey agreed, on the thirtiedi die Pole would have to arrive; die next day the talks would break down, and on September 1 ‘White’ could begin, as planned. As an Abwehr colonel noted in his diary: ‘The Fiihrer has told Ribbentrop, Himmler, Bodenschatz, etc., “Tonight I’m going to hatch somediing dia¬ bolical for the Poles — something they’ll choke on.’” Weizsacker, equally well informed, wrote soon after diree a.m. in his diary: ‘Goring has told die Fiihrer, “Let’s stop trying to break the bank!” to which the Fiihrer re¬ torted, “It’s the only game I’ve ever played — breaking banks.’” The reply diat Hitler handed to die British ambassador at seven p.m. redected his new stratagem. It said that he would approve of direct negotia¬ tions widi Warsaw — and ‘counted on the arrival’ of a Polish plenipotentiary die next day. He would also agree to guarantee Poland’s new frontiers — but only in association widi die Soviet government. Henderson objected, ‘This sounds very much like an ultimatum.’ Hitler replied that it would 212 ii: Toward the Promised Land only take ninety minutes for a Pole to fly to Berlin from Warsaw. ‘My sol¬ diers are asking me: Yes or No?’To underline the point, Henderson found Keitel outside the study as he left. He ironically asked, ‘Busy today, Herr Generaloberst?’ On August 30, Hitler conferred all afternoon with his commanders in chief (except of course Raeder, who was still sulking over the Albrecht affair). His timetable now allowed little leeway. He was sure that no Polish plenipotentiary would arrive, and the FA wiretaps on tlie British embassy revealed that London shared that view. Henderson was heard at eleven a.m. complaining, ‘You can’t just conjure a Polish representative from out of a hat.’ Soon after five p.m. a strange FA wiretap report reached Hitler.The British foreign office had telephoned Henderson that Neville Chamberlain was less impressed than his ambassador by the clamour arising from t he Reich chan¬ cellery, ‘as he’s been over there himself’ and, by implication, knew these people. The Voice [speaking from the London end] continued that they are really on the right track now:They [the Germans] really mustn’t expect to get away with it again by summoning people to them, handing over docu¬ ments to diem, and forcing them to sign on die dotted line. All that’s a thing of the past now. That did it: Hitler instructed Ribbentrop to read out die sixteen-point proposals to Henderson when die ambassador came that evening, but on no account to hand over the document. At 10:30 p.m. the FA monitored a British embassy official, Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes, telling Attolico diat they were all still ‘twiddling dieir thumbs’ waiting for die telegram of reply from London. Precisely at midnight, Henderson arrived at the chancellery. When he inquired whether die German proposals had now been drafted, Ribbentrop airily replied that diey had: but diey were now superseded as Poland had sent no plenipotentiary. Ribbentrop read diem out to show how ‘reason¬ able’ they were. At midnight Hitler related all this to Dr. Goebbels: ‘The British,’ recorded die diarist, ‘are still hanging tough. Not a peep out of Poland yet. The Fiihrer thinks there will be war. Italy’s defection is not all that bad for us, as Italy is die most vulnerable to attack by die Entente powers. The Fiihrer has drafted a memorandum: Danzig to be German, a Pact with the Devil 213 plebiscite in tlie Corridor in twelve months’ time on the basis of 1918; fifty-one percent of the vote to be decisive. Loser to get a one-kilometre- wide corridor across die corridor. Minorities problems to be examined by an international commission. When die time is ripe the Fiihrer will toss diis document to the world community.’ A few minutes after Ambassador Henderson left, die Fiihrer sent for Colonel Schmundt. At 12:30 a.m. he issued the code word once again: ‘Case White.’ Immediately after diat he retired to bed. throughout the next day, August 3 1 , Hitler was calm and self-assured. He had made up his mind and nothing would now induce him to change it. The FA knew diat Henderson had advised the Polish embassy to tel¬ ephone Warsaw for urgent instructions. At 8:30 a.m. Henderson had ur¬ gently telephoned die embassy again, warning diat an unquestionably reliable source had informed him that there would be war if Poland did not under¬ take some move over the next two or diree hours. The Polish ambassador Lipski, however, refused even to come to die telephone. Soon after midday die FA’s intercept ofWarsaw’s explicit instructions to him was in Hitler’s hands: Lipski was ‘not to enter into any concrete negotiations,’ he was merely to hand a Polish government communication to die Reich government.Thus die Nazis knew diat the Poles were merely stalling for time. Lipski went to ground — ‘He can’t be found,’ recorded Goebbels, ‘for hours at a time. Poland is obviously playing for time.’ It wor¬ ried the minister that Field Marshal Goring, the Luftwaffe’s commander in chief, was ‘still sceptical,’ but he consoled himself in his diary: ‘The Fiihrer still does not believe Britain will intervene. Nobody can say as yet.The SS is given special orders for the coming night.’ Goring called a ministerial conference at his operational HQ outside Potsdam that day. State secretary Herbert Backe recorded: Today again at Goring’s operations HQ. . . Bormann optimistic. G[oring] said tilings look good. Poles wanted to prevaricate, we are determined. Decision in 24 to 48 hours. Instead of Mussolini-Stalin. [Goring] men¬ tioned publication of something or other that may just keep Britain out. . . Unfortunately we forfeited surprise element, will cost a few hundred thousand more [lives]. But then we have the upper hand. [Need only defend] frontier in west and air approaches to coast from Holland to Denmark (in addition to those to the west!). Big danger is to the Ruhr. 21 4 ii: Toward the Promised Land As tlie new frontier is short, massive demobilisation of troops probable after Poland’s defeat. And then relentless rearmament against Britain. There is other evidence of Hitler’s beliefs in Colonel von Vormann’s notes diat day: ‘The Fiihrer,’ he wrote, ‘is firmly convinced diat France and Britain will just put on an act of waging war.’ Then, shortly before one p.m. on August 31, die OKW issued Hitler’s official executive order for war. When Ribbentrop came around soon after¬ ward, Hitler disclosed to him: ‘I’ve given the order. I’ve set the ball rolling.’ To diis die foreign minister replied, ‘And the best of luck to you!’ Hitler instructed Ribbentrop to ‘fob off the Polish ambassador should he try for an interview. During die afternoon Lipski did indeed ask to see eidier Hitler or Ribbentrop. Brauchitsch heard through Canaris of Lipski’s request, and told Hitler; the Fiihrer replied at four p.m. diat he did not intend to receive die Pole, and confirmed that ‘White’ was still on. When Ribbentrop finally deigned to see Lipski at six p.m., he merely asked the ambassador whether he was authorised to negotiate. The inter¬ view, die first between diplomatic representatives of Poland and Germany since March 1939, was concluded in a matter of minutes. As the ambassa¬ dor left, all telephone lines to the Polish embassy were cut. Everything had gone just as Hitler planned. Three hours later, German radio was interrupted widi a broadcast of die ‘ultra-reasonable’ sixteen-point offer diat Warsaw had refused even to look at. At 10:30P.M. there were the first radio mentions of serious border incidents, including an armed ‘Polish’ raid on die transmitter at Gleiwitz. Other ‘provocations by the Poles’ were reported near Kreuzburg and Hochlinden. Over two million Germans were now under arms, and the dedicated and incorruptible civil servants of the Forschungsamt could see signs that the western alliance was crumbling. Monsieur Coulondre phoned Henderson about Lipski’s visit to Ribbentrop and said diat the Pole had merely handed over a Note, without receiving the German proposals (which Henderson had unofficially obtained from Goring during the day). Henderson exploded, ‘But what’s the point of that! It’s ludicrous, die whole diing!’ In a later conversation a heated argument broke out, which ended with both ambassadors slamming down dieir tel¬ ephones. On die eve of war, die West was in disarray. Entr’acte: His First Silesian War B y the time that Hitler awoke, his armies had already advanced many miles into Poland. They had stormed the frontier at 4:41, a.m. that morning, September 1, 1939, while die Luftwaffe had bombed the enemy airfields and supply dumps. In many places Hitler’s undercover operations had run into stiff resist¬ ance. Polish railway officials on Danzig’s neutral soil had managed to hold up the ‘goods train,’ bound from East Prussia for die Dirschau bridge, at nearby Simonsdorf station. The SA massacred these interfering Polish railwaymen in reprisal dur¬ ing the day. By the time the train with its hidden cargo of German sappers and infantry reached die Dirschau bridge the gates were closed and die lines blocked.The Luftwaffe had attacked the demolition fuses on time, but brave Poles had repaired diem and thus die mile-long bridge across die Vistula was blown. A second bridge at Graudenz had been assigned to a long-range Abwehr holding squad, operating in plain clodies.These men penetrated into Polish territory, only to be arrested by an officious and trigger-happy German army lieutenant; in the distance diev heard diat bridge, too, destroyed. In Danzig itself die Polish post office building held out all day while Polish army officers disguised as postmen directed the defence.Thirty-eight Polish ‘postmen’ survived die siege: diose found to be wearing Polish army underwear were executed. It was a rough war for ‘illegals’ on bodi sides. An Abwehr ‘army,’ pulled together by two captains — Ebbinghaus and Fleck — from volunteers, SA guerrillas, die Sudeten German Free Corps, and Polish and German agents, had infiltrated Poland at about diree a.m. to seize rail¬ way junctions, coal-mines, and factories. On this first day alone Ebbinghaus and Fleck lost 1 74 dead and 13 3 injured of the five hundred cut-throats 21 S 216 Entr’acte they had set out with. As for Jablunka, the Poles now had time to blow up both the railroad tunnels. hitler dressed that morning in a baggy held-grey army uniform, having discarded his Party tunic for die last time die night before. At ten, he drove with his staff through Berlin’s almost deserted streets to the Kroll Opera-house to address the Reichstag. The same nervous tension gripped him as his little convoy of cars negotiated the hfteen-foot-wide approach passage to die Kroll Opera-house ~ one of Berlin’s best vantage points for an assassin. A hundred of the seats in front of him were empty, these depu¬ ties having been drafted with millions of odiers into the Wehrmacht ranks. In his speech he formally gave notice diat they were at war with Poland. He publicly dianlced his comrade Mussolini for his understanding attitude and ‘offer of support’ — but, he added, the Italians must understand diat he needed no outside aid to fight this war.The speech rang widi hollow prom¬ ises: die West Wall would always remain Germany’s frontier in the west; his pact with Russia eliminated every prospect diat there might be a conflict between diem. With a gesture to his uniform, he proclaimed: ‘I shall never wear anodier, until victory is ours; not as long as I live!’ The deputies applauded frequently; but they applauded with feeling only when Hitler announced diat he would fight a chivalrous war. ‘ I shall under¬ take each operation in such a manner diat women and children are neidier the target nor the victims.’ He stayed on in Berlin, as he believed diat the time for diplomacy was not over. In London, Lord Halifax had summoned the German charge d’affaires,Theo Kordt, but merely complained diat die German action against Poland‘created a very serious situation.’ Hitler took heart. At 5:36 p.m. the PA did intercept London’s instructions to notify Berlin that Britain would stand by Poland if the Nazi troops were not withdrawn: but no deadline was given. Colonel von Vormann, writing at six p.m., observed: ‘The big question — will Britain really stand by Poland? — is wide open.’ Almost at once the Forschungsamt intercepted an incautious remark by a British em¬ bassy official, diat die Note was not an ultimatum — just a warning. early on September 2, Mussolini made an attempt to halt the avalanche. He proposed a cease-fire and an immediate Five-Power peace conference; France was said to be in agreement. For some hours Hitler appears to have taken seriously the possibility of cease-fire. In conference this same day he His First Silesian War 217 urged the Wehrmacht to seize as much Polish territory as possible over the next few days, particularly the whole Polish Corridor. At 9:20 a.m. his army adjutant phoned Rommel not to expect die Fiihrer to transfer to his HQ that day either. Meanwhile the Fiihrer’s residence teemed with officials; Bruckner moved regularly through die rooms, inquiring each person’s business and tactfully easing die idle out into the Wilhelm Strasse. Colonel von Vormann jotted in his diary: ‘Mood is very confident.’ In a noisy House of Commons, Neville Chamberlain had insisted diat Germany’s forces totally withdraw from Poland. The FA monitored this statement being telegraphed to the British embassy at 7: <, o p.m., and diere was a postscript: ‘See my immediately following telegram.’ Henderson was heard telephoning Coulondre: ‘I don’t know what die next telegram will be, but I can guess.’ Half an hour after midnight — it was now Sunday, September 3 — Henderson received die ‘immediately following telegram.’ Its text was as he had feared. ‘You should ask for an appointment with Minister for For¬ eign Affairs at nine a.m., Sunday morning. Instructions will follow.’ There was no doubt in Hitler’s mind, reading the FA intercept of diis, as to what the instructions would be. Britain was about to tender a war ulti¬ matum to the Reich. At two a.m. Hitler ordered an adjutant to telephone to Rommel that die Fiihrer’s HQ was to expect him to arrive in twenty-four hours’ time. at the foreign ministry, an interpreter was given the thankless task of re¬ ceiving the formal British ultimatum from Henderson. At eleven a.m. diis ultimatum expired. At 1 1:30A.M. Henderson saw Ribbentrop and informed him diat Britain was now at war with die Reich. Ten minutes later, the FA heard the British embassy report to London diat Ribbentrop had handed over an eleven-page reply, refusing to give any assurance as to die with¬ drawal of German troops and putting die blame squarely on Britain: ‘The Germans,’ said the intercept report, ‘were very polite.’ Colonel von Vormann’s contemporary account that day deserves quot¬ ing here: Now the worst has happened, after all! . . . I’m not a belly-acher or de¬ featist, but the future looks very grim to me. This is just what we didn’t want. Until this morning die idea was to play for time somehow and to 21 8 Entr’acte postpone the decision. Even today the Fuhrer still believes that the: west¬ ern powers are only going to stage a phoney war, so to speak.That’s why I’ve had to transmit an order to the Army at i : 50 p.m. not to commence hostilities [in die west] ourselves. I can’t share his belief. Ele’s got the wrong idea of the British and French psyche. From die contortions that Britain had gone through to produce even this ultimatum Flitler was certain of her unwillingness to fight; he said as much to Grand Admiral Raeder that afternoon. Raeder penned a sour sur¬ vey diat day, beginning: ‘Today diere began a war with Britain and France widi which — to judge from all the Fiihrer’s utterances hitherto — we should not have had to reckon before about 1944 . . .’ Goebbels too was beset by misgivings, warning Flitler in a twenty-five page memorandum entitled ‘Thoughts on the Outbreak of War, 1939’ diat diere was little enthusiasm for diis new conflict and that Britain, poisoned by ‘Jewish capital,’ would fight to die last man: ‘Britain,’ he pointed out, ‘is governed by the old men of 1914 who are incapable of thinking straight or logically because of their hate complexes.’ In die event however Flitler proved right again. Field Marshal Goring — no admirer of Ribbentrop’s — volunteered to fly at once to London. Flitler forbade him to undertake any such venture. Oblivious of die audience of officials, Flitler dictated in rapid succession the proclamations to the Ger¬ man people, to die Nazi party, and to die Wehrmacht in east and west. In them, he branded Britain as the eternal warmonger, whose aim over two hundred years had been to defeat whichever Continental power was strong¬ est, spurning no lies, libels, or deceits to that end. He wasted no words on France. He scanned die drafts and released diem to the press. Secretary Christa Schroeder wrote diat evening to a woman friend: ‘We’re planning to leave Berlin in a few hours’ time. ... As for me, I’m ready to go through thick and thin with die Chief. If our luck runs out — I’d rather not think about that, but if— then my own life doesn’t matter to me any more.’ a quarter-century before, Kaiser Wilhelm’s armies had marched off to battle dirough cheering crowds, garlanded with flowers, while bands played. How different was Adolf Hitler’s departure for the Polish front that night! At die Anhalt railroad station, a solitary stationmaster waited at the barrier to greet him and his staff. The special train Amerika waited on die cordoned- His First Silesian War 219 off platform, its locomotive panting steam, while the station’s coloured signal lamps reflected from the metal of the light flak batteries mounted on flat-top wagons at each end. At nine p. m . t lie long train hauled out of t lie station, toward die battlefield in Poland. ‘Almighty God,’ Hitler had written in Mein Kampf, ‘bless our arms when die time comes, be righteous just as Thou hast always been, judge for Thy¬ self whether we have now merited our freedom. Lord, bless our fight!’ French ambassador Robert Coulondre leaves Berlin on September 2 , 1939 as his country prepares to declare war on Germany (author’s collection). Part hi: Hitler’s War Begins rienzi: ‘DeiTag ist da, die Stunde naht Zur Siihne tausendjahr’ger Schmach!’ RICHARD WAGNER’S OPERA Rienzi Preserved in miniature on photographic plates (see page 220 ), the secret 1939 diaries of Hitler’s propaganda minister Dr Joseph Goebbels remained hidden in Moscow archives until 199 - 2 , when the author frst retrieved and deciphered them. ‘White’ ^ ^ he special train Amerika was parked in a dusty Pomeranian rail¬ road station surrounded by parched and scented pine trees and ^ wooden barrack huts baked dry by the central European sun. It was a cumbersome assemblage of twelve or fifteen coaches hauled by two locomotives, immediately followed by armoured wagons bristling with 20- millimetre anti-aircraft guns. Hitler’s personal coach came first. In the drawing room, there was an oblong table with eight chairs grouped around it. The four remaining compartments in Hitler’s coach were occupied by his adjutants and man-servants. The nerve centre was the ‘command coach’ attached to his own quar¬ ters. One half was taken up by a long conference room dominated by a map table, and the other by Hitler’s communications centre, equipped with tel¬ eprinter and radio-telephone. He was to spend most of his waking hours in this hot, confined space for the next two weeks. Here Keitel introduced to t lie E it lire r for the first time his chief of operations, Major General Alfred Jodi. A year younger than Hitler, Jodi was to be his principal strategic ad¬ viser until the last days of war. In the train, as at the chancellery, the brown Nazi party uniform domi¬ nated the scene. Hitler hardly intervened in the conduct of the Polish campaign. He would appear in the command coach at nine a.m. to hear Jodi’s personal report on the morning situation. His first inquiry of Colo¬ nel von Vormann was always about the dangerous western front situation, for of thirty German divisions left to hold die three-hundred-mile line, only twelve were up to scratch; and against diem France might at any time unleash her army of 110 divisions. On September 4, an awed Colonel von Vormann wrote: ‘Meanwhile, a propaganda war has broken out in die west. 223 224 hi: Hitler’s War Begins Will the Fuhrer prove right after all?They say that t lie French have hung out a banner at Saarbriicken reading We won’t fire thefrst shot! Poland was overrun in three weeks. Neither the bravery of her soldiers nor t lie promises of her allies prevented this overwhelming defeat.The gaso¬ line engine, the tank, and the dive-bomber should not have taken the Poles by surprise, but they did. Hitler’s armoured and mechanised units encir¬ cled the enemy armies while t hey were still massed to the west of the Vistula, where they were deployed in preparation for die drive to Berlin — die thrust which would bring about an anti-Nazi revolution in Germany. What had been planned on the maps of the German General Staff diroughout the summer now took precise shape in the marshlands and fields of Poland in September 1939. Hitler listened unobtrusively to all that went on about him in the com¬ mand coach. His being there did not distract his staff, as one member wrote, except that they were forbidden to smoke in his presence — a prohibition that fell heavily on his cigar-smoking naval adjutant. Hitler’s only strategic influence had been on die ‘grand pincer’ plan, with its powerful southward thrust with mechanised forces from East Prussia behind the Vistula. He had also attempted to veto the appointments of generals Johannes Blaskowitz to command the Eighdi Army and Gunther von Kluge the Fourth Army — the former because he recalled diat in manoeuvres three years before, the general had not committed his tanks as he himself would have considered best. Hitler did later find fault with the conduct of die Eighdi Army’s op¬ erations. This produced the only real crisis of die campaign; but die crisis occurred precisely where Hitler had expected, and he had ordered coun¬ termeasures in anticipation. at eight o’clock on the morning of September 4, General von Bock, the commander of Army Group Nordi, joined Rommel in reporting to Hitler, and the three men set out on an extended tour of the battle areas. Hitler rode in a heavy six-wheeled Mercedes, and die rest of his staff and escort followed in six identical vehicles. Seventy or more cars packed widi Party and ministerial personages jostled for position behind die Fuhrer’s convoy. At each brief halt Hitler’s generals and Party leaders elbowed dieir way into the foreground of die photographs being taken and dien galloped back to their cars to urge their chauffeurs into even closer proximity to the Fuhrer’s Mercedes. Once when Bormann angrily rebuked Rommel for these ‘White’ 225 scenes of disorder, the general coolly snapped back: ‘I’m not a kindergar¬ ten teacher. You sort them out, if you want!’ The Wehrmacht was already steamrollering northward toward Thorn. These were fields long steeped in German blood. On die sixdi Hitler toured die battlefield ofTucheler Heide, where a powerful Polish corps had been encircled. (Apparently convinced diat the German tanks were only tinplate dummies, the Polish cavalry had attacked widi lances couched.) A radio message told Hitler diat Krakow was now in German hands. At ten p.m. diat evening, Colonel vonVormann briefed him on die western front. (‘The phoney war continues,’ he wrote later that day. ‘So far not a shot has been bred on the western front. On both sides there are just huge loudspeakers barking at each odier, with each side trying to make it clear to the odier how impossible their behaviour is and how stupid dieir governments are.’) Vormann talked of die dissolution of the Polish army: ‘All that remains now is a rabbit hunt. Militarily, die war is over.’ Beaming widi pleasure Hitler took the colonel’s hand in bodi of his and pumped it up and down. The situation in die west had a comic-opera quality. There were secret exchanges of food and drink between die French and German lines. Hitler went out of his way to avoid provoking British public opinion: when Goring begged for permission to bomb the British fleet, Hitler rejected the re¬ quest. He was furious when Britain announced on September 4 that one of her transatlantic liners, die Athenia, had been torpedoed by a German sub¬ marine. Admiral Raeder assured him that none of dieir handful of U-boats could have been near the alleged incident. Hitler suspected diat Churchill had himself ordered the liner sunk to arouse American public opinion. Shortly afterward, however, Raeder advised him confidentially diat a U- boat commander had now admitted die sinking. The liner, he contended, had been blacked-out and zigzagging. Raeder and Hitler agreed to keep die trudi to themselves. hitler’s territorial plans for Poland were still indeterminate. In a secret speech to his generals on August 2 2 he had set as his goal ‘the annihilation of die Polish forces’ radier dian any particular line on die map. But on Sep¬ tember 7 he also mentioned to his army Commander in Chief, General von Brauchitsch, die possibility of founding an independent Ukraine. Hitler’s notion was to mark die ultimate frontier between Asia and the West by gathering togedier the racial German remnants scattered about die Bal¬ kans, Russia, and die Baltic states to populate an eastern frontier strip along 226 hi: Hitler’s War Begins either the River Bug or the Vistula. Warsaw would become a centre of Ger¬ man culture; or alternatively it would be razed and replaced by green belds on either side of the Vistula. Between tlie Reich and the ‘Asian’ frontier, some form of Polish national state would exist, to house the ethnic Poles — a lesser species of some ten million in all. To stifle the growth of new chau¬ vinistic centres, the Polish intelligentsia would be ‘extracted and accommodated elsewhere.’ With this independent rump Poland, Hitler planned to negotiate a peace settlement that had some semblance of legal¬ ity and thereby spike the guns of Britain and France. If however this rump Poland fell apart, die Vilna area could be offered to Lithuania, and the Galician and Polish Ukraine could be granted independence — in which case, as Canaris noted, Keitel’s instructions were that his Abwehr-controlled Ukrain¬ ians ‘are to provoke an uprising in the Galician Ukraine with die destruction of the Polish and Jewish element as its aim.’ Hitler’s army had fallen upon the hated Poles with well-documented relish. Colonel EduardWagner, as Quartermaster General initially respon¬ sible for occupation policy, wrote privately on September 4: ‘Brutal guerrilla war has broken out everywhere, and we are ruthlessly stamping it out. We won’t be reasoned with. We have already sent out emergency courts, and they are in continual session. The harder we strike, the quicker there will be peace again.’ And a week later: ‘We are now issuing fierce orders which I have drafted today myself. Nothing like the death sentence! There’s no other way in occupied territories.’ Hitler and his generals were confronted by what they saw as evidence that Asia did indeed begin just beyond die old Reich frontier. In the western Polish town of Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) the local Polish commander had ordered the massacre of several thousand Ger¬ man residents on the charge that some of them had taken part in the hostilities. Goring’s paratroopers were being shot on the spot when cap¬ tured by die Poles. The population was instructed, for example, to pour gasoline over disabled German tanks and set them on fire. ‘Against Ger¬ many the Polish people fight side by side with the Polish soldiers, building barricades and combating the German operations and positions by every means they can.’ hitler’s special train, Amerika, had left for Upper Silesia on the ninth. It finally halted in a railway siding at Illnau.The air outside was thick widi the hot dust-particles of mid-September. His secretary Christa Schroeder wrote this plaintive description in a private letter: ‘White’ 22J All day long the sun beats down on t he compartments, and we just wilt in t he tropical heat. . . . The Chief drives off in t lie morning leaving us condemned to wait for his return. . . . Recently we were parked one night near a held hospital through which a big shipment of casualties was just passing. . . .Those who tour Poland with the Chief see a lot, but it’s not easy for them because the enemy are such cowards — shooting in the back and ambushing — and because it is difficult to protect the Chief, who has taken to driving around as though he were in Germany, stand¬ ing up in his open car even in the most hazardous areas. . . . On die very first day he drove through a copse still swarming with Polacks — just half an hour earlier they had wiped out an unarmed German medical unit. One of ffie medics escaped and gave him an eye-witness account. . . . Once again, the Fiihrer was standing in full view of everybody on a hum¬ mock, witli soldiers streaming toward him from all sides. Obviously it gives the soldiers’ morale a colossal boost to see the F. in the thick of die danger widi them, but I still think it’s too risky. We can only trust in God to protect him. ‘The Fiihrer is in die best of moods; I often get into conversation with him,’ wrote General Rommel. ‘He says that in eight or ten days it’ll all be over in die east and dien our entire battle -hardened Wehrmacht will move west. But I diink the French are giving up the struggle. Their soldiers are bathing in die Rhine, unmolested by us. This time,’ he concluded, ‘we are definitely going to win through! ’ That day, September 12, Hitler summoned Goring, Brauchitsch, and Keitel and flatly forbade them to provoke the French in any way. Hitler had walked into the command coach just as Canaris was outlining to Keitel die unfavourable effect a German bombardment ofWarsaw would have on for¬ eign opinion. When asked for news from die western front, Canaris craftily replied diat the French were systematically marshalling troops and artil¬ lery opposite Saarbriicken for a major offensive.* Hitler remained politely incredulous. ‘I can hardly believe diat die French will attack at Saarbriicken, die very point at which our fortifications are strongest.’ Jodi added that die * Canaris had deliberately exaggerated reports of a planned minor French attack in the hope of disrupting Hitler’s Polish campaign strategy, according to Colonel Lahousen, who accompanied him. 228 hi: Hitler’s War Begins artillery preparation for a major offensive would take at least three weeks, so the French offensive could not begin before October. ‘Yes,’ responded Hitler, ‘and in October it is already quite chilly, and our men will be sitting in their protective bunkers while the French have to wait in t lie open air to attack. And even if t lie French should manage to penetrate one of die weaker points of the West Wall, we will in the meantime have brought our divisions across from the east and given them a thrashing drey’ll never forget.’ Hitler’s tours of these Polish battlefields were his first real contact with ‘die east.’ They reinforced his unhealthy fantasies about the ‘sub-humans’ and the Jews. Was diis still Europe? Indiscriminately scattered about the untended acres were wretched wooden hutlike dwellings widi diatched roofs. At die roadsides, knots of submissive Polish civilians stood in the swirling dust of Hitler’s motorcade. Among diem he glimpsed Jews in high- crowned hats and caftans, dieir hair in ritual ringlets; they looked for all the world like figures out of mediaeval antisemitic drawings. Time had stood still here for centuries. The Jews were die enemy. Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the president of the Jewish Agency, had written to Neville Chamberlain promising explicitly diat all Jews everywhere would fight on the side of die democracies against Nazi Germany. The Times pub¬ lished Weizmann’s letter on September 6, and Hitler no doubt considered it a Jewish declaration of war. He often referred to it in later years — by which time his grim prophecy was being cruelly fulfilled. ‘For die first time we are now implementing genuine ancient Jewish law,’ he boasted on Janu¬ ary 30, 1942. ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ For the pogroms diat now began, Himmler and Heydrich provided die initiative and drive diemselves. Hitler’s only order to die Reichsfuhrer SS, Himmler, in diis context was one for the general consolidation of the Ger¬ man racial position. The army generals became restless about deeds being enacted by the SS in Poland, but Himmler reassured diem in a secret speech at Koblenz in March 1940, of which his handwritten notes survive. He explained diat now for the first time, under Adolf Hitler, the solution of the thousand-year-old problem of Poland was possible: only die infusion into Poland of Germanic blood had made some Poles great and dangerous; now that Germany was strong she must see to the ‘final annexation of die area, its purification and Germanisation.’ But a ‘Bolshevik method’ — which Himmler defined in a memorandum two mondis later as downright exter¬ mination of the minority races — was ‘impossible.’ He conceded diat the ‘leading brains of the resistance’ were being executed but this was not, ‘White’ 229 stressed Himmler, ‘a wild excess by subordinate commanders — still less by me.’ Here Himmler’s jottings show a German phrase — Weiss sehr genau, was vorgeht — which might be translated as either ‘[I] know precisely what is happening’ or ‘[He] knows precisely what is happening.’* Two weeks later Himmler spoke in a Ruhr city. Here his notes read: ‘The Fiihrer’s mission to die Reichsfuhrer SS: the quality of the German species. Blood our most supreme value. New territories not a political, but an ethnological prob¬ lem.’ as in Austria and Czechoslovakia, the advancing tide of German army units had been followed by Heydrich’s police net. Each army had its task force (Einsatzgruppe) , and each corps had an Einsatzkommando of a hundred officials inWaffen SS uniform with SD ( Sicherheitsdienst , security service) emblems on their sleeves.Their primary role was Intelligence — seizing enemy docu¬ ments — and what the army orders more formally described as ‘combating any anti-Reich or anti-German elements in rear areas.’ According to Hey- drich, writing ten months later, die special order directing die task forces to conduct ‘security operations of a political and ideological nature in diese new territories’ was issued by Hitler himself. Parallel to die SS task forces attached to the armies, there was an inde¬ pendent ‘special duties’ task force under the command of die arrogant and brutal SS General Udo von Woyrsch. When he was eventually kicked out of Poland on German army orders, he loudly protested that he had received direct instructions from the Fiihrer via Himmler to spread ‘fear and terror’ to dissuade die Poles from committing acts of violence. (Himmler’s orders to Woyrsch survive, dated September 3: he was charged widi die ‘radical suppression of die incipient Polish insurrection in the newly occupied parts of Upper Silesia’; Hitler is not mentioned.) There is no surviving record of when — or if — Heydrich conferred widi Hitler during the Polish campaign. But many of Hitler’s generals learned * General Ulex, who was present, recalled this after the war as ‘I am doing nothing of which the Fiihrer does not know/ ( Cf. Professor Helmut Krausnick, ‘Hitler and the Murders in Poland,’ VfZ, 1963, 196ff.) However, nobody else recalled this. And General von Leeb, whose diary has been available to me, would certainly have mentioned such a candid statement in it, given his pronounced Christian convictions. Ulex had been hu¬ miliated by Hitler late in 1938. Let it be noted however that Colonel Eduard Wagner wrote his wife on the following day: ‘In the evening Himmler spoke to the Commander in Chiefs at Koblenz. More about that verbally . . .’ 230 hi: Hitler’s War Begins from him that he planned to eliminate the Polish intelligentsia one way or another; they joined a conspiracy of silence. Hitler’s blood was already boiling at the ponderous court-martial pro¬ cedures being implemented against Polish guerrillas — he wanted dieir swift and summary execution. On September 7 he had met with Brauchitsch in his private coach and for two hours discussed the political future of Poland. He instructed the army to abstain from interfering in the SS operations, and the next day he issued a set of guidelines in which the emphasis was on the appointment of Party functionaries as civil commissars to do the dirty work in Poland. Little is known in detail of what Hitler told Brauchitsch. After talking to Haider on the ninth, Eduard Wagner noted in his diary: ‘It is the Fuhrer’s and Goring’s intention to destroy and exterminate the Polish nation. More than that cannot even be hinted at in writing.’ The same day, Colonel von Vormann wrote: ‘The war in Poland is over. . . .The Fuhrer keeps discuss¬ ing plans for the future of Poland — interesting but scarcely suited for committing to writing.’ Only GeneralWalther Heitz, the new military gov¬ ernor of West Prussia, lifted a corner of this veil of secrecy in writing up a conference with Brauchitsch on September 10: ‘Other business: I am to rule the area with the mailed fist. Combat troops are over-inclined toward a false sense of chivalry.’ That the nature of the SS task force operations had been explained to Brauchitsch was established when Admiral Canaris reminded Keitel of the damage the planned ‘widespread executions’ of Polish clergy and nobility would inflict on the Wehrmacht’s reputation. Keitel retorted that this had long been decided on by the Fuhrer, who had made it plain to Brauchitsch ‘that if theWehrmacht wants nothing to do with it, they will merely have to put up with the SS and Gestapo appearing side by side with diem.’ Hence the creation of parallel civil audiorities in Poland. On them would fall the job of‘demographic extermination,’ as Canaris recorded Keitel’s phrase. When Heydrich informed Colonel Wagner diat die planned ‘mopping up’ of Poland would embrace ‘die Jewry, intelligentsia, clergy, and nobility,’ the army officer asked only diat the murderous orders flow directly from Heydrich to his task forces in die held. But Heydrich had not in fact secured Hitler’s approval for liquidating the Jews. On September 14 he reported to his staff on his tour of the task forces. The discreet conference record states: ‘The Chief [Heydrich] en¬ larged on the Jewish problem in Poland and set out his views on diis. The ‘White’ 231 Reichsfuhrer [Himmler] will put certain suggestions to the Fiihrer, on which only tire Fiihrer can decide, as they will also have considerable repercus¬ sions abroad.’ Hitler, however, favoured only a deportation of the Jews, as became clear to bodi Brauchitsch and Himmler when they conferred sepa¬ rately with Hitler at Zoppot on September 20. To Brauchitsch he talked only of a ghetto plan for die Jews. Hitler’s somewhat more moderate instructions to Himmler were presumably those echoed by Heydrich to his task force commanders in Berlin next day: the formerly German provinces of Poland would be reannexed to the Reich; an adjacent Gau, or district, made up of a Polish¬ speaking population, would have Krakow as its capital and probably be governed by the Austrian Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart. This Gau — the later Generalgouvernement — would be a ‘kind of no-man’s-land’ outside die planned East Wall: it would accommodate the Polish Jews. Hitler also audiorised Heydrich to unload as many Jews as possible into the Russian zone.To facili¬ tate diis expulsion the Jews were to be concentrated in the big Polish cities. They would be joined by the Jews and the remaining thirty diousand gyp¬ sies from Germany. Hitler asked Himmler to act as overlord of this resettlement operation — what would in later years be called edmic cleans¬ ing. For his part, General von Brauchitsch circularised his held commanders dius: ‘The police task-forces have been commanded and directed by die Fiihrer to perform certain ethnographical ( volkspolitische ) tasks in the occu¬ pied territory.’The only stipulation Brauchitsch made when he met Heydrich on September 2 2 was that the expulsion operations must not interfere with die army’s movements or Germany’s economic needs. Heydrich readily agreed. hitler’s positive enjoyment of the battle scenes was undeniable. He vis¬ ited die front whenever he could. At a divisional headquarters set up in a school within range of the Polish artillery, he made the acquaintance of General von Briesen. Briesen had just lost an arm leading his division into an action which warded off a desperate Polish counterattack by four divi¬ sions and cavalry on the flank of the Eighdi Army; he had lost eighty officers and fifteen hundred men in die fight, and now he was reporting to his Fiihrer not far from die spot where his father, a Prussian infantry general, had been killed in the Great War. On die fifteendi we find Hitler at Jaroslav, watching his soldiers bridging die river San. On die next day the greatest strategic 232 hi: Hitler’s War Begins triumph of the campaign was complete: t lac Polish army optimistically as¬ sembled at Posen (Poznan) for the attack on Berlin had been encircled, and Kutno had been captured by the fourth and Eighth armies. Now it was only a matter of days before Warsaw itself fell. Hitler had begun to debate the fate of that city with Jodi on the fifteenth. He was particularly eager to have the capital in his hands by the time the U.S. Congress reconvened. He hoped that the mere threat of concerted ground and air attack would suffice. He plagued his officers for estimates on how long it would take to starve the city into submission. Early on the sixteenth a German officer carried to the Polish lines an ultimatum giving the commandant six hours in which to surrender. The commandant refused even to receive the ultimatum. He had spent every waking hour preparing the capital for the German assault. All fortifications and defences had been strengthened; every suburban building had been reinforced by sandbags, concrete, and barbed wire, its basement linked by a honeycomb of tunnels to a network of resistance strongpoints; deep antitank trenches cut across Warsaw’s main thoroughfares, and there were barricades formed of heaped- up streetcars, cobblestones, and rubble. As Blaskowitz was later to report: ‘What shocked even the most hard¬ ened soldier was how at the instigation of their military leaders a misguided population, completely ignorant of the effect of modern weapons, could contribute to the destruction of their own capital.’ At three o’clock on the afternoon of tlie sixteenth, Luftwaffe aircraft released over Warsaw several tons of leaflets giving the civilian population twelve hours to leave by two specified roads. At six p.m. die next day, the Deutschland Sender broadcast an invitation to die Polish forces to send officers to die German lines for negotiations to begin at ten p.m. Any officers who turned up for negotiations were to be instructed to hand to their com¬ mandant an ultimatum calling for die unconditional surrender of die capital by eight a.m. die next day. Arrangements for die evacuation of die diplo¬ matic corps would be made on request. By 11:41, a.m. on the eighteenth no Polish officer had appeared at die German lines. Hitler’s attempts to obtain the city’s bloodless capitulation were sufficient to give him a clear con¬ science about destroying Warsaw when die time came. The Polish government had already escaped to neutral Romania. ‘To protect the interests of die Ukrainian and White Russian minorities,’ two Soviet army groups invaded eastern Poland in the small hours of Septem¬ ber 17. The news reached Hitler’s train soon after. At about four a.m. he ‘White’ 233 entered the command coach, where he found Schmundt waiting with Keitel and Jodi. All of them were grouped around the maps of Poland, guessing at die Soviet army’s movements, until the arrival of Ribbentrop, who on Hit¬ ler’s instructions now revealed to the astonished generals die details of secret arrangements made with Moscow for Poland. ‘We decided with Stalin on a demarcation line between die two spheres of interest running along die four rivers — Pissa, Narev, Vistula, and San,’ the foreign minister explained as he somewhat crudely drew die line on die map. by September 19, when Hitler and his staff drove into Danzig, die Polish campaign was all but over. How he now privately mocked die foreign min¬ istry Cassandras who had predicted military disaster!* Only die garrisons ofWarsaw, Modlin, and Hela were still holding out. As die victorious Fiihrer drove through die streets of Danzig, flowers rained down from die win¬ dows. When the convoy of cars stopped outside die ancient Artus Hof, Schmundt was heard to comment, ‘It was like diis everywhere — in die Rhineland, in Vienna, in the Sudeten territories, and in Memel. Do you still doubt the mission of the Fiihrer?’ Here, in a long, columned fourteenth- century hall built in die heyday of the Germanic knightly orders, Hitler delivered a lengdiy speech. He compared the humanity with which he was fighting this war with the treatment die Poles had meted out to die Ger¬ man minorities after Pilsudski’s death. ‘Tens of thousands were deported, maltreated, killed in die most bestial fashion.These sadistic beasts let their perverse instincts run riot and — diis pious democratic world looks on widi- out batting one eyelash.’ In his peroration he spoke of‘Almighty God, who has now given our arms His blessing.’ Afterward his staff cleared a padi for him through the heaving Danzig population packed into die Long Market outside. A bath was provided for die sweat-soaked Fiihrer in one of the patrician houses. He took up quar¬ ters for die next week in the roomy sea-front Kasino Hotel at Zoppot, near Danzig. His mood was irrepressible. At midnight two days after his arrival, followed by one of his manservants widi a silver tray of champagne glasses, he burst into Jodi’s room, where a number of generals were celebrating Keitel’s birthday. But his ultimate intentions remained die same. Here at * Cf. Hewel’s unpublished diary, October io, 1941: ‘Triumphant conversation [with the Fiihrer] about the foreign ministry. Who in 1939 believed in victory?The state secretary at the foreign ministry [Weizsacker]?’ 234 hi: Hitler’s War Begins Zoppot Hitler began weighing a course of action as hideous as any that Heydrich was tackling in Poland. About a quarter of a million hospital beds were required for Germany’s disproportionately large insane population: of some seven or eight hundred thousand victims of insanity all told, about ten percent were permanently institutionalised. They occupied bed space and the attention of skilled medical personnel which Hitler now urgently needed for the treatment of die casualties of his coming campaigns. Ac¬ cording to the later testimony of Dr. Karl Brandt, his personal surgeon, Hitler wanted between forty and sixty percent of the permanently hospi¬ talised insane to be quietly put away. To his suite at t lie Kasino Hotel t lie Fiihrer now summoned his constitu¬ tional and medical advisers, and in particular Hans Lammers, chief of the Reich chancellery, and Dr. Leonardo Conti, chief medical officer of the Reich, together with the ubiquitous Martin Bormann and Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler, chief of t he ‘Fiihrer’s chancellery.’ (Conti’s widow still re¬ calls her husband reaching for the encyclopaedia to look up ‘Euthanasia’ after die Fiihrer’s call.) Hitler instructed Dr. Conti that, to meet the re¬ quirements of wartime, a program for die painless killing of the incurably insane should be initiated. Dr. Conti questioned whether t lie re was any scientific basis for assuming it would produce eugenic advantages. There was some discussion of die actual mechanics of the program. Dr. Conti proposed t he use of narcotics, but in separate discussions with Dr. Brandt, Hitler learned that barbiturates would be too slow to be ‘humane’ and that most physicians considered carbon monoxide gas die fastest and most peace¬ ful lethal dose. Hitler asked Brandt shortly to investigate which was the fastest way consistent with die least amount of pain. He had been an enthusiastic advocate of the racial rejuvenation of the German people ever since the Twenties. On die pretext that 20 percent of the German population had hereditary biological defects, die National So¬ cialists had instituted a program of‘racial hygiene’ immediately after they came to power; Minister of the InteriorWilhelm Frick was a fervent advo¬ cate. In July 1933 the Cabinet had passed the first related law; it was henceforth obligatory for doctors to report on patients with hereditary diseases so that t hey could be sterilised. An elderly Darwinian (Alfred Ploetz) whom the Reich had made a professor after 193 3 was to point out in 1933 that ‘the contra-selective effects of war must be offset by an increase in the extermination quotas.’ Frick had drafted tlie necessary laws governing the operations of the local health offices in 1934, parallel to the racial-politics ‘White’ 235 agencies of the Party which functioned in each Party district. Over the next ten years, tens of thousands of senior medical officials were to pass t lirough special courses in racial hygiene.The economic burden represented by these specimens was explained, and particularly repulsive samples were housed at the institutions as walking laboratory exhibits. In 1935 Hitler openly told Dr. Conti’s predecessor that should war come he would ‘tackle the euthanasia problem,’ since a wartime psychology would reduce the risk of opposition from the church. But it was not until the end of 1938 that Hitler was directly involved in any euthanasia decisions, and then it was in ‘mercy killing.’ Bouhler’s chan¬ cellery had repeatedly submitted to him appeals from patients in intolerable pain, or from their doctors, asking Hitler to exercise the Head of State’s prerogative of mercy and permit the doctor to terminate the patient’s life without fear of criminal proceedings. When Hitler received such an appeal from the parents of a malformed, blind, and imbecile boy born in Leipzig, he sent Dr. Brandt early in 1939 to examine the child, and he authorised die doctors to put him to sleep. A ministerial decree was eventually passed in August 1939 requiring all midwives to report die details of such de¬ formed new-born babies; a panel of three assessors judged each case, and if all diree agreed, die infant was procured from the parents eidier by decep¬ tion or by compulsion and quietly put away. After the Zoppot meeting in September 1939, some time passed with¬ out any results. In fact Dr. Conti had become involved in lengthy discussions in which the legal and ediical bases of Hitler’s proposals were explored. The consequence of this delay was that Hitler bypassed both Lammers and Conti, and peremptorily dictated onto a sheet of his private stationery an order diat considerably enlarged the scope of the euthanasia project: Reichsleiter Bouhler and Dr. Brandt, M.D., are herewith given full re¬ sponsibility to enlarge die powers of certain specified doctors so diat diey can grant diose who are by all human standards incurably ill a mer¬ ciful death, after the most critical assessment possible of their medical condition. ( Signed ) Adolf Hitler This Fiihrer Order was symbolically backdated to September 1, the start of what he had envisaged as his ‘first Silesian war.’ Now it was no longer a local campaign but a bloody crusade in the course of which die German people were to become ennobled by conflict and purged of the impure 236 hi: Hitler’s War Begins elements in their blood and seed. Census forms, ostensibly for statistical survey purposes, were circulated to doctors and hospitals from October 9, 1939. Panels of three assessors dien decided the life or death of each pa¬ tient on die basis of these forms alone. Hitler told Bouhler he wanted a process untrammelled by red tape. What had begun as die ‘mercy killing’ of the few was now followed by the programmed elimination of die burdensome tens of thousands of in¬ sane; and all diis was but a platform for far wider campaigns on which die Reich was to embark now diat it was at war. Hitler put Philipp Bouhler in charge oj‘mercy killingOut of that grew massacres of quite a different order. He killed himself in 1945 (author’s collection) Overtures H itler’s train idled on a siding in outer Pomerania until 9:30 a.m. on September 26, 1939, and then began the eight-hour haul back to Berlin. The journey passed in heavy silence. Jodi must have been in his private compartment, for only Colonel von Vormann was there. For the next few hours Flitler spoke no word but restlessly paced die length of die swaying carriage while the train drew closer to Berlin. Just after five p.m. die train reached Berlin’s Stettin station. Flitler and his entourage drove almost stealthily to the Reich chancellery.The atmosphere was funereal. Widiout doubt his dioughts now revolved around the next step. In Janu¬ ary 1944 he was secretly to address his sceptical generals widi words diat he might well have been thinking now. ‘If I am now taken to task about what concrete prospects there are of ending die war, then I should just like to ask you to look at die history of wars and tell me when in the major campaigns any concrete idea emerged as to how each would end. . . . Moltke himself wrote diat it is erroneous to expect that any plan of war can be drawn up diat will hold good after the first battles.’ In die same speech he was to explain: ‘In my position one can have no other master dian one’s own judge¬ ment, one’s conscience, and one’s sense of duty.’ The army had issued an order for die withdrawal of most of the combat divisions from Poland and their partial demobilisation. When Hitler heard of it he declared, ‘We are going to attack die West, and we are going to do it this October!’ There are small indications that Hitler had known all along diat he was on die direshold of a long and bitter war widi Britain. As early as Septem¬ ber 4 die Fiihrer instructedWalther Hewel to use every possible diplomatic channel to rescue his disconsolate friend ‘Putzi’ Hanfstaengl from die con- 237 23 8 hi: Hitler’s War Begins sequences of his own self-imposed exile in London and arrange his escape to Germany. Britain was clearly going to play for time. On the evening of September i 2, Hitler confidentially disclosed to Colonel Schmundt that as soon as Poland had been defeated he would swing around and attack in the west; he must exploit the western weakness while he could. He said the same to Goebbels —‘Once we’ve dealt with the east,’ the minister recorded, ‘he wants to take on the West. He has no use for a long war. If there’s got to be war, then short and sharp.’ On the fourteenth he discussed with his chief engineer, Fritz Todt, the need for a permanent headquarters site in the west. To his adjutants, Hitler explained that his Great War experience in Flanders had taught him that until January the weather would hold good for an offensive, after which it would be imprudent to launch a large-scale campaign before May. He proposed to make one more peace offer to Brit¬ ain, but he did not seriously expect Britain to come to terms until the Wehrmacht was arrayed on the English Channel, he said. Hitler revealed this intention to his startled supreme commanders on September 27. What disturbed the army was Hitler’s insistence that since German superiority of arms and men was only temporary, the offensive against France must begin before the end of 1939, and, as in 1914, it would have to be carried through Belgium. Hitler explained that he was uncon¬ vinced of Belgium’s honest neutrality; there were indications that she would permit a rapid invasion by the French and British forces massing on her western frontier. Aware that Brauchitsch inwardly rebelled against this new campaign, Hitler tolerated no discussion of his decision or of the prospects. He terminated the conference by tossing his brief notes into the fire burn¬ ing in the study grate. Baron Ernst von Weizsacker recorded Hitler as saying in his presence two days later that the new offensive might cost Germany a million men — but it would cost the enemy the same number, and the enemy could ill afford the loss. Hitler repeated his arguments to his army and army group commanders when he assembled them in the chancellery the next day. Warsaw had just fallen. Elsewhere in Poland tire towns had largely es¬ caped damage. In Krakow, little had been bombed. But this was not the fate ofWarsaw. By the twenty-first it was clear that the city would have to be taken by storm. The two hundred foreign diplomats were allowed to es¬ cape, and die artillery bombardment of the city was stepped up. On die twenty-fifth Hitler had visited the Tenth and Eighth armies; the latter had a Overtures 239 hundred and fifty batteries of artillery drawn up for tire final bombardment due to begin next day. From the roof of a sports stadium Flitler watched with binoculars as the artillery pounded Warsaw. Blaskowitz’s report states: Flitler was briefed on die Eighdi Army’s plan of attack: according to diis die main artillery assault on the fortress will commence early on Sep¬ tember 26. Until then only identified military objectives, enemy batteries, and vital installations such as gas, water, and power stations are being bombarded by ground and air forces. . . . After the plan of attack has been outlined broadly to him, the Fiihrer, who is deeply troubled by the suffering that lies in store for die popula¬ tion of the fortress [Warsaw], suggests that one more last attempt should be made to persuade die military command of Warsaw to abandon its lunatic course. He guarantees diat the officers of the fortress will be granted honourable captivity and may retain their daggers if they sur¬ render fordiwidi, and orders that the NCOs and troops are to be assured of their early release after die necessary formalities. Millions of new leaflets publishing these terms were dropped over War¬ saw that evening. The Polish commandant made no response. Early on die twenty-sixdi, dierefore, die target of die artillery bombardment was changed to the city itself, and the infantry assault began.The next day it was all over; die Poles had capitulated with virtually no further military resistance. On October 2, General Rommel visited Warsaw and afterward reported to Hitler on die terrible scenes of destruction. Rommel wrote to his wife die next day: ‘Report in the Reich chancellery, and dinner at the Fiihrer’s table. Warsaw is in bad shape.There is hardly a building not in some way damaged or with its windows intact. . . .The people must have suffered terribly. For seven days there has been no water, no power, no gas, and no food. . . .The mayor estimates there are forty thousand dead and injured. . . .’ A pall of deadi still hung over Warsaw as Hitler flew in for his big victory parade diere on October j.The stench of rotting bodies soured die Polish air. According to his closest staff, the Fiihrer was unnerved by die spectacle of die deadi all about. Outwardly he remained hard and callous. To die foreign journalists swarming around him he said menacingly, ‘Take a good look around Warsaw. That is how I can deal with any European city.’ But when he saw die banquet that the army had prepared at die airfield, either his stomach rebelled or his instinct for bad publicity warned him not to sit 240 hi: Hitler’s War Begins at a vast, horseshoe-shaped table with spotless white linen and sumptuous food at a time when hundreds of thousands ofWarsaw’s inhabitants were starving. The frontiers of eastern Europe had now been agreed upon between Germany and the Soviet Union. Hitler had insisted that his foreign minister personally fly to Moscow to settle the details: ‘Laying down the definitive frontiers between Asia and Europe for the next thousand years is after all a task worthy of the foreign minister of the Grossdeutsches Reich!’ Whereas the line provisionally agreed upon in mid-September had run along the Vistula River, it now followed die Bug River far to the east, since Stalin had also assigned to Germany the districts ofWarsaw and Lublin in exchange for die Baltic state of Lidiuania, which the August pact had placed within Germa¬ ny’s sphere of influence. So now the German troops who had advanced to the Bug, only to be ordered to withdraw to the Vistula, had to march east¬ ward once again, spanning die difficult terrain for the third time in as many weeks. for the first two weeks of October 1939, Hitler unquestionably wavered between continuing the fight and making peace with the remaining belligerents on the best terms he could get.The fact that he had ordered the Wehrmacht to get ready for ‘Operation Yellow’ (Fall Gelb, die attack on France and die Low Countries) in no way detracts from the reality of his peace offensive. Germany would have needed at least fifty years to digest the new territories and carry out the enforced settlement programmes planned by Heinrich Himmler to fortify the German blood in the east. Thus Hitler’s peace feelers toward London were sincere — not just a ploy to drive a wedge between Britain and France. Weizsacker wrote early in October: ‘The attempt to wind up die war now is for real. I myself put the chances at twenty percent, [Hitler] at fifty percent; his desire is 100 percent. If he obtained peace ... it would eliminate the awkward decision as to how to reduce Britain by military means.’ Early in September Goring had hinted to the British through Birger Dahlerus diat Germany would be willing to restore sovereignty to a Poland shorn of die old German prov¬ inces excised from the Fatherland at the end of the Great War; diere would also be a reduction in German armaments. The British response had been a cautious readiness to listen to the detailed German proposals. Hitler told Dahlerus in Berlin late on September 26 that if die British still wanted to salvage anything of Poland, diey would have to make haste, and now he Overtures 241 could do nothing without consulting his Russian friends. Dahlerus left for London at once. The German army had good reason to keep anxious track of Hitler’s peace offensive. Late in September, Haider’s deputy had gloomily — and wholly inaccurately — warned that die German army could not launch a frontal assault on die French before 1942.The tactics which had proved so successful in Poland would not suffice against die well-organised French army; die foggy weather and short hours of autumn daylight would set die Luftwaffe at a disadvantage. Brauchitsch enumerated these arguments to Hitler on October 7, and Hitler asked die Commander in Chief to leave his notes behind. Over die next two days he dictated a fifty-eight-page memorandum for Keitel and die three commanders in chief alone; in it he explained just why they must launch ‘Yellow’ at die very earliest opportunity and just why time was work¬ ing against Germany. The Fiihrer read this formidable document to his uncomfortable generals on the tenth. In it, he insisted that Britain’s long- range goal remained unchanged. The long-range German war aim must dierefore be the absolute military defeat of the West. This was the struggle which the German people must now assume. Despite all this, he added, a rapidly achieved peace agreement would still serve German interests — pro¬ vided that Germany was required to relinquish nothing of her gains. on September 29, Alfred Rosenberg secured Hitler’s permission to take up feelers put out through an intermediary in Switzerland by officials of die British air ministry; but diis glimmer of hope was shortly extinguished when die intermediary reported diat die forces for peace in that ministry had been pushed to the wall by the more militant forces at Churchill’s beck and call. Little more was heard of these diffident approaches from London. At diis stage in Hitler’s thought processes there came an ostensible in¬ tervention by President Roosevelt diat was as abrupt in its approach as it was enigmatic in denouement. At die beginning of October an influential American oil tycoon, William Rhodes Davis, arrived in Berlin on a peace mission for which he had apparently received a ninety-minute personal briefing from Roosevelt. In Berlin die oilman met Goring, and a seven- page summary of the discussion of the alleged Roosevelt proposals survives. It was evidently given wide confidential circulation in Berlin, for sardonic references to Roosevelt’s sudden emergence as an ‘angel of peace’ bent on securing a third term figure in several diaries of the day. 242 hi: Hitler’s War Begins President Roosevelt is prepared to put pressure on die western powers to start peace talks. . . . [He] asks to be advised of the various points Germany wants to settle, for example, Poland and the colonies. In this connection President Roosevelt also mentioned die question of die purely Czech areas, on which however a settlement need not come into effect until later. This point was touched on by President Roosevelt widi re¬ gard to public opinion in the United States, as he must placate the Czech voters and die circles sympadiising widi diem if he is to exercise pres¬ sure on Britain to end the war. Roosevelt suspected that Britain’s motives were far more dangerous and that they had nothing to do with Poland; he himself recognised diat the real reason for the war lay in die one-sided Diktat ofVersailles which made it impossible for the German people to acquire a living standard comparable widi diat of dieir neighbours in Europe. Roosevelt’s proposal, according to the unpublished summary, was diat Hitler be allowed to keep Danzig and all the formerly German Polish provinces, and that all Germany’s former African colonies be restored to her fordiwith. This was not all. If Daladier and Chamberlain refused to comply, then President Roosevelt would sup¬ port Germany — Davis reported — in her search for a lasting peace: he would supply Germany with goods and war supplies ‘convoyed to Ger¬ many under the protection of the American armed forces’ if need be. John L. Lewis had privately promised Davis that if some such agreement could be reached between Germany and die United States his unions would pre¬ vent the manufacture of war supplies for Britain and France. On October 3 Goring announced to die American emissary diat in his important speech to the Reichstag on the sixth Hitler would make a number of peace proposals closely embodying the points Davis had brought from Washington. Goring told Davis: ‘If in his [Roosevelt’s] opinion the sugges¬ tions afford a reasonable basis for a peace conference, he will then have the opportunity to bring about diis settlement. . . .You may assure Mr. Roosevelt that if he will undertake this mediation, Germany will agree to an adjust¬ ment whereby a new Polish state and an independent Czechoslovak government would come into being.’ Goring was willing to attend such a conference in Washington. Hitler hoped for an interim reply from Roosevelt by the fifth. (As Rosenberg wrote: ‘It would be a cruel blow for London to be urgently “advised” by Washington to sue for peace! ’) But something had gone wrong: Overtures 243 when Davis reached Washington he was not readmitted to the President, and they did not meet again. A different aspect of Roosevelt’s policy was revealed by the Polish docu¬ ments ransacked by the Nazis from t he archives in Warsaw. The dispatches of the Polish ambassadors in Washington and Paris laid bare Roosevelt’s efforts to goad France and Britain into war. In November 1938, William C. Bullitt, his personal friend and ambassador in Paris, had indicated to the Poles that the President’s desire was that ‘Germany and Russia should come to blows,’ whereupon die democratic nations would attack Germany and force her into submission; in the spring of 1939, Bullitt quoted Roosevelt as being determined ‘not to participate in die war from die start, but to be in at die finish.’Washington, Bullitt had told die Polish diplomats, was be¬ ing guided solely by the material interests of the United States. Events now took dieir course. On Friday, October 6, Hitler spoke to die Reichstag. He singled out Churchill as a representative of the Jewish capitalist and journalistic circles whose sole interest in life lay in die fur- dierance of arson on an international scale. Optimistically General Rommel wrote from Berlin on the seventh: ‘If die war ends soon, I hope I will soon be able to go home. . . .’ Late on October 9 Dahlerus reported to Hitler the conditions Britain was attaching to peace negotiations: in addition to insisting on a new Polish state, Britain wanted all weapons of aggression destroyed forthwith. These were hard terms to swallow, for Britain was blithely ignoring die growing armed strength of die Soviet Union and her expansionist policies. Never- dieless, on the tendi, Dahlerus was instructed to advise London that Hitler would accept diese terms on principle. The Swedish negotiator saw Hitler twice diat day before he departed for The Hague. He took with him a formal letter from Goring and a list of Hitler’s proposals. Dahlerus noted to one German officer after meeting Hitler diat ‘Germany for her part was able to swallow even tough conditions, pro¬ vided they were put in a palatable form.’ He said he was taking widi him to Holland more than enough to dispel Britain’s smouldering mistrust of Hit¬ ler. ‘It depends on London,’ Hitler explained at lunch on October 1 o to Dr. Goebbels, ‘whether the war goes on.’ In Holland, however, Dahlerus waited in vain for die promised British emissary. Chamberlain’s eagerly awaited speech to die House of Commons on October 1 2 exploded Hitler’s confident expectation diat peace was about to descend on Europe after five weeks of war. Chamberlain dismissed Hit- 2 44 hi: Hitler’s War Begins ler’s public offer as ‘vague and uncertain’ — he had made no suggestion for righting die wrongs done to Czechoslovakia and Poland. If Hitler wanted peace, said Chamberlain, ‘acts — not words alone — must be forthcoming.’ That same evening Hitler sent for Goring, Milch, and Udet of the Luftwaffe and instructed them to resume bomb production at die earliest possible moment: ‘The war will go on!’ ‘Before diese answers came,’Weizsacker wrote two days later, ‘die liilirer himself had indulged in great hopes of seeing his dream of working with Britain fulfilled. He had set his heart on peace. Herr von Ribbentrop seemed less predisposed toward it. He sent the Fiihrer his own word picture of a future Europe like the empire of Charlemagne.’To die Swedish explorer Sven Hedin Hitler voiced his puzzlement at Britain’s intransigence. He felt he had repeatedly extended the hand of peace and friendship to die British and each time they had blacked his eye in reply. ‘The survival of die British Empire is in Germany’s interests too,’ Hitler noted, ‘because if Britain loses India, we gain nothing thereby.’ Of course he was going to restore a Polish state — he did not want to gorge himself with Poles; as for die rest of Chamberlain’s outbursts, he, Hitler, might as well demand diat Britain ‘right die wrongs’ done to India, Egypt, and Palestine. Britain could have peace any time she wanted, but they — and that included that ‘brilliantined moron’ Eden and die equally incompetent Churchill — must learn to keep dieir noses out of Europe. the urgency of resuming the offensive was what Hitler had most empha¬ sised in his memorandum of October 9. German military advantage was now at its very zenith. In Italy Mussolini was not getting any younger. Rus¬ sia’s attitude could easily change. And diere were odier reasons why Germany must strike swiftly and avoid a protracted war: as Britain injected fresh units into France, the psychological boost diis gave to die French could not be ignored; conversely it would become progressively more difficult to sustain die German public’s endiusiasm for war as each month passed. Ger¬ many’s air superiority was only temporary — die moment die enemy believed he had achieved air superiority he would exploit it. Above all, die British and French knew of the vulnerability of die Ruhr industries, and the mo¬ ment die enemy could base aircraft or even long-range artillery on Belgian and Dutch territory, Germany would have to write off the Ruhr from the war effort. This was why Hitler was convinced diat the occupation of Bel¬ gium and Holland must be on the western powers’ agenda already, and this Overtures 245 was how he justified ordering his army to prepare to attack France through Belgium. If the coast of western Europe were in Flitler’s hands, the advantages to Germany would be decisive: for sound strategic reasons the German navy needed submarine bases west of t lie English Channel. Similarly die Luftwaffe would have a disproportionate advantage in striking power if its dying dis¬ tance to British targets involved only the short shuttle route from Elolland, Belgium, or even the Pas de Calais in France. These were the reasons Flitler gave for asking the Wehrmacht to put die offensive first, attacking in the west ‘diis very autumn,’ and en masse. The German army would attack the French along a front from soudi of Luxem¬ bourg to nordi of Nijmegen, in Elolland. Splitting into two assault groups on either side of die Belgian fortress of Liege, it would destroy die French and British armies which would have come to meet it. The German armoured formations would be used widi such speed and dexterity that no cohesive front could be stabilised by the enemy. The Luftwaffe was to concentrate on shattering enemy railroad and road net¬ works, radier than squander effort on hunting down individual aircraft. ‘Extreme restrictions are to be imposed on air attacks on cities themselves’; diey were to be bombed only if necessary as reprisals for raids on the Reich cities. The German navy and air force accepted Flitler’s arguments widiout demur. The army leadership did not. Perhaps this was because for the first time the generals clearly saw that Flitler took his position as Supreme Com¬ mander of the Wehrmacht seriously. Admiral Raeder added an urgency of his own when he saw Flitler on the evening of the tenth of October: if Britain was to be defeated, she must be beleaguered and besieged regard¬ less of army objections. ‘The earlier we begin, and the more brutally, the earlier we shall see results; tlie shorter will be tlie war.’ Flitler thought the same way and stressed the importance of maintain¬ ing the submarine construction programme right through 1940.The OKH (War Department) considered the army unready; army group command¬ ers Bock and Leeb echoed this scepticism with different degrees of vehemence, and army commanders like Reichenau and Kluge were equally unenthusiastic about the campaign. An indirect result of the British snub of his peace overture was a further hardening in Flitler’s attitude to the future of Poland. He did not renew his offer to set up a rump Polish state. The Poland of 1939 would be subdi- 246 hi: Hitler’s War Begins vided, dismembered, and repopulated in such a way that it would never again rise to embarrass Germany or the Soviet Union. A series of radical decrees heralded this new order. On October 4 Hit¬ ler amnestied all deeds committed by Germans ‘enraged by die atrocities perpetrated by the Poles.’The Hitler decree appointing Himmler gave him the job of ‘eliminating die injurious influence of such non-German seg¬ ments of the population there as are a danger to die Reich’; it was signed on the seventh. On die eighdi Hitler signed a decree setting up new Reich Gaue (districts) — ‘West Prussia’ and ‘Posen.’ As for the remaining Ger¬ man-occupied area, the Polish reservation, on die twelfdi Hitler drafted a decree ‘for die restoration ... of public order’ diere, subjugating these remaining regions to a German Governor General, a viceroy responsible only to himself. At a conference at die chancellery on October 1 7, Hitler announced to Keitel, Frank, and Himmler that die army was to hand over control to die civilian administrations set up under Hans Frank and Gauleiters Albert Forster and Artur Greiser. The army ought to be glad to be rid of this un¬ wholesome task, Hitler noted, and warming to his dieme he ordered diat in the Generalgouvernement it was no part of the administrators’ duty to establish a model province along German lines or to put die country eco¬ nomically back on its feet. Significantly Frank’s task in Poland would be to ‘lay the foundations for a military build-up in the future’ and to prevent the Polish intelligentsia from creating a hard-core opposition leadership. Po¬ land must become so poor that the people would want to work in Germany; the Jews and other vermin must be given speedy passage eastward. To an army colonel Keitel frankly admitted: ‘The mediods to be employed will be irreconcilable widi all our existing principles.’ According to yet anodier version, Hitler ended by announcing that he wanted Gauleiters Greiser* and Forster to be able to report to him ten years from now that Posen and West Prussia were pure and Germanic provinces in full bloom, and Hans Frank to be able to report that in the Generalgouvernement — die Polish reservation — the ‘Devil’s deed’ had been done. * On March 7, 1944 Gauleiter Artur Greiser cabled the Fuhrer that 1,000,000 Germans had been officially transplanted to his Reich gau ‘ Wartheland’ from the old Reich, from the rest of Europe, and most recently from the Black Sea regions; the Jews had all but vanished from the area, and the number of Poles had been reduced from 4,200,000 to 3,^00,000 by forced migration. Overtures 247 The population surgery prescribed by the redrawn map of eastern Eu¬ rope inflicted hardship on Germans too, and German refugees crowded t lie roads of t he territories of south-eastern Poland beyond the San River, an area which had been assigned to Russia. Here there were scores of vil¬ lages and hamlets where die language and die culture was German, where Germans had tended land given to their ancestors by Maria Theresia and Joseph II — villages with names like Burgdial and Wiesenberg, or Neudorf and Steinfels, where the farms were laid out and worked in an orderly and scientific manner that set them apart from the farms of Polish and Ukrain¬ ian neighbours. In die last days of October 1939, Hitler’s army adjutant handed to him a Fourteendi Army report on the evacuation of diese diou- sands of ethnic Germans. No orders had been given; none were necessary. ‘In die majority of cases die villagers had experienced enough during die Great War (when the Germans were transported to Siberia) and during the years of Bolshevik rule, 1919 and 1920, for diem to abandon their prop¬ erty widiout furdier ado and take to dieir heels.’ As diis westward movement was in progress, a more ominous eastward flow began: from dieir half of Poland, die Russians began deporting dangerous intellectuals and the officer classes; and in the German half the Jews were being rounded up, confined, and spilled over the demarcation line into die Russian zone where possible. Hitler’s attitude toward the Kremlin at this time revealed a fascinating conflict between his short-term desire for a stable eastern front and an assured supply of raw materials, and his long-term, immutable hatred and mistrust of communism. In private conferences both the Fiihrer and Ribbentrop spoke reverently of the treaties signed with Moscow. But con¬ tacts between the German and Soviet armies along die demarcation line were prohibited by Berlin. In his long October memorandum to his su¬ preme commanders Hitler had warned: ‘Through no agreement can die lasting neutrality of Russia be guaranteed widi certainty.’ This latent mis¬ trust was voiced by Hitler to Keitel on the seventeenth: Poland was to be left in decay except insofar as was needed to work up die roads, die rail systems, and the signals networks to turn die area into an important mili¬ tary springboard. In a long speech behind closed doors to senior Party officials and gauleiters four days later, he promised that once he had forced Britain and France to their knees he would revert his attention to the east. ‘Once he had [dealt with the east] as well,’ recorded one listener, ‘he would set about restoring Germany to how she used to be. . . .’ He wanted Belgium; and as 24 8 hi: Hitler’s War Begins for France, Hitler was now thinking in terms of the ancient frontier of i i, 40 — when the Habsburg empire of Charles V had embraced Switzerland and a multitude of duchies like Burgundy and Lorraine, extending as far to the west as the Meuse River. Reich minister Darre also noted Hitler’s remarks to die gauleiters in his private diary: ‘In history,’ Hitler had declaimed, ‘die Victor is always right! Thus, in diis war, I shall have only die dictates of my own conscience to follow — that is, of my own God-given people. Ice-cool, I shall resort to actions that will probably violate every valid law of nations. What we need,’ he continued, ‘is space. And I hope to acquire die space we need in the East.’ A week after this speech to die gauleiters, he assembled two dozen gen¬ erals and admirals for an investiture at die chancellery. During the banquet that followed he suddenly asked the panzer general, Heinz Guderian, what the army reaction to his Moscow Pact had been. Guderian replied that the army had breadied a sigh of relief. This was evidently not the answer that Hitler wanted. He lapsed into a brooding silence, then changed the sub¬ ject. ‘Ever at jour side’ — the inscription on the dog tag worn by Hitler’s Alsatian, Blondi (author’s collection) Incidents B y November 1939 Adolf Hitler had faced up to t he fact that t he war would go on. When Alfred Rosenberg came to him with nebu¬ lous reports of fresh peace moves within t he British air ministry, tlie Fiihrer belittled the prospects: while he himself would still favour a German-British rapprochement, he said, London was in the grip of a Jew- ish-controlled, lunatic minority. Hitler said he failed to see what the British really wanted. ‘Even if the British won, the real victors would be the United States, Japan, and Russia.’ German propaganda now portrayed the British whom Hitler had unsuccessfully wooed as murderers, liars, and hypocrites. That Britain was continuing the fight was an unpalatable truth Hitler could no longer ignore. Upon his return from Poland, Hitler had equipped the big Congress Room in his official Berlin residence as a war conference room. In its cen¬ tre was a large map table.The OKW (Wehrmacht High Command) generals Keitel and Jodi moved into neighbouring rooms vacated by Hitler’s adju¬ tants. Jodi’s status was still relatively weak. When he ventured an appreciation of the overall strategic situation, Hitler cut him short after the first few sentences. But Hitler’s regard for Jodi grew as his contempt for the army’s representatives became more explicit. He told Jodi in the middle of Octo¬ ber, ‘We are going to win this war even if it contradicts a hundred General Staff doctrines — because we’ve got the better troops, the better equip¬ ment, the stronger nerves, and a united, resolute leadership!’ On October 19 the reluctant War Department had at Hitler’s behest issued its first hasty directive on ‘Yellow.’ It envisaged a massive main attack being carried through Belgium by seventy-five divisions. Army Group C, commanded by General von Leeb, would remain on the defensive with sixteen divisions behind the West Wall. Meanwhile, to justify invading neu- 249 250 hi: Hitler’s War Begins tral Belgium the Intelligence agencies were instructed to compile detailed summaries of instances of Franco-Belgian collusion and to allow their im¬ aginations free rein in doing so. The military prospects of this OKH plan did not encourage Bock and Rundstedt, who expressed their pessimism in memoranda to t lie War De¬ partment in October. Leeb added a similar study, questioning the propriety of violating Belgian and Dutch neutrality. When Hitler voiced his own fear that if‘Yellow’ was not executed forthwith, ‘one fine winter’s night Britain and France may arrive at the Meuse without a shot being fired,’ General von Reichenau stubbornly retorted, ‘That would be preferable in my view.’ When Keitel returned from Zossen, Hitler bitterly accused his OKW chief of ‘conspiring with die generals’ against him. He insisted diat in the future Keitel loyally transmit die Fiihrer’s will to the War Department. The army put die strength of die French army far too high, in Hitler’s view; what perturbed him was die growing British force in France, for he consid¬ ered each British division was wordi three or four French. Other generals pointed out that die winter nights were long and that the combination of long nights and rainy, foggy days would make a war of movement difficult. But Hitler wanted a war in which his armoured and mechanised forma¬ tions could sweep forward, exploiting the ‘inflexibility’ of die French and the ‘inertia’ of the British armies. The more he pored over the maps the less he liked die War Depart¬ ment’s proposed operational plan. In the third week of October he commented acidly to Keitel and Jodi that Haider’s plan, widi its strong right wing along die coast, was no different from die Sclilieffen Plan drafted before Wo rid War i: ‘You cannot get away with an operation like that twice. I have something very different in mind. I will tell you two about it in the next few days.’ This was the alternative possibility — a vast encirclement of die enemy, spearheaded by the armoured units thrusting eventually up to the coast between the Meuse River and Arras and Amiens. Fardier to die north, in Flanders, the tanks would get into terrain difficulties. The idea obsessed him, and at the end of a discussion with the senior ‘Yellow’ generals at die Reich chancellery on October 25 he put it to the Commander in Chief. Bock, who was also present, wrote in his diary that the Fiihrer said in reply to a question from Brauchitsch diat from the very outset he has had the following wish and idea: to deliver the main offensive only Incidents 251 south of tlie Meuse ... so diat by our advancing in a roughly westerly and dien north-westerly direction the enemy forces already in or pour¬ ing into Belgium will be cut off and destroyed. Brauchitsch and Haider are obviously taken completely by surprise, and a ‘lively’ debate rages to and fro over this idea. This was die germ of die campaign plan that was to bring about France’s defeat. It staked everything on one card — namely diat die German armies would succeed in breaking through to the Channel coast. But he asked die army to look into his idea, and from a side remark it was clear that he was not averse to postponing ‘Yellow’ until spring if need be. if hitler invaded Belgium, dien the Albert Canal and the nearby fortress of Eben Emael would present serious obstacles to die advance of Reichenau’s Sixth Army. The canal had been designed from the outset as a moat, an integral part of die Belgian eastern defences, and it was fortified widi bun¬ kers, blockhouses, and walls ramped to steep slopes. Only diree bridges crossed die canal, and these had been built with pillboxes and demolition chambers. The Eben Emael fortress had eighteen heavy guns emplaced in casemates and armoured turrets and manned by a thousand Belgian troops living underground in die tunnels and bunkers. Since die whole system was some twenty miles from the Reich frontier, die bridges could be demol¬ ished long before German army advance parties could reach them; die Germans would then have to cross the wide Meuse by the two available bridges on die Dutch side at Maastricht, and diese had also been prepared for demolition. This complex problem occupied Hitler as much as die rest of‘Yellow’s’ problems put together. In die last week of October he proposed setting up a camouflaged Abwehr battalion under Reichenau’s control. Commanded by a Lieutenant Hokke, diis battalion would be rigged out in uniforms used by the Dutch frontier police in the Maastricht enclave. As Hitler was to say, ‘In wartime, a uni¬ form is always die best camouflage. But one diing is vital — diat the leaders of Hokke’s shock troops be the spitting image of Dutch police officers as far as language, dress, and behaviour go.’ Their job would be to put the deto¬ nating cables and charges out of action. Hitler lamented his army generals’ inability to come up with ideas like diese. ‘These generals are too prim and 2^2 hi: Hitler’s War Begins proper,’ he scoffed after one such conference. ‘They ought to have read more Karl May!’* He had a solution for the fortress of Eben Emael as well: some three hundred airborne troops would land within the fortress walls in the dark¬ ness before dawn; they were to be equipped with deadly fifty-kilo ‘hollow-charge’ explosives capable of knocking out the big guns t lie re. At the beginning of November, the Seventh Air Division ordered the immedi¬ ate activation of an airborne assault unit for the glider operation. The unit was to be ready for action by the twelfth, the provisional D-day. There was much that could, and did, go wrong. An official of the Mun¬ ster Abwehr office was detected purchasing large quantities of Dutch police uniforms in the province of Groningen. For several days Dutch newspapers featured cartoons speculating on the manner in which the Nazi invaders would be dressed when they came. One cartoon showed Goring skulking in t lie uniform of a Dutch streetcar conductor. with the attack ostensibly just one week away, the German army com¬ mand was in a high state of nervousness. At noon on November j, General von Brauchitsch himself secured an audience with t lie Fuhrer, having him¬ self written out in longhand an answer to Hitler’s memorandum of October 9. His main concern was die state of the army in die west. In die Polish campaign the infantry had shown little verve in attack; Brauchitsch even spoke of‘mutinies’ in some units, and he recounted acts of drunken indiscipline at the front and on die railways during the transfer west. On hearing this, Hitler lost his temper and demanded die identities of die units involved. Snatching Brauchitsch’s memorandum from his hands, he thundered at the general: ‘Not one front-line commander mentioned any lack of attacking spirit to me. But now I have to listen to this, after the army has achieved a magnificent victory in Poland!’ He insisted that Brauchitsch furnish him widi the reports he had men¬ tioned. Sweeping out of the room, Hitler slammed the door behind him and left Brauchitsch trembling. To Fraulein Schroeder he dictated an aide- memoire on the ugly scene. He also dictated a document dismissing Brauchitsch, but Keitel talked him out of this.There was no suitable succes¬ sor for the courtly and pliable Commander in Chief of die German army. * German author of popular and ingenious American Indian stories. Incidents 253 Two days later Hitler provisionally postponed ‘Yellow’ by three days, giving the weather as the reason. that evening, November 7, 1939, his special train left for Munich. He had to speak to the ‘Old Guard’ at die Burgerbraukeller. This Burgerbrau assembly and the long march through Munich’s narrow streets were annual opportunities to an assassin. On November 9, 1938, a Swiss waiter named Maurice Bavaud — a nephew of Hjalmar Schacht, as it turned out — had trained a gun on him during this very march through Munich. Hitler learned of die attempt only when Bavaud was stopped by railway police at Augsburg — as he was attempting to leave Germany — for not having a valid ticket. He confessed to having also stalked Hitler with a gun during his daily walks on die Obersalzberg mountain in October. Bavaud was due to come up for secret trial by the People’s Court in December 1, 1939.* Hitler was supposed to remain in Munich until the ninth; however, on die morning of the eighth his residence was telephoned from Berlin diat die army was demanding a fresh decision on the deadline for ‘Yellow’ in view of die weadier, and he sent an adjutant to arrange for his private coaches to be attached to die regular express train that same evening. His adjutant returned with word that it would be cutting things fine if he was to catch diis train after his speech. Hitler, dierefore, brought forward the beginning of his speech by five minutes, to 8 : 1 o p.m. , and ordered Hess to stand in for him during ceremonies scheduled for the next day. At eight o’clock sharp, the Fiihrer entered die cavernous beer hall, die band stopped playing, and Christian Weber (one of die Party’s leading figures in Bavaria) spoke a few brief words of welcome. Hitler stood at a lectern in front of one of die big, wood-panelled pillars. His speech was a tirade against Britain, whose ‘true motives’ for this new crusade he identified as jealousy and hatred of the new Germany, which had achieved in six years more dian Britain had in centuries. Julius Schaub nervously passed him cards on which he had scrawled increasingly urgent admonitions: ‘Ten minutes!’ then‘Five!’ and finally a peremptory ‘Stop!’ ‘Party members, comrades of our National Socialist movement, our German people, and above all our victorious Wehrmacht: Siegheil!’ Hitler concluded, and stepped into the midst of the Party officials who dironged forward. A harassed Julius Schaub managed to shepherd the Fiihrer out of the hall at twelve minutes past nine. * He was beheaded. 2 S 4 hi: Hitler’s War Begins At the Augsburg station, the first stop after Munich, confused word was passed to Hitler’s coach that something had occurred at the Biirgerbrau. At the Nuremberg station, the local police chief, a Dr. Martin, was waiting with more detailed news: just eight minutes after Hitler had left the beer hall a powerful bomb had exploded in the panelled pillar right behind where he had been speaking.There were many dead and injured. Hitler’s Luftwaffe aide, Colonel Nicolaus von Below, later wrote: ‘The news made a vivid impression on Hitler. He fell very silent, and then described it as a miracle that the bomb had missed him.’* For several days afterward his adjutants Bruckner andWunsche brought to the ruffled Fiihrer telegrams of con¬ gratulation from people like Admiral von Horthy, the king and queen of Italy, Benito Mussolini, the still-exiled Kaiser Wilhelm, and Field Marshal von Blomberg. Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands cabled: Herr Reich Chancellor, may I send to you my most heartfelt congratula¬ tions on your escape from t he abominable attempt on your life. Even as Hitler had been speaking at the Biirgerbrau, a man had been apprehended at Konstanz; George Elser, a thirty-six-year-old Swabian watch¬ maker, confessed that he had single-handedly designed, built, and installed a time bomb in the pillar. Under Gestapo interrogation a week later the whole story came out — how he had joined the Red Front ten years before but had lost interest in politics, and how he had been angered by the regimen¬ tation of labour and religion.The year before, he had resolved to dispose of Adolf Hitler and had begun work on a time bomb controlled by two clock mechanisms. After thirty nights of arduous chiselling at the pillar behind the panelling, he had installed die preset clocks, soundproofed in cork to prevent the ticking from being heard. Elser’s simple pride in his craftsman¬ ship was evident from die records of his interrogations. He probably was telling die truth, and diere is no doubt diat one watchmaker acting alone had nearly accomplished what after years of debate, planning, and self-in¬ dulgent conspiracy a battalion of officers and intellectuals were to fail to do five years later. * Below’s account goes on to say that Hitler often excitedly repeated the circumstances that had led to his leaving the Biirgerbrau early (see also Rosenberg’s diary, November 11). ‘He joked that this time the weather expert had saved his life. Otherwise, com¬ mented the Fiihrer, the expert was pushing him into an early grave with his weather forecasts, for the weather outlook was black and likely to continue so.’ Incidents 255 In private Hitler assured his staff t hat one day he would publish the whole story but not yet, as he also wanted to round up those who had pulled the strings. General Rommel wrote on November 9: ‘My only hope is that now in the Fuhrer’s headquarters too the security precautions will be better organised with everything in one person’s hands (mine). Because if any¬ body is going to take this responsibility, he cannot share it with anybody else.’And on the fifteenth, referring to ‘OperationYellow,’ Rommel wrote: ‘The assassination attempt in Munich has only made [the Fuhrer’s] resolu¬ tion stronger. It is a marvel to witness all this.’ on the day after the Munich explosion Hitler again postponed ‘Yellow’; on November 13 he further instructed that the offensive would not begin be¬ fore the twenty-second.There is some reason to believe that Hitler himself did not intend these deadlines to be serious — that they were designed to keep the army at maximum readiness in case die western powers should diemselves suddenly invade die Low Countries. Hitler did not doubt diat die West had economic means enough to pressure the Low Countries into ‘appealing for help’ at a propitious moment. ‘Let us not credit the enemy widi a lack of logic,’ Hitler said later in November. ‘If we respect their [die Low Countries’] neutrality, the western powers will just march in during die spring.’ Hitler was also under pressure from Goring and the Luftwaffe’s Chief of Staff, Hans Jeschonnek, to occupy the whole of Holland: possession of Hol¬ land would be vital for the future air war between Britain and Germany. So die time had come to compromise die Dutch: German ‘army officers’ sup¬ plied by Heydrich appeared on the ninth at Venlo, just inside the Dutch frontier. British agents drove up for a prearranged meeting with diem, there was a rapid exchange of gunfire, and they were dragged across the border into Germany together with the driver and another officer, mortally wounded; diis latter turned out to be a Dutch Intelligence officer accom¬ panying diem. Hitler said this was proof diat die ostensibly neutral Dutch were working hand in glove widi die British. ‘When the time comes I shall use all diis to justify my attack,’ he told his generals. ‘The violation of Bel¬ gian and Dutch neutrality is unimportant. Nobody asks about such tilings after we have won.’ On November 13, General Jodi instructed die War Department that a new Fiihrer Directive was on its way: die army must be prepared to occupy as much of Holland as possible to improve Germany’s air defence position. 2 g 6 hi: Hitler’s War Begins On November 20 Hitler issued a directive which finally ranked die attack on Holland equal to those on Belgium and France: In variation of the earlier directive, all measures planned against Holland are audiorised to commence simultaneously widi die beginning of the general offensive, without special orders to diat effect. . .Where no op¬ position is encountered, the invasion is to be given die character of a peaceful occupation. In the east, meanwhile, the ‘Devil’s work’ was well in hand. Gruesome reports of massacres began to filter up through army channels. Consciences had to be salved, and die reports were dutifully shuttled about between the adjutants. Thus, soon after the Munich plot, Captain Engel received from Brauchitsch’s adjutant a grisly set of eye-witness accounts of executions by the SS at Schwetz. An outspoken medical officer addressed to Hitler in person a report summarising die eye-witness evidence of three of his men: Togedier with about 1 (, o fellow soldiers they witnessed the summary execution of about 20 or 30 Poles at the Jewish cemetery at Schwetz at about 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, October 8. The execution was carried out by a detachment consisting of an SS man, two men in old blue police uni¬ forms, and a man in plain clodies. An SS major was in command. Among those executed were also 3 or 6 children aged from two to eight years old. Whether Engel showed diis document and its attached eye-witness ac¬ counts to Hitler is uncertain. He returned it to Brauchitsch’s adjutant almost immediately widi a note: ‘The appropriate action to be taken at diis end will be discussed orally.’ in the Reich chancellery, die large table in die old Cabinet Room was now dominated by a relief map of the Ardennes — the mountainous, difficult region of Belgium and Luxembourg diat was twice to be die scene of Hit¬ ler’s unorthodox military strategy. Many an hour he stood alone in the evenings, tracing die narrow mountain roads and asking himself whether his tanks and mechanised divisions would be able to get through them. By now he had been provided with the original construction plans of the bridges across die Albert Canal; previously he had only aerial photographs and picture postcards of diese important targets. From odier sources he Incidents 257 had similar details on the fortress at Eben Emael. A scale model of the fortress had been built, and intensive training of the glider crews had begun under top security conditions. The bridges presented the most intractable problem, die more so since the Dutch had evidently been warned by anti- Nazi agents in Berlin; on November 1 2 extensive security precautions had suddenly been introduced at the Maastricht bridges.* Elitler discussed the operations with Canaris and Colonel Erwin Lahousen on November 16; he did not believe they would capture die bridges over the Albert Canal by surprise alone, and he began casting around for other means of preventing die bridges’ destruction. He ordered a full-scale secret conference on die bridges plan on November 20. General von Reichenau made it clear diat since die invasion of Holland had already been compromised once, he had no faith in the Abwehr’s ‘Tro¬ jan horse’ plan. Since the Dutch audiorities were now expecting police uniforms to be used, as was shown by die fact that they had issued special armbands to dieir police, there was little prospect of the Abwehr getting away widi it. Hitler replied, ‘Then die entire operation as at present planned is pointless!’ Canaris did what he could to salvage the plan. Hitler was un¬ convinced: ‘None of die plans is bound to succeed.’ But after all the odier possibilities had been scrutinised — including attacking the bridges with light bombs to destroy the demolition cables, and rushing them with tanks and 88-millimetre gunsf — he had to fall back on theTrojan horse. ‘There must be some means of getting diese bridges into our hands,’ he complained. ‘We have managed to solve even bigger problems before.’ When die conference ended four hours later, Hitler had provisionally adopted die sequence proposed by Goring: at X-hour proper, fifteen min¬ utes before dawn, die gliders would land silently on the fortress at Eben Emael and die bridge at Canne; five minutes later dive-bombers would attack the odier Albert Canal bridges to disrupt die demolition charges; die bombers would be followed five minutes later by the arrival of more glider-borne troops just east of die bridges themselves. At the same time * Colonel Hans Oster, Canaris’s Chief of Staff in the Abwehr, had himself warned the Belgian and Dutch legations that Hitler planned to attack on November i 2.The fake- uniforms scheme was not mentioned. Oster had been cashiered from the Reichswehr over a morals scandal in 1934 and immediately conscripted into the Abwehr by Canaris. Both men were hanged as traitors in April 194^. f ‘If it can’t be accomplished by trickery,’ Hitler said, ‘then brute force must do.’ 25 $ hi: Hitler’s War Begins the Abwehr’s disguised advanced party would seize the Maastricht bridges; for this they would have to cross the frontier in Dutch uniforms forty-five minutes before X-hour. The weather was still against ‘Yellow.’ Every morning, Berlin was in the grip of icy frost and fog, which lifted in the afternoons to let a weak sun filter through. On November 21 the Fiihrer issued orders for his leading generals and admirals to hear an exposure of his views two days later. To the large audi¬ ence tint packed the Great Hall of the chancellery, Hitler depicted the coming battle as the operation that would finally bring down the curtain on the world war that Germany had been fighting ever since 1914. He recited the many occasions when, aided only by Providence, he had ignored the grim prophecies of others to exploit the brief opportunities tint opened to him. He, Adolf Hitler, had now provided the generals with a strategic situ¬ ation unparalleled since 1871. ‘For the first time in history we have only to fight on one front. The other is at present open.’ His own indispensability had been forcefully impressed on him by die recent assassination attempt; that there would be other attempts was probable. Thus diere was no time to be lost. The defensive strategy his cowardly army generals were calling for was short-sighted; Moltke had clearly shown diat only through offensives could wars be decided. Germany’s present enemies were weak and unready: here, he illustrated his point by listing in turn the number of French tanks and guns, and British ships. His speech bristled with concealed barbs against the army generals. (Rommel wrote the next day: ‘. . . But that seems quite necessary, too, because die more I speak with my comrades die fewer I find with their heart and conviction in what diey are doing. It is all very depressing.’) While Hitler praised the ‘aggressive spirit’ of the navy and Fuftwaffe, he sneered: ‘If our commanders in chief are going to have nervous breakdowns as in 1914, what can we ask of our simple riflemen?’ He had been ‘deeply wounded’ by suggestions that the officers had had to precede dieir men into battle, with consequently disproportionately high officer losses: ‘That is what the officers are there for.’ He recalled how in 1914 after months of training the infantry attack on Fiege had broken up in panic and disaster. ‘I will not hear of complaints that the army is not in shape. . . Give die Ger¬ man soldier proper leadership and I can do anything with him.’ It was not as though Germany had a real choice between armistice and war. ‘People will accuse me: war and yet more war! But I regard fighting as Incidents 259 the fate of all the species. Nobody can opt out of the struggle, unless he wants to succumb.’ A few minutes later he said, ‘Victory or defeat! And it is not a matter of the future of National Socialist Germany, but of who will dominate Europe in years to come. For this it is worth making a supreme effort.’ He believed the present favourable strategic situation would last per¬ haps six more months, but then the British troops, ‘a tenacious enemy,’ would vastly strengthen their foothold in France, and ‘Yellow’ would be a different proposition altogether. The speech lasted two hours. General von Brauchitsch reappeared in die evening and stiffly informed the Fiihrer diat if he had no confidence in him he ought to replace him. Hitler retorted diat die general must do his duty like every odier soldier; he was not oblivious to ‘die spirit of Zossen’ prevailing in the army, and he would stamp it out. Zossen was the head¬ quarters of the General Staff and seat of die conservative and conspiratorial elements of the German army. Himmler confers with Reinhard Heydrich and Gestapo chief Heinrich Muller (right) on the hunt for the Biirgerbrau assassin, November 1939 (keystone) Hitler with his henchmen Martin Bormann (left) and Julius Schaub (WALTHER HEWEL) Clearing the Decks H itler knew that his pact with Stalin was misunderstood. In his speech to die generals he had laid bare his own suspicions. ‘Rus¬ sia is at present harmless,’ he assured diem. Pacts were respected only until they no longer served a purpose. ‘Russia,’ he added, ‘will abide by the pact only as long as she considers it to her advantage.’ Stalin had far- reaching goals, and among them were die strengthening of Russia’s position in the Baltic — which Germany could only oppose once she was unencum¬ bered in the west — the expansion of Russian influence in die Balkans, and a drive toward the Persian Gulf. It was the aim of German foreign policy diat Russia should be deflected toward die Persian Gulf, as this would bring her into conflict with Britain; but she must be kept out of the Balkans. Hitler hoped diat die present situation between Germany and Russia would prevail for two or three more years, but if Stalin were to die, diere might be a rapid and ugly volte-face in die Kremlin. There was clear evidence of a Russian military build-up. Blaskowitz re¬ ported from Poland that four military airfields were being built, and two to diree hundred Russian bombers had been counted, around Bialystok. In addition, wrote Blaskowitz, Russian propaganda was making plain diat diis was nothing less than a war against fascism: ‘Germany is said [in die USSR] to be planning an attack on Russia as soon as she is victorious in die west.Therefore Russia must be on guard and exploit Germany’s weak¬ ness at die right moment.’ The general’s command had clearly identified Russian espionage and Communist subversive activity behind German lines in Poland. In short, Hitler must conclude diat war with Russia was inevitable — and diat victory would go to die side which was ready first. 261 262 hi: Hitler’s War Begins To strengthen her position in the Baltic, Russia now made demands of Finland. When Finland snubbed the Russians, the Red Army attacked on the last day of November 1939. Hitler had abandoned Finland to Soviet influence in the secret codicil to die August pact with Stalin, and he in¬ structed his foreign missions to adhere to an anti-Finnish line, for the integrity of his brittle pact with Stalin was to be his most powerful weapon in the attack on France.The Fiihrer even agreed to a Russian request for the transfer of fuel and provisions from German steamships to Soviet subma¬ rines blockading Finland. Under the economic treaty signed between the two powers on August 19, Russia was to supply Germany widi raw materials; it was also to act as a safe channel to Germany for goods exported by Japan, Manchuria, Af¬ ghanistan, Iran, and Romania but subject to British naval blockade. Hitler also needed die oil produced in Russia and Soviet-occupied Poland, and he knew that Stalin could exert pressure to control the supply of Romanian oil to Germany. It thus behoved him to behave like a proverbial friend in need; and throughout the winter he was a friend indeed as he instructed his mili¬ tary and economic authorities to do their utmost to meet the Russian demands. Russia’s list of requirements was not easy to fulfil. The Russians wanted the half-built cruiser Liitzow and the aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin; diey also wanted the blueprints of these and even more up-to-date German warships including the Bismarck and the Tirpitz. They asked for sets of the heaviest ship’s armament, and for die 37,000 blueprints prepared for the new Krupp 406-millimetre triple-turret guns, the fire-control sets, and the ammuni¬ tion that went with them. The Soviet navy wanted samples of accumulators and periscopes for submarines, they wanted a supply of top-grade German armour-plate for a cruiser to be built in Russia, and diey wanted hvdro- acoustical gear, torpedoes, and mines as well. Hitler told Raeder that his only anxiety in handing over the blueprints of die battleship Bismarck to the Russians was diat diese revealed diat the vessel had been planned on a far larger scale than was permitted by die international agreements binding on Germany at the time. Raeder assured him it would take die Russians six years to copy the Bismarck; however, he conceded diat it would be unfortu¬ nate if the blueprints fell into British hands. hitler had assigned to his navy a largely passive role in the war. He ini¬ tially forbade his submarines to attack even Anglo-French naval forces. Clearing the Decks 263 During the first year of the war, the German navy had on average only a dozen submarines with which to blockade the British Isles. Since the Luftwaffe was given priority in raw materials, die navy’s steadily reduced steel allocation further limited its expansion. In one respect, however, Raeder had an advantage over Brauchitsch and Goring: to Hitler the sea was an unwholesome element, an area of uncertainty he did not understand, and he was relieved to trust Grand Admiral Raeder to act as he saw fit. Thus, German destroyers executed bold sorties into the very jaws of the enemy, laying magnetic minefields in t lie estuaries of the principal British rivers. A U-boat sank die aircraft carrier Courageous; another U-boat penetrated Scapa Flow and torpedoed the battleship Royal Oak. In the South Atlantic die Graf Spee had now begun raiding enemy con¬ voys, but the Luftwaffe — and Goring particularly — wanted to bring die war closer to Britain’s shores: when on November 28, in reprisal for die German mining of the coastal waters, Britain issued an Order-in-Council blockading Germany’s export shipments, Goring and Milch hurried to Hitler widi proposals for a crushing Luftwaffe offensive against British shipyards, docks, and ports. Hitler turned down the Luftwaffe’s idea, but he did issue a new directive specifying that the best way to defeat Britain would be to paralyse her trade. The German navy and the Luftwaffe were to turn to this task as soon as ‘Yellow’ had been successfully completed. Since Hitler would dien control die Channel coast, the Luftwaffe really could attack on die lines Goring had proposed. in October 1939, Raeder had left Hitler in no doubt as to Germany’s grim strategic position should the British occupy Norway: in winter all Germa¬ ny’s iron-ore requirements passed through the ice-free port at Narvik; German merchant ships and warships would no longer be able to traverse die neutral Norwegian waters; die British air force could dominate north¬ ern Germany and the Royal Navy would command die Baltic. Though he had realistically advised Hitler that a Norwegian campaign might end in a massacre of die German fleet, Raeder saw no alternative to such a cam¬ paign if die strategic dangers inherent in a British occupation of Norway were to be obviated. Raeder’s view took Hitler by surprise. Neither his political nor his naval advisers gave him respite once die Russo-Finnish war broke out. At noon on December 11, Alfred Rosenberg briefed Hitler on a similar idea diat had originated with one of his Norwegian contacts, MajorVidkun Quisling. 264 hi: Hitler’s War Begins Rosenberg told Hitler that Quisling’s idea was that: Germany should invade Norway at die request of a government he would himself set up. Ribbentrop andWeizsacker warned Hitler against even agreeing to see this Norwegian. Hitler told Rosenberg he was willing to meet Quisling. ‘In this conversa¬ tion,’ Rosenberg’s office recorded, ‘the Fiihrer repeatedly emphasised diat what he most preferred politically would be for Norway and, for diat mat¬ ter, all Scandinavia to remain absolutely neutral. He had no intention of enlarging the theatres of war by dragging still more countries into die conflict. If however the other side was planning such an enlargement of the war . . . dien he must obviously feel compelled to take steps against the move. In an effort to offset die increasing enemy propaganda activity, the Fiihrer dien promised Quisling financial aid for his Pan-Germanic move¬ ment.’ Quisling said he had two hundred thousand followers, many in key positions in Norway. Hitler asked the OKW to draft two alternative operations, one follow¬ ing Quisling’s suggestions, die other projecting an occupation of Norway by force. Hitler initiated inquiries into Quisling’s background and decided not to rely on him for any assistance beyond subversive operations: a number of hand-picked Norwegians would undergo secret guerrilla-warfare train¬ ing in Germany; when Norway was invaded, diey were to seize key buildings in Oslo and elsewhere, and thus present die king with a fait accompli. No date for the operation was set. the general Staff continued dieir open hostility to Hitler. After his un¬ equivocal speech on November 2 3, General Guderian privately taxed Hitler widi his astonishing attitude toward the leaders of an army diat had just won such a victory for him in Poland. Hitler retorted that it was the army’s Commander in Chief himself who displeased him, adding diat there was unfortunately no suitable replacement. Brauchitsch’s chief of Intelligence noted: ‘There is as little contact be¬ tween Br. and the Fiihrer as ever. A changeover is planned.’ Hitler suspected the hand of the General Staff against him everywhere. When die Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung published a sensational and sloppy article on the ‘ Great Headquarters,’ Hitler was furious at an implicit suggestion diat history was being made by die General Staff and not himself. The Fiihrer was however hard to please, for when at Christmas die Essener National-Zeitung ventured a seasonal comparison between Adolf Hitler and the Messiah, Goebbels confidentially informed the entire German press Clearing the Decks 265 that the Fuhrer would prefer them to abstain from such comparisons in the future. in moments of military crisis, Hitler was to display an indecisiveness and lack of precision that was otherwise wholly out of character. On December 13 the pocket battleship, Graf Spee, fell foul of three Brit¬ ish cruisers off the coast of neutral Uruguay. It was not until the small hours of the fourteenth that t lie first details reached die Berlin admiralty. ‘I have taken fifteen hits, food stores and galleys destroyed, I am making for Mon¬ tevideo.’To those familiar with die political stance of Uruguay it was clear die battleship’s fighting days were probably over. It would take many days for the damage to be repaired. The government at Montevideo granted only diree days. Meanwhile British naval forces began to mass in uncertain strengdi at die mouth of die Plate River. On die sixteenth, Raeder arrived at the chancellery with die latest cable from the battleship. Captain Hans Langsdorff had signalled: 1. Military situation off Montevideo: apart from cruisers and destroyers [there are also] Ark Royal and Renown. Tightly blocked at night. No pros¬ pect of breakout into open sea or reaching home. 2. Propose emerging as far as neutral waters limit. Should it be possible to fight through to Buenos Aires using remaining ammunition, diis will be attempted. 3. In event diat breakout would result in certain destruction of Spee with no chance of damaging enemy, I request decision whether to scuttle despite inadequate depdi of water? Estuary of die Plate? Or intern¬ ment? Hitler met Admiral Raeder at the door of his study with a demand diat Graf Spee must attempt to break dirough to die open sea; if she must go down, at least she could take some of die enemy widi her. He put a hand on die admiral’s shoulder. ‘Believe me, the fate of this ship and her crew is as painful to me as to you. But diis is war, and when the need is there, one must know how to be harsh.’ But he followed diis firm speech with an inexplicable act. Raeder showed him die admiralty’s draft reply to Captain Langsdorff: Gref Spee was to stay at Montevideo as long as the audiorities would allow; a ‘breakout’ to Buenos Aires would be ‘approved.’ ‘If scut¬ tling, thoroughly destroy everydiing first.’ This reply was wholly out of 2 66 hi: Hitler’s War Begins keeping with Hitler’s heroic demand; but he said nothing. Hitler eagerly awaited the news of Graf Spee’s last battle. During tlie seventeenth, the stunning news arrived that die battleship had sailed out of Montevideo, discharged her crew onto a waiting steamer, and then gently settled down onto die shallow bed of the river’s estuary. In a savage mood, diat evening Hitler pondered die damage Langsdorff had done to Germany’s fighting image. At diree in die morning he ordered the official announcement altered to read: ‘Under these circumstances the Fiihrer ordered Captain Langsdorff to destroy the ship by blowing her up.’ Langsdorff had been an officer on Jodi’s staff; he had been given die Graf Spee, it transpired, as a cure for his chairbound attitudes. But the cure had apparently not worked. He shot himself on reaching Buenos Aires. His sup¬ ply ship Altmark, laden with prisoners plucked from the decks of the battleship’s victims, was ordered to return home to Germany. Hitler left Berlin for a brief respite at die Berghof. Passing through Mu¬ nich, he paid his annual Christmas visit to his friends and patrons, die Bruckmanns. He chatted about his plans to conquer Britain by using mag¬ netic mines and odier fabulous weaponry. In his entry in die Bruckmanns’ guest book he wrote: ‘In the year of die fight for die creation of the great German-Teutonic Reich! ’ For diree days he toured die western front, join¬ ing die Christmas celebrations of Luftwaffe squadrons, anti-aircraft batteries, infantry, and SS regiments. On his return to Berlin, Hitler again postponed ‘Yellow,’ this time to mid-January; failing a period of cold, clear wintry weadier then, die Fiihrer resolved, he would call off‘Yellow’ until die spring. He retreated to the Berghof to await the New Year. The photographs in Eva Braun’s albums show that even when the Fiihrer sat faintly smiling at the delight of the offspring of Speer, Goebbels, and Martin Bormann at a Berghof children’s party, he still wore the field-grey army tunic, with its solitary Iron Cross, diat he had emotionally donned on die day his troops attacked Poland. In one photograph, however, Hitler is shown in sombre evening dress, spooning molten lead into a bowl of water — a New Year’s Eve tradition. Some believe diat a man’s future can be predicted from the contorted shapes die solidifying metal assumes. Hitler’s face betrayed a cer¬ tain lack of confidence in diis procedure. At die Berghof he received a long, angry, and indeed frightened letter from Benito Mussolini. It broke months of silence, and marked the lowest point in Axis relations, which had been soured by Hitler’s continued flirting widi Moscow. As recently as December 21, Hitler had on the eve of Stalin’s Clearing the Decks 267 sixtieth birthday cabled him greetings coupled with his best wishes for die Soviet peoples; Stalin had cordially replied. In Mussolini’s eyes Hitler was a traitor to t he Fascist revolution; he had sacrificed the principles of that revolu¬ tion to die tactical requirements of one given moment: You cannot abandon die antisemitic and anti-Bolshevist banners which you have down for twenty years [Mussolini admonished him] and for which so many of your comrades died. . .The solution for your Lebensraum is in Russia and nowhere else. In this letter — which Hitler deliberately left unanswered for two more months — Mussolini also proposed that Hitler should take steps to restore some kind of Polish state. Hitler’s policy in Poland had undergone a radical change in the autumn of 1939. Early in October he had indicated to Governor General Frank diat die Generalgouvernement was to be a kind of Polish reservation, but in November he bluntly told Frank: ‘We are going to keep the General¬ gouvernement. We will never give it back.’ Hitler saw no great urgency about the matter and had himself told Himmler in die autumn of 1939: ‘I don’t want these eastern gauleiters in a frantic race to be die first to report to me after two or three years, “Mein Fiihrer, my gau is fully Germanised.” I want die population to be racially flawless, and I’ll be quite satisfied if a gauleiter can report that in ten years.’ Himmler, however, wanted greater urgency. Acting on a cruel directive which he had issued at the end of October, die two gauleiters concerned — Forster and Greiser — and SS generals Kruger and Odilo Globocnik, police commanders based in Krakow and Lublin, respectively, began die ruthless midwinter expulsion from their domains of die 3 /, o ,000 Jews and die prin¬ cipal anti-German and intellectual elements; they used Frank’s General¬ gouvernement as a dumping ground. In some respects Hitler did act as a brake. From Himmler’s scrawled notes we know diat he was obliged to report to Hitler in person on die ‘shooting of 380 Jews at Ostro’ on November 19; and diat when at the end of November die archbishop and suffragan bishop of Lublin were condemned to deadi along widi diirteen priests for die possession of firearms and sub¬ versive literature, Hitler ordered dieir reprieve and deportation to Germany instead. Events in Poland still disturbed die army. A ripple of protest dis¬ turbed die German armies poised in the west to unleash ‘Yellow.’ Hitler 268 hi: Hitler’s War Begins learned that on January 2 2 Major General Friedrich Mieth, Chief of Staff of the First Army, had told his assembled officers about atrocities in Poland: ‘The SS has carried out mass executions without proper trials. There have been disturbances.’ Mieth was dismissed. Soon after, die army’s Commander in Chief East, General Johannes Blaskowitz, sent to Berlin a formal list of specific SS atrocities in Poland — including murder and looting: ‘The view that t lie Polish people can be intimidated and kept down by terrorism will definitely be proven wrong,’ he warned, and added: ‘ They are far too resil¬ ient a people for that.’ Blaskowitz added that the atrocities would provide the enemy with powerful ammunition diroughout t lie world. Hitler does appear to have issued orders to Hans Frank for regular pro¬ phylactic massacres of the Polish intelligentsia. How else can Frank’s confidential remarks at the end of May 1940 to his police authorities in Poland be interpreted? ‘The Fiihrer has said to me, “The problem of dealing with and safeguarding German interests in the Generalgouvernement is a matter for the men in charge of the Generalgouvernement and for them alone.” And he used these words: “The ruling class that we have already unearthed in Poland is to be exterminated. We must keep close watch on whatever grows up in its place, and dispose of that too after a suitable time has elapsed.’” And Frank hastened to recommend to his minions: ‘There’s no need for us to cart off all these elements to concentration camps in the Reich first.That’ll just result in a lot of bother and unnecessary correspond¬ ence with next-of-kin. No — we’ll liquidate this business here, on the spot.’ The directive issued by the Eighteenth Army, on its transfer to Poland in August 1940, is an eloquent statement of die army’s surrender to die Party: ‘For centuries an ethnological struggle has raged along our eastern fron¬ tier. To put an end to it once and for all has called for a short, sharp solution. Specific Party and government agencies have been put in charge of waging this ethnological war in the east. This is why our soldiers must keep their noses out of what these units are doing.’ In die east, Hitler too turned a blind eye on the excesses. An army major procured die arrest of eight Polish whores and put four of them clumsily to death in prison diat evening. Hitler commuted die major’s death sentence to a prison term. In another case, one of die innumerable young SA officers appointed magistrate in Poland shot fifty-five Polish prisoners in a drunken orgy. Here too the local gauleiter, Greiser, begged the ministry of justice not to blight the young officer’s promising career, and Hitler granted him a reprieve. Clearing the Decks 269 Within Germany itself, Himmler’s police agencies were now acting as a law unto themselves. At the end of September 1939, the minister of justice submitted to Hitler a hie on summary executions of Germans; Hitler re¬ plied that he had not given Himmler any general instruction but that he had ordered certain executions himself. ‘This is why he has now ordered the Teltow bank robbers to be put before a bring squad,’ his staff explained. But die hies also show that Hitler drew much of his information on civilian crime from casual references in the newspapers. A thoughtless editor had only to headline a story ‘man swindled soldiers’ wives’ for die Fiihrer to send Schaub scurrying to a telephone with instructions diat the Fiihrer had ordered the man shot. hitler’s attitude to the Party’s own courts was even more ambivalent, as his reaction to die trial of Julius Streicher showed. Streicher’s enemies were legion, but Hitler still saw in him an idealist and true revolutionary. Four days after Hitler’s secret speech to the gauleiters in October, Streicher had revealed Hitler’s military plans to local Party members in a speech, and he had repeated diis imprudent step in a larger assembly a few days later. Speak¬ ing of Hitler’s decision to invade neutral Belgium, Streicher had explained, ‘We need die coast for our attack on Britain.’ His recent speeches had in¬ cluded blasphemous attacks on die clergy, libellous references to die generals of die Great War, and an address to a young female audience in November in which he exhorted diem to find nothing improper in the desire to se¬ duce married men. ‘Any woman or lady who gets worked up about this is in my eyes just a pig.’ The Party’s Supreme Court — six gauleiters and three Party judges — met in February 1940, and on the sixteendi they ruled against Streicher. Hitler suspended him from office and forbade him to make furdier public speeches; but he was not ejected from die Party, as Hess had demanded, and he was allowed to continue publishing his newspapers — including die despicable Sturmer. Characteristically, Hitler was unhappy widi even diis mild verdict; he told other Party leaders like Ley diat he felt an injustice had been done to Streicher: the legalists, he said, had paid too little atten¬ tion to Streicher’s Party record. Heinrich Knirr’s heroic painting ojHitler, 1938 (author’s collection) ‘We Must Destroy Them Too!’ A n icy winter descended on Germany. The canals froze, die rail¬ ways were clogged with military movements, population and industry alike were starved for coal and die most elementary daily requisites. Day and night Hitler talked and dreamed of ‘Yellow.’ By Christmas 193 9 he had already decided where die big hole was to be punched through the French defences: at Sedan; and it was indeed at Sedan diat die foundations of the Nazi triumph over France were laid. It was now January 1940, and the Fiihrer was back at his chancellery in Berlin.The frightened letter Mussolini had written proved how little Hitler could rely on Italy. It was indeed a curious alliance, for the Forschungsamt now intercepted a coded telegram in which die Belgian ambassador in Rome reported to his foreign ministry in Brussels diat Count Ciano had betrayed to him Germany’s firm intention of attacking Belgium and had revealed die date currently set for diat adventure. ‘The Italians are strange people,’ wrote Weizsacker. ‘Loyal glances toward us, so as to share in any success we may achieve. And gifts and minor acts of treachery for the West, so as to keep in dieir good books too.’ Not surprisingly, Belgium had shifted her main defensive effort to her frontier widi Germany. A secret report submitted by German army Intelli¬ gence in January 1940 revealed that since mid-October, over two-thirds of all Belgium’s forces were massed in die east. ‘Widi the exception of one division, every single mechanised infantry, armoured, and cavalry division is standing on die Belgian frontier.’ The Belgian gendarmerie had received instructions to speed any French invasion of the country; and while sign¬ posts in western Belgium had been replenished and improved to diat end, diose in die east had been wholly removed to hamper a German invasion. Mayors of Ardennes villages were ordered to prepare billets for French 271 2 J 2 hi: Hitler’s War Begins troops. Mufti-dressed French soldiers were observed on die Belgian trans¬ port systems. The fortifications at Liege and on the Albert Canal were far beyond the Belgian military capacity to defend — they had clearly been de¬ signed to accommodate French and British troops as well. British bombers regularly trampled through Belgian air space. In short, Hitler saw no rea¬ son to have compunctions about attacking this ‘little neutral.’ He still frowned on the notion t hat he had unleashed a World War. For more general consumption, he decided diat the best overall title was the ‘Great German War of Liberation.’ On January i o he discussed ‘Operation Yellow’ with his Commanders in Chief. The weather report was excellent: he decided ‘Yellow’ would begin on the seventeenth. As January i o ended, Germany was closer to launching ‘Yellow’ than ever before. Two million men waited, confronting the armies of France, Belgium, and Holland. Shortly before noon the next day, however, infuriating news reached t he chancellery. A Luftwaffe major had strayed in a light aircraft across the Bel¬ gian frontier. Hitler stormed into Jodi’s room and demanded a complete list of all the documents the major had been carrying. ‘It is things like this that can lose us the war!’ he exclaimed — an outburst of startling frankness when spoken by the Fiihrer. Even now Hitler did not waver on his decision to launch ‘Yellow’ on the seventeenth; at 3:1^ p.m. he confirmed this. One Belgian newspaper reported that die German major had hurled die docu¬ ments into a stove in the room where he was being interrogated; but a Belgian officer had thrust his hand into die stove and retrieved the smoul¬ dering fragments. On January 12, the attache in Brussels cabled that the major and his pilot had assured him they had burned all the papers apart from an unimportant residue, and he repeated this in person to Hitler at die chancellery at eleven a.m. on die diirteendi.The incident was not enough to deter Hitler from launching ‘Yellow.’ But shortly afterward a bad weather report unsettled him, and at about one o’clock diat afternoon he ordered all movements stopped. ‘Yellow’ was provisionally postponed by three days. The weather picture worsened. Hitler told his staff, ‘If we cannot count on at least eight days of fine and clear weather, then we will call it off until the spring.’ And on die afternoon of die sixteenth he directed that die whole offensive was to be dismantled until then; Hitler left Goring in no uncer¬ tainty about his anger at die Luftwaffe’s loose security regulations, for two more incidents had occurred. Goring reacted characteristically: he dismissed both General Helmuth Felmy, the major’s superior, and Felmy’s Chief of Staff; and he then calmly informed Hitler diat he had consulted a clairvoy- ‘We Must Destroy Them Too!’ 273 ant, who had also reassured him that the most important papers had been destroyed.The Intelligence reports from Belgium gave this the lie.The Bel¬ gian General Staff ordered military units in southern Belgium to offer no resistance whatsoever to any French and British troops that might march in.Thanks to tlie Forschungsamt, Flitler had by now also read the telegram sent by the Belgian military attache in Berlin, Colonel Goethals, on the evening of January 13, warning that the German invasion was due next day, according to what an ‘informateur sincere’ had told him. (Goethals’s source was his Dutch colleague, Major G. J. Sas; Sas’s source was the German traitor Colonel Flans Oster.) By die morning of the seventeenth, it was clear from the official demarches of the Belgian government that die docu¬ ments had in fact betrayed most of‘Yellow’ in its original form. In a sense Hitler must have been relieved diat diis betise had forced a major decision on him. Besides, the enemy would now surely concentrate his best forces in die north. The prospects of an encirclement operation beginning at Sedan and ending at the Channel coast were much enhanced. Everything depended on keeping diis, his real intent, concealed from die enemy, and in a series of conferences at die end of January 1940 Hitler impressed this on his army commanders. As he said on the twentieth, he was convinced that Germany would win die war, ‘But we are bound to lose it if we cannot learn how to keep our mouths shut.’When ‘Yellow’ began, a foreign ministry official would be sent secretly to The Hague to invite die Dutch monarchy to accept theWehrmacht’s ‘armed defence of Dutch neu¬ trality.’* Meanwhile, a constant state of alert was to be maintained in die west on die assumption diat ‘Yellow’ might start at any moment. at the end of January 1940, die Fiilirer had sent his chief military adjutant on a flying tour of the western front. On his return to Berlin on February 1, Colonel Schmundt returned, bursting to report what he had found at Gen¬ eral von Rundstedt’s army group headquarters at Koblenz. Rundstedt’s former Chief of Staff, General Erich von Manstein, was as adamantly op¬ posed to die current War Department (OKH) offensive plan in the west as was Hitler; moreover, he was advocating a radical alternative almost identi- * Major Werner Kiewitz, who had carried Hitler’s first surrender ultimatum to Warsaw on September 16 (see page 232), was selected for this mission. In the event, the Dutch refused to issue an entry visa to him; a desperate plan to parachute him into The Hague was abandoned, as by that time the queen had escaped to England. 2 74 hi: Hitler’s War Begins cal to what Hitler had been debating with his closest staff ever since Octo¬ ber. This convinced Hitler of its soundness; and that the OKH bureaucrats had removed Manstein from his post with Rundstedt and given him com¬ mand of a corps in the rear impressed him even more. On February 13, Hitler told Jodi of his decision to commit the mass of his armour to the breakthrough at Sedan, where the enemy would now least expect it. Jodi urged caution: The Gods ofWar might yet catch them napping t lie re, for the French might launch a powerful flank attack. But now Hitler was deaf to criticism. On the seventeenth he buttonholed Manstein in person when the general attended a chancellery dinner party for die new corps commanders. Manstein assured him that die new plan was the only means by which to obtain a total victory on land. The next day Hitler sent for General von Brauchitsch and his Chief of Staff and dictated the new operational plan to diem. On February 24, die War Department issued the new directive for ‘Yellow.’The subsequent out¬ standing success of the new strategy convinced Hitler of his own military genius. Hencefordi he readily mistook his astounding intuitive grasp for the sound, logical planning ability of a real warlord. His reluctance to heed his professional advisers was ever after magnified. To undermine die French soldiers’ morale Hitler ordered German propa¬ ganda to hint diat the real quarrel was with the British. But Hitler’s true attitude toward Britain was a maudlin, unrequited affection that caused him to pull his punches diroughout 1940. As Haider explained Hitler’s pro¬ gramme to the chief of army Intelligence late in January: ‘The Fiihrer wants to . . . defeat France, dien a grand gesture to Britain. He recognises the need for die empire.’ During lunch at the chancellery in these weeks of early 1940, Rudolf Hess once inquired, ‘Mein Fiihrer, are your views about the British still the same?’ Hitler gloomily sighed, ‘If only the British knew how little I ask of them! ’ How he liked to leaf through the Society pages of The Tatler, studying the British aristocracy in their natural habitat! Once he was overheard to say, ‘Those are valuable specimens — those are die ones I am going to make peace with.’ The chancellery dinner attended by Manstein and the odier corps commanders fell on the day after die Altmark incident, in which die Royal Navy had violated Norwegian neutral waters under circumstances to be explained below. Hitler expounded loudly on die inherent properness of such actions — whatever the international lawyers might subsequently proclaim. History, he once more explained, judged only between success ‘We Must Destroy Them Too!’ 275 and failure; that was all t hat really counted — nobody asked the victor whether he was in the right or wrong. Since the action off the Uruguayan coast, the supply ship Altmark had lain low, her holds packed with three hundred British seamen captured from Graf Spee’s victims. Until mid-February 1940, the worried German admi¬ ralty had heard no sound from her, but on tlie fourteenth she signalled that she was about to enter nor them Norwegian waters. Under t lie Hague Rules she was entitled to passage through them, for she was not a man-of-war but a naval auxiliary flying the flag of the German merchant marine.The Nor¬ wegian picket boats interrogated her and undertook to escort her, but in Berlin late on the sixteenth die admiralty began intercepting British naval signals which left no doubt but that an attempt was afoot to capture die Altmark even if it meant violating Norwegian neutral waters. By six a.m. next morning a radio signal of the British commander to die admiralty in London had been decoded in Berlin: the British destroyer Cos¬ sack had been alongside die Altmark, and he and his group were returning to Rosydi. At midday a full report was in Hitler’s hands, telephoned through by die legation in Oslo. Seeing the British force — a cruiser and six destroy¬ ers — closing in, the Altmark’s captain had sought refuge in Jossing Fjord. Two Norwegian vessels had held the British ships at bay until dusk, when die Cossack had forced her way past diem and ordered die German ship to heave to. The Altmark’s report described how a boarding party had seized die ship’s bridge ‘and began bring blindly like maniacs into the German crew, who of course did not have a gun between them.’ The three hundred prisoners were liberated, die ship and its crew were looted. London had signalled the captain that the destroyers were to open bre on the Norwegian patrol boats if die latter resisted the British approach. The German naval staff war diary concluded: ‘From the orders of die admi¬ ralty . . . it is clear beyond peradventure diat die operation against die supply vessel Altmark was . . . planned with die deliberate object of capturing die Altmark by whatever means available, or of releasing die prisoners, if neces¬ sary by violating Norway’s territorial waters.’ Hitler thoughtfully ordered diat, in die ensuing operation to recover the damaged Altmark, Norway’s neutrality was to be respected to the utmost. More than the strategic need to occupy die Norwegian coast before die Allies could do so, diere began to weigh widi Hitler the belated considera¬ tion that since the Scandinavian peoples were also of Germanic stock diey naturally belonged widiin the German fold. It is important to recall that in 2j6 hi: Hitler’s War Begins none of his secret speeches to his generals had Hitler adumbrated the oc¬ cupation of Scandinavia. Only after Quisling’s visits had t lie Fiihrer ordered Jodi’s staff to study such a possibility. The OKW study recommended that a special working staff under a Luftwaffe general should devise a suitable op¬ erational plan; under the code name ‘Oyster,’ this staff began work under General Erhard Milch a week later. Almost immediately however Hitler ordered the unit dissolved. He was not convinced that the Luftwaffe knew how to safeguard the secrecy of such planning. Instead, a top-secret unit was established under Hitler’s personal supervision; its senior officer was a navy captain, Theodor Krancke. He proposed simultaneous amphibious landings at seven Norwegian ports — Oslo, Kristiansand, Arendal, Stavanger, Bergen, Trondheim, and Narvik — the troops being carried northward by a fleet of fast warships; paratroops of the Seventh Air Division would support the invasion. Diplomatic pres¬ sure on die Oslo government would do die rest. characteristically, hitler consulted neidier Brauchitsch nor Goring at this stage. Piqued by this, Goring refused to attach a Luftwaffe officer to Krancke’s staff. Hitler meanwhile put die campaign preparations in the hands of an infantry general, Nikolaus von Ealkenhorst. Ealkenhorst accepted the mission with alacrity and returned to die chancellery on the twenty-ninth widi a complete operational plan which now embraced Denmark as well. On March i, Hitler signed die directive, ‘Weseriibung’. The army at once protested at diis introduction of a new theatre. Goring stormed into the chancellery and refused to subordinate his squadrons to Falkenhorst’s command. Only the navy committed itself body and soul to the campaign. Hitler wanted the campaign launched soon, before die British and French could beat him to it. Hewel brought him telegram after telegram from Helsinki,Trondheim, and Oslo hinting at die Allied preparations to land in Scandinavia on the pretext of helping Finland, which had in die meantime been attacked by die Soviet Union. Hitler orally ordered die service com¬ mands to speed up their planning. Goring was still discontented, and when Falkenhorst reported progress on March y, he expressed loud contempt for all the army’s joint planning work so far. The risk of an Allied interven¬ tion in Scandinavia was too great. Through Rosenberg, Hitler received from Quisling’s men in Oslo urgent proof that die British and French invasion plans were far advanced. At lunch on the sixth, Hitler leaned over to Rosenberg and said, ‘I read your note. Things are looking bad.’ ‘We Must Destroy Them Too!’ 277 The crisis reached its blackest point on March 1 2. A torrent of dispatches from Moscow and Helsinki revealed that armistice talks had begun. Lon¬ don began frantic attempts to keep the Finnish war alive a few more days. Winston Churchill flew in person to Paris on the eleventh to inform the French government that his expeditionary force was to sail for Narvik on March 15. At 3:30 p.m. on die twelfdi Hitler’s Forschungsamt intercepted an urgent telephone call from the Finnish envoy in Paris to his foreign min¬ istry in Helsinki, reporting that Churchill and Daladier had promised him diat if die Finns would appeal for help at once, British and French troops would land in Norway.That really put the fat in die fire. Hitler ordered all German invasion plans accelerated, and die forces to stand by for the so- called Immediate Op. emergency. By next morning, however, the Russians had signed an armistice with Finland, and this immediate crisis was over. The German admiralty’s intercepts of coded British radio messages clearly indicated to Hitler that die British and French had been on the brink of landing in Norway. The fact diat dieir troop transports were still on ex¬ tended sailing-alert proved however that die Allies had only postponed dieir invasion. German invasion preparations returned to a more leisurely pace; for die time being, Hitler widiheld die executive order for die operation. ‘He is still searching for a sufficient reason,’ Jodi wrote in his diary. we have seen how Hitler concerned himself however not only with grand strategy but with the most minute interlocking elements of each opera¬ tion: the position of die demolition charges on canal bridges, the diickness of the concrete in his fortifications, die calibre of the guns commanding die Norwegian fjords. In this he was aided by a phenomenal memory and tech¬ nical insight into weapons design. On his bedside table lay the latest edition ofWeyer’s Taschenbuch der Kriegsjdotten, a naval handbook like Jane’s Fighting Ships, for die Fiihrer to commit to memory as though he were preparing for some astounding music-hall act. It was he who first demanded diat 7j-millimetre long-barrel guns be installed in German tanks, and it was he who pinpointed one common error in German warship design — building die forecastle so low that in heavy seas it tended to cut beneath die waves. On his birthday in 1937, die proud navy had presented him with a model of the Scharnhorst; late diat evening he had sent for his adjutant Puttkamer, and invited him to crouch and squint along the model’s decks widi him. He was right, of course, and even at that late stage the forecastle had to be redesigned. 2jS hi: Hitler’s War Begins When the Red Book of arms production reached him each month, he would take a scrap of paper and, using a coloured pencil, scribble down a few random figures as he ran his eyes over the columns. He would throw away the paper, but the figures remained indelibly in his memory — column by column, year after year — to confound his more fallible aides with the proof of their own shortcomings. Once, late in 1940, Keitel presented the figures on the total ammunition expended in the recent French campaign; but Hitler responded that in 1916 die German armies had consumed far more 210-millimetre and 1 40-millimetre ammunition each month, and he stated the precise quantities from memory. Afterward Keitel wearily in¬ structed his adjutant to forward those new figures to the OKW’s munitions procurement office. ‘That is the new programme. If the Fiihrer says it, you can take it that it’s right.’ Although the OKW maintained its own munitions procurement office under General Georg Thomas, Keitel readily echoed Hitler’s mounting criti¬ cism of the arms production effort during the winter. In vain Keitel warned that huge production figures could not be attained if die high quality of modern ammunition was not to be jeopardised. Hitler himself drew up a new production programme in which priority was given to mine produc¬ tion for die naval and Luftwaffe blockade of Britain and to huge mondily outputs of artillery ammunition. Keitel issued die programme to the army ordnance office — headed by a sixty-year-old professor, General Karl Becker. By mid-January 1940, die latter had objected that Hitler’s programme could not be met ‘to the remotest extent.’ Hitler was already toying with the idea — first put to him by Goring, who lost no opportunity to criticise the army’s feeble ordnance office — of appointing a civilian munitions min¬ ister to take arms and munitions production out of the hands of the bureaucratic army staff officers. When in February the army ordnance office reported die previous month’s production figures, Hitler found this the last straw. Production of die most important weapons had actually declined. In the two main calibres of shell the Fiihrer’s programme figures would not be reached even by April. At die end of February, Goring appointed Dr. Fritz Todt as a special trouble-shooter to locate die bottlenecks in die munitions industry and recommend ways of stepping up production. Todt convinced Hitler that if the industry was given the system of self-responsibility that had functioned so well in die construction of the autobahns and of the West Wall, Hitler’s ‘impossible’ production figures could be achieved. In March, Hitler ap- ‘We Must Destroy Them Too!’ 279 pointed Todt his munitions minister. It was as much a rebuff to Keitel as to General Becker, who sensed his disgrace keenly and committed suicide not long after — t lie first of a sorry band of such German generals whose only common denominator was a failure to come up to Hitler’s expectations. on march 1, 1940 Hitler had secretly summoned the Party’s gauleiters to die chancellery and blamed the weather for dieir lack of action in die west. He assured them the war would be over in six mondis — his new weapons would force the enemy to their knees; widiout doubt he was alluding to die mass minelaying operations the Luftwaffe was shortly to begin, using die magnetic mine against which he believed the Allies had no defence. ‘The Fiihrer is a genius,’ recorded Goebbels afterwards. ‘He’s going to build die first Germanic people’s empire.’ Italy’s uncertain stance continued to trouble Hitler. Roosevelt had sent his under-secretary of state, Sumner Welles, to sound die engaged Euro¬ pean capitals on the prospects of peace. Hitler studied the Italian communiques on Welles’s Rome talks and compared them with the Fors- chungsamt intercepts of die secret Italian dispatches. In his own talks with die American he adhered rigidly to his argument that since this was Brit¬ ain’s war, it was up to Britain to end it. On March 4, Hitler repeated that to a General Motors vice president, Janies D. Mooney: ‘The current war can only be brought to an end by the other countries giving up their war aims,’ meaning die annihilation of Germany; Germany, he said, had no war aims. Britain’s heavy-handed dealings with Mussolini reinforced Hitler’s Axis position.To force Mussolini to take his trade negotiations widi Britain seri¬ ously, the British imposed a naval blockade on Italy’s coal supplies at die beginning of March. Hitler stepped in widi an immediate offer of a million tons of coal a month. He instructed Jodi’s staff to provide him with a folder of charts, including one grossly faking Germany’s actual military strengdi (crediting her with 207 divisions instead of her actual 1 <77), and met Mus¬ solini at the Brenner Pass on March 18. It was their first encounter since Munich. Mussolini arrived with the air of a schoolboy who had not done his homework, as Hitler later put it. The Fiihrer impressed upon him that die Duce could decide the best moment to declare war, but that he, Hitler, would recommend doing so only after die first big German offensive. The Duce promised to lose no time, but admitted diat he would prefer ‘Yellow’ to be delayed for diree or four months until Italy was properly prepared. Hitler hugely exaggerated Germany’s 280 hi: Hitler’s War Begins prospects: her armies were more powerful than in 1914, she had more ammunition than she could use, production of Junkers 8 8 aircraft and sub¬ marines was surging forward. As for the British, once France had been subdued, Britain would come to terms with Hitler. ‘The British are ex¬ traordinarily determined in defence,’ he said, ‘but quite hopeless at attacking, and their leadership is poor.’ Despite all his protestations however Hitler still mistrusted the Italians, for he imparted to Mussolini neither the impressive operational plan that he and Manstein had evolved for victory in tire west, nor even die barest hint at his intentions in Scandinavia. In die directive he soon after issued to Keitel, instructing the Wehrmacht to resume staff talks with Italy, he stated explicitly that any Italian forces must be assigned a task as independent from the main German operations as possible, to minimise ‘the problems inevitable in a coalition war.’ Hitler attempted in his private talk with Mussolini to convince him that Russia was changed — diough how far these words were intended for Soviet consumption is a matter of speculation. He reminded Mussolini that he had always wanted to march side by side widi the British. ‘But Britain,’ he said, ‘prefers war.’ there were less abstract reasons for his insistence that German industry deliver die goods to Stalin. So long as their pact was in force, it released sixty high-grade divisions for Hitler to employ in the attack on France. His innermost intentions, the ‘black nugget’, lay never far beneath the surface. Perhaps the Russians could have guessed at diem, for in 1940 a new reprint of Mein Kampf went on sale, in which Chapter 14 , widi its clear statement of his plan to invade die east, remained unexpunged. In conver¬ sation with Mussolini Hitler touched on the enforced evacuation of the German-speaking population from die South Tyrol; he cryptically explained that he planned to resettle these people in a beautiful region ‘that I do not yet have but will certainly be procuring’; he must have already been look¬ ing ahead to the day when his armies would be standing astride the Crimea. On March 22, 1940, Adolf Hitler again headed south, flying to die Berghof for die Easter weekend. Captain Engel took the opportunity of this long flight to hand him a report General Guderian had compiled on the training standards of die Soviet troops in Finland. Hitler returned it widi die laconic commentary: ‘Auch die miissen wir vernichten !’ — ‘We must destroy diem too!’ Hors d’CEuvre O n easter Monday, March 2^, 1940, Hitler returned to the chan¬ cellery in Berlin.The next time he was to see the Obersalzberg mountain it would be high summer, and he would be master of all northern Europe from North Cape in Norway to the Spanish Pyrenees. At noon on the day after Elitler’s return to Berlin, Admiral Raeder put it to him diat although a British invasion of Norway now seemed less immi¬ nent than it had two weeks earlier, t lie Germans would do well to seize die initiative there now. It would be best to occupy Norway on April 7; by die fifteendi the nights would already be too short. Elitler agreed. Raeder also asked Elitler to authorise an immediate resumption of Luftwaffe mine-lay¬ ing operations, as it seemed that the secret of die magnetic mine was now out; although both Keitel and Goring wanted the minelaying campaign de¬ layed until ‘Yellow’ began, the Fiihrer directed that it must begin immediately. Against Goring’s advice, Elitler also allowed himself to be per¬ suaded by Raeder on another issue: the Fiihrer had originally wanted die dozen destroyers that were to carry troops to Narvik and Trondheim to remain as a source of artillery support and to boost the morale of die troops diey had landed; as he put it to Jodi one evening in his map room, he could not tolerate ‘the navy promptly scuttling out.’What would the landing troops make of diat? But Raeder dug his heels in. The most perilous phase of die whole invasion campaign, he insisted, would be the wididrawal of the war¬ ships from northern Norway to the safety of German waters under die nose of die most powerful navy in the world. Raeder was prepared to risk his deet for Norway, but he would not stand by and see it frittered away. Intelligence on Britain’s intentions in Scandinavia hardened. Far more important was diat Hitler now learned of an Allied Supreme War Council decision in London on March 28 to develop a two-stage Scandinavian op- 282 hi: Hitler’s War Begins eration early in April: the cynical Allied master plan was to provoke Hitler into an over-hasty occupation of southern Norway by laying mines in Nor¬ way’s neutral waters; Hitler’s move would then ‘justify’ a full-scale Allied landing at Narvik in the north to seize the railroad to the Swedish ore fields. This first stage would later be coupled with several operations farther south. On March 30 German Intelligence intercepted a Paris diplomat’s report on a conversation with Paul Reynaud, France’s new premier. Reynaud had assured this unidentified diplomat that in the next few days the Allies would be launching all-important operations in northern Europe. On the same day, Churchill broadcast on tire BBC a warning to Norway that the Allies would continue the fight ‘wherever it might lead them.’ (Churchill’s de¬ signs on Norway were known to German Intelligence from a series of incautious hints he dropped in a secret press conference with neutral press attaches in London on February 2.) Small wonder that Hitler later referred more than once to the indiscretions committed by Reynaud and Churchill as providing the final urgent stimulus for his own adventure.* An intercepted Swiss legation report from Stoc kholm claimed that British and German invasions of the Norwegian coast were imminent. After spend¬ ing two days investigating every detail of the operation with all the commanders involved, Hitler decided that the first assault on Norway’s coastline was to take place at ^: 1 £ a.m. on the ninth. The nervous strain on Hitler would have overwhelmed most men. Per¬ haps the very idea was too audacious to succeed? When on April 1 he personally addressed t he hand-picked commanders, one report noted: ‘The Fiihrer describes the operation ... as one of the “cheekiest operations” in recent military history. But in this he sees the basis for its success.’ At two a.m. on April 3, the operation passed the point of no return. The first three transports camouflaged as coal vessels sailed from Germany, bound with the tanker Kattegat for Narvik, a thousand miles to the north. Four more ‘coal ships’ — three for Trondheim and one for Stavanger — were ready in German ports. All carried heavy equipment, artillery, ammunition, and provisions concealed beneath the coal. The initial assault troops would be carried on fast warships, some entering the Norwegian ports under cover of the British flag: ten destroyers would carry two thousand troops to Narvik, * Ambassador Hewel recorded Hitler’s dinner-table reminiscences on July 1941, thus in his diary: ‘. . .if Churchill and Reynaud had kept a still tongue in their heads, I might well not have tackled Norway.’ Hors d’CEuvre 283 escorted by the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau; another seventeen hundred troops would be landed at Trondheim by the cruiser Hipper and four destroyers. Thousands of assault troops would be landed at five other ports by virtually the rest of the German navy — a fleet of cruisers, torpedo boats, whalers, minesweepers, submarine chasers, tugs, and picket boats. Troop reinforcements would arrive during the day in fifteen merchant ships bound for Oslo, Kristiansand, Bergen, and Stavanger. If anything prema¬ turely befell even one of these ships laden with troops in field-grey, the whole operation would be betrayed. That afternoon the War Department notified him that t lie railroad move¬ ment of invasion troops from their assembly areas in t he heart of Germany to the Baltic dockyards had begun on schedule. From Helsinki came fresh word of an imminent British operation against Narvik; Swedish and Nor¬ wegian officers tried to assure Berlin that the Allies were just trying to provoke Germany into an ill-considered preventive campaign, but Hitler remained unconvinced. He already felt that the Swedes knew more than was good for them. Equally ominous were the telephone conversations the Forschungsamt now intercepted between the Danish military attache and the Danish and Norwegian ministers in Berlin, in which the attache ur¬ gently asked for immediate interviews with them as he had something of ‘the utmost political significance’ to tell them.* During the night of April 7, the German fleet operation began. The war¬ ships sailed. A further stiffening in the Norwegian attitude to Germany was detected. Norwegian coastal defences were on the alert, lighthouses were extinguished. Norwegian pilots for the ‘coal ships’ waiting to pass north¬ ward through the Leads to Narvik and Trondheim were only slowly fortlicoruing — was this deliberate Norwegian obstructionism? Soon the entire German invasion fleet was at sea. Hitler was committed to either a catastrophic defeat, with the certain annihilation of his navy, or to a spec¬ tacular victory. Early on April 8, the German legation in Oslo telephoned Berlin with die news that British warships had just begun laying minefields in Norwe¬ gian waters. This violation of Norway’s neutrality could hardly have been * Admiral Canaris’s Chief of Staff, Colonel Hans Oster, warned the Dutch military attache Major Sas of this — presumably to restore his own credibility after the many false alarms he had given in the winter. Sas passed the information on to the Danish and Norwegian legations, though neither was greatly impressed by it. 284 hi: Hitler’s War Begins more opportune for Hitler’s cause. In Oslo, there was uproar and anger; the redoubled Norwegian determination to defend their neutrality caused Raeder to order his warships to abandon their original intention of enter¬ ing the Norwegian ports under die British flag. The elation in Berlin was shattered by a second telephone call from the Oslo legation in the early evening. The Rio de Janeiro, a slow-moving mer¬ chant ship headed for Bergen with horses and a hundred troops, had been torpedoed a few hours earlier off die Norwegian coast. But Hitler’s luck still held. In Berlin die naval staff was confident that the British would wrongly conclude that these warship movements were an attempted breakout into the Atlantic. Raeder had insisted on attaching battleships to the first group, and this was now vindicated, for die British were indeed deceived, and deployed dieir forces far to the north of die true seat of operations. Only now did Hitler send for Dr. Goebbels and inform him, during a stroll in the chancellery garden, of what was afoot. The minister ventured to inquire what reaction he anticipated from Washington. ‘Material aid from them can’t come into play for about eight mondis,’ responded Hitler, ‘and manpower not for about a year and a half.’ In the small hours of April 9, Berlin picked up a Norwegian radio signal reporting strange warships entering the Oslo Fjord. Hitler knew diat the toughest part of the operation had begun. But shortly before six a.m. Ger¬ man signals from the forces were monitored; diey called for U-boats to stand guard over die port entrances. Access to Norway had now been forced. General von Falkenhorst reported at five-thirty: ‘Norway and Denmark occupied ... as instructed.’ Hitler himself drafted die German news-agency report announcing that the Danish government had submitted, grumbling, and almost widiout a shot having been fired, to German force majeure. Grinning from ear to ear, he congratulated Rosenberg: ‘Now Quisling can set up his government in Oslo.’ In soudiern Norway die strategically well-placed airfield at Stavanger had been captured by German paratroops, assuring Hitler of immediate air superiority; at Oslo itself five companies of paratroops and airborne infan¬ try landed on Fornebu airfield. A small party of infantry marched with band playing into the Norwegian capital and Oslo fell. When the gold-embossed supper menu was laid before Hitler that evening, the main course of macaroni, ham, and green salad was appropri¬ ately prefaced by smdrrebrod, a Scandinavian hors d’oeuvre {smorebrod). Hors d’CEuvre 285 Hitler confided to his adjutants that if his navy were to do naught else in this war, it had justified its existence by winning Norway for Germany. Its losses had been heavy. In the final approach to Oslo along the fifty-mile- long Oslo Fjord, Germany’s newest heavy cruiser, the Bliicher, was disabled by the ancient Krupp guns of a Norwegian coastal battery and finished off by torpedoes with heavy loss of life. Off Bergen the cruiser Konigsberg was also hit by a coastal battery, and was sunk the next day by British aircraft. South of Kristiansand, the cruiser Karlsruhe was sunk by a British subma¬ rine. Three more cruisers were damaged and many of t lie supply vessels sunk. In one incident, however, the cruiser Hipper and four destroyers bear¬ ing seventeen hundred troops to Trondheim were challenged by the coastal batteries guarding die fjord; die Hipper’s commander, Captain Heye, sig¬ nalled ambiguously in English: ‘I come on government instructions.’ By die time the puzzled gunners opened fire, the ships were already past. Over lunch that day, April 9, Hitler again began boasting to Dr. Goebbels of a coming new Germanic empire. At Narvik however a real crisis was beginning. Ten destroyers had landed General Eduard Dietl’s two thousand German and Austrian mountain troops virtually unopposed, for die local Norwegian commander was a Quisling sympathiser. Only die tanker Jan Wellem arrived punctually from the naval base pro¬ vided by Stalin at Murmansk; the ten destroyers could refuel only slowly from this one tanker, they could not be ready to return before late on die tendi. Earlier that day however five British destroyers penetrated the fjord; in the ensuing gunplay and the battle fought there three days later, die age¬ ing British battleship Warspite and a whole flotilla of destroyers sank all ten German destroyers — though not before they had taken a toll from die British. Thus half of Raeder’s total destroyer force had been wiped out. When over the next two days news arrived of British troops landing at Harstad, not far nordi of Narvik, and at Namsos, to the north of Trond¬ heim, the military crisis brought Hitler to the verge of a nervous breakdown. had the diplomatic offensive in Oslo been prepared with die same thor¬ oughness as die military invasion, die Norwegian government could have been effectively neutralised. When the Bliicher sank in Oslo Fjord, the as¬ sault party detailed to arrest the Norwegian government had foundered widi her. As a result, die king and government had had time to escape the capital, and die local German envoy, Kurt Brauer, was not equal to die 286 hi: Hitler’s War Begins situation. On April io, both king and government had been amenable to negotiation, but Brauer wanted them to recognise Major Quisling’s new government and left the talks without awaiting the outcome of his propos¬ als. The king refused, and a confused but still undeclared war between Norway and Germany began. Had Brauer not insisted on Quisling but dealt with the existing government instead, this situation would not have arisen. On April 14, t lie foreign ministry flewTheo Habicht to Oslo to make a last attempt to secure agreement with die king. But the British operations in Narvik stiffened tire Norwegian resolve. Ribbentrop’s representatives scraped together an ‘Administrative Council’ of leading Oslo citizens but progress was slow and quite die opposite of what Hitler had wanted. He was apo¬ plectic with rage at Brauer and Habicht for allowing diese ‘Norwegian lawyers’ to dupe them; he had wanted to see Quisling at die head of an ostensibly legal Norwegian government — not some lawyers’ junta. the military crisis paralleled the diplomatic one. Neither Luftwaffe nor submarines could carry munitions, or reinforcements to General Died in any quantity. Widi his own two diousand troops now augmented by the two thousand shipless sailors of die destroyer force, he could not hold Narvik once the main British assault on the port began. It worried Hitler that diey were mostly Austrians, for he had not yet wanted to place such a burden on the Anschluss. By April 14, he was already talking to Brauchitsch of aban¬ doning Narvik and concentrating all effort on die defence of Trondheim, threatened by die British beachhead at Namsos and Aandalsnes. He planned to expand Trondheim into a strategic German naval base that would make Britain’s Singapore seem ‘child’s play.’ Over die next few days, after re¬ peated conferences widi Goring, Milch, and Jeschonnek, he ordered die total destruction of Namsos and Aandalsnes, and of any odier town or vil¬ lage in which British troops set foot, without regard for the civilian population. He frowned at his adjutants and said, ‘I know the British. I came up against diem in the Great War. Where they once get a toehold there is no dirowing diem out again.’ On the fourteendi, he had somehow gained die impression diat die British had already landed at Narvik. He knew of no odier solution than that Dietl should fight his way southward to Trondheim. Hitler announced Dietl’s promotion to lieutenant general and at the same time dictated to Keitel a message ordering Dietl to evacuate Narvik forthwith. The British would now take Narvik unopposed. Jodi wrote in his diary: ‘The hysteria is fright- Hors d’CEuvre 28j ful.’ Jodi’s staff was scandalised by die Fuhrer’s lack of comportment in die sc days. Hitler’s message to Died was never issued, however. Jodi’s army staff officer, Colonel Bernhard von Lossberg, refused to send out such a message — it was the product of a nervous crisis ‘unparalleled since die darkest days of die Battle of the Marne in 1914.’The whole point of the Norwegian campaign had been to safeguard Germany’s iron-ore sup¬ plies. Was Narvik now to be relinquished to the British without a fight? Jodi quietly advised him that diis was die personal desire of the Fiihrer. The colonel craftily persuaded Brauchitsch to sign another message to Died, one congratulating him on his promotion and ending: ‘I am sure you will defend your position, which is so vital to Germany, to the last man.’ Lossberg handed diis text to Jodi and tore up Keitel’s handwritten Fiihrer Order before dieir eyes. Thus ended one day of die Narvik crisis. As each day passed, Jodi’s voice was raised with more assurance. Even¬ tually die Allies had landed some twelve diousand British, French, and Polish troops to confront Dietl’s lesser force. Jodi remained unimpressed; and when Hitler again began talking of abandoning Narvik, he lost his temper and stalked out of die Cabinet Room, slamming die door behind him with a noise that echoed around the chancellery building. Throughout die seven - teendi the argument raged back and forth between them. Hitler had again drafted a radio message ordering Died to withdraw. ‘We cannot just abandon those troops,’ he exclaimed. Jodi retorted in his eardiy Bavarian accent, ‘Mein Fiihrer, in every war there are times when die Supreme Commander must keep his nerve!’ Between each word, he rapped his knuckles on the chart table so loudly diat diey were white after¬ ward. Hitler composed himself and replied, ‘What would you advise?’ That evening Hitler signed a stand-fast order submitted by Jodi; but he made it abundantly clear in a preamble that he thought the whole nordiern position was bound to be overwhelmed by the Allies eventually. It was not one of his more felicitously worded messages. His fifty-first birthday passed without noticeable public enthu¬ siasm. When Alfred Rosenberg presented him with a large porcelain bust of Frederick the Great, tears welled up in the Fuhrer’s eyes. ‘When you see him,’ he said, ‘you realise how puny are the decisions we have to make compared with those confronting him.’ Goring mentioned during an audience with Hitler that a mass resistance movement in Norway was growing. At die next conference Hitler announced 288 hi: Hitler’s War Begins his intention of transferring executive authority to Falkenhorst; the tough young gauleiter of Essen, Joseph Terboven, would be appointed Reich Commissioner, answerable only to the Fiihrer himself. Keitel — rightly fearing that Norway was now to suffer as Poland was already suffering — raised immediate objections. When Hitler’s only reply was to snub the OKW chief, Keitel took a leaf from Jodi’s book and stormed out of the conference chamber. On April 21, Terboven and his staff were en route for Oslo, ready to introduce a reign of terror to the Norwe¬ gian people. Again Hitler was plagued by sleepless nights. If the Luftwaffe generals were to be believed, Falkenhorst was in despair and already giving up Trondheim as lost. Hitler sent one officer after another to Norway to re¬ port to him on the progress of his two divisions of infantry struggling to bridge the three hundred miles between Oslo and Trondheim. On April 22, he sent Schmundt by plane to Oslo with Colonel von Lossberg. Lossberg reported back to Hitler t he next evening after a hazard¬ ous flight. So struck was he by the air of dejection in the chancellery that he apparently forgot himself; when the Fiihrer asked in what strength the Brit¬ ish had now landed at Namsos and Aandalsnes, he exclaimed. ‘Five thousand men, mein Fiihrer!’ This, to Hitler, was a disaster, but the colonel briskly interrupted him: ‘Jawohl, mein Fiihrer, only five thousand men. Falkenhorst controls all the key points, so he could finish off the enemy even if they were far stronger. We must rejoice over every Englishman sent to Norway rather than to meet us in the west on die Meuse.’ Lossberg was curtly dismissed from die con¬ ference chamber, and for weeks afterward he was not allowed into the Fiihrer’s presence. On die chart table, Lossberg had left behind him a small sheaf of re¬ cently captured British military documents which he had brought widi him from Oslo. A British infantry brigade fighting south of Aandalsnes had been put to flight and important files captured. The immense political importance of the find sank in overnight: die British brigade commander had previously been briefed on the plan to cap¬ ture Stavanger — long before die German invasion of Norway. The British orders were dated April 2,6, and 7. Odier British landing operations had been planned at Bergen, Trondheim, and Narvik. The German operation had cut right across die British scheme. ‘That is a gift from the gods,’ wrote a gleeful Dr. Goebbels. ‘We missed disaster by hours. Churchill was wait- Hors d’CEuvre 289 ing for reports of tire English invasion — and the accursed Germans had got there first.’ Hitler was overjoyed. He personally mapped out the propaganda cam¬ paign to exploit them; until die small hours of die morning, he, Schmundt, and Jodi checked over the White Book the foreign ministry was pre¬ paring. The hasty publication contained document facsimiles, translations, and statements of British officers as to die documents’ authenticity. Hitler himself met and talked to the British prisoners brought to Berlin from Norway. One of Haider’s staff wrote at this time: ‘The first British prisoners were flown to Berlin, shown to the Fiihrer, wined and dined, and driven around Berlin for four hours. They just could not understand how diings can look so normal here. Above all diey were in perpetual fear of being shot: that’s what diey had been tricked into believing.’ Hearing a few days later that Polish prisoners had attacked the new British arrivals, Hitler asked diat the next time photographers should be present to capture die scene of supposed allies at one anodier’s diroats. There was no denying the impact diat Ribbentrop’s White Book had on world opinion. Well might Hitler ask, Who now dares condemn me if die Allies care so little for small states’ neutrality themselves? At all events, on die very day the captured documents were released to die world, April 27, 1940, Hitler secretly announced to his staff the decision to launch ‘Yellow’ in the first week of May. in the west, Hitler had marshalled 137 divisions; yet even so he was facing a numerically superior enemy. His Intelligence agencies had pinpointed the position of 100 French divisions and 11 more divi¬ sions from the British Expeditionary Force; the Belgians had raised 2 3 divisions, and the Dutch 13. Added to diis total of 147 divisions were 2o more holding the frontier fortifications. Hitler did not doubt the outcome of die for dicoming passage of arms. Jodi was years later to write: ‘Only die Fiihrer could sweep aside the hack¬ neyed military notions of die General Staff and conceive a grand plan in all its elements — a people’s inner willingness to fight, die uses of propaganda, and die like. It was diis that revealed not the analytic mind of die staff officer or military expert in Hitler, but the grand strategist.’ On die eve of die assault on France and die Tow Countries, Hitler was to proclaim to his assembled staff, ‘Gentlemen: you are about to witness the most famous vic¬ tory in history!’ Few viewed the immediate future as sanguinely as he. 2go hi: Hitler’s War Begins Now the real pressure was on. On April 30, Hitler ordered die entire Wehrmacht to be ready to launch ‘Yellow’ at twenty-four hours’ notice from die fifth.That day, General Jodi had confirmed to him that in Norway the German forces diat had set out weeks before froniTrondheim and Oslo had now linked; the Fiihrer was delirious with joy. ‘That is more than a battle won, it is an entire campaign!’ he exclaimed. Before his eyes he could already see the autobahn he would build to Trondheim. The Norwegian people deserved it. How utterly they differed from the Poles! Norwegian doctors and nurses had tended the injured until they dropped with exhaustion; the Polish ‘sub-humans’ had jabbed their eyes out. Moved by this comparison, on May 9, Hitler was to give his military commander in Norway an order which began as follows: The Norwegian soldier spurned all the cowardly and deceitful methods common to the Poles. He fought witli open visor and honourably, and he tended our prisoners and injured properly and to the best of his ability. The civilian population acted similarly. Nowhere did they join in the fighting, and they did all they could for die welfare of our casualties. I have t hercforc decided in appreciation for this to authorise the lib¬ eration of t lie Norwegian soldiers we took prisoner. Hitler assembled his staff for a last run of secret conferences on the details of‘Yellow’: everybody was now standing by — t lie glider and para¬ chute troops; the disguised ‘Dutch policemen’; the emissary; and two million men. The Luftwaffe’s chief meteorologist sweated blood under the burden of responsibility that he alone now bore. On May 3, Hitler postponed ‘Yel¬ low’ on his advice by one day, to Monday. On the fourth he again postponed it. On Sunday die fifth die forecast was still uncertain, so ‘Yellow’ was set down for Wednesday the eighth. On diis deadline Hitler was determined: he ordered a special timetable printed for his headquarters staff as part of die elaborate camouflage of his real intentions. The timetable showed his train departing from a little sta¬ tion near Berlin late on May 7 and arriving next day in Hamburg en route for ‘an official visit to Oslo.’ On May 7 however the Luftwaffe’s meteorologist was adamant that diere was still a strong risk of morning fog; so Hitler again postponed ‘Yellow’ by one day. Hors d’CEuvre 291 On that day too the Forschungsamt showed him two coded telegrams which the Belgian ambassador to t he: Vatican had just sent to his govern¬ ment: a German citizen who had arrived in Rome on April 29 had warned that Hitler was about to attack Belgium and Holland.The Abwehr was or¬ dered to search out the informant — a supreme irony as the SS was to realise four years later, for the culprit was a minor member of Canaris’s Abwehr network.* In any case, the cat had been let out of the bag. Early on the eighth Holland was in a state of siege. Telephone links with foreign countries were cut, t lie government district of The Hague was cordoned off; and the guard on important bridges was increased. Hitler wanted to wait no longer, but Goring kept his nerve: The weather was improving daily: May 10 would be ideal. Hitler was torn between the counsels of his experts and the whispering voice of his intuition. Against all his instincts he reluctantly agreed to postpone ‘Yellow’ to May 10, ‘but not one day after that.’ Early on the ninth Puttkamer, the duty adjutant, telephoned one of the westernmost corps headquarters, at Aachen; die Chief of Staff there told him there was some mist, but tlie sun was already breaking through. When die naval adjutant repeated this to Hitler, he announced, ‘Good.Then we can begin.’The service commands were informed diat die final orders to attack or postpone (code words ‘Danzig’ and ‘Augsburg,’ respectively) would be issued by 9:30 p.m. at the latest. Extraordinary security precautions were taken, even widiin Hitler’s own staff. Martin Bormann was left in die belief diat they were to visit Oslo; even Julius Schaub, Hitler’s long-time intimate, did not know the truth. During die afternoon Hitler and his staff drove out of Berlin to die railroad station at Finkenkrug, a popular excursion spot. Here Hitler’s special train was waiting for diem. It left at 4:38 p.m. , heading nordi toward Hamburg; *This was Dr. Joseph Muller, a Catholic lawyer, who became a post-war Bavarian minister of justice. Colonel Oster also repeated his earlier acts of treachery by giving the Dutch military attache a running commentary on each postponement of‘Yellow’ and the final definitive warning at nine p.m. on the very eve of the offensive. His complicated motives can be summarised thus: recognising Hitler’s immense popular support by 1940, Oster desired to inflict on him such a military defeat that a coup against him would stand a better chance; the colonel also desired the Allies to take him seriously as a negotiating partner. Under current German law it is an offence to describe Oster as a traitor; suffice it to say that the Dutch military commander considered him ‘a pitiful specimen.’ 292 hi: Hitler’s War Begins but after dusk fell, it pulled into the little country station of Hagenow. When it set off again, even the uninitiated could tell it was no longer head¬ ing nortli, but south and west. Hitler retired early to his sleeping quarters; but the movement of the train and his apprehensions kept him from sleeping. Hour after hour he gazed out of the carriage window, watching for the first telltale signs of fog shrouds forming. An hour before dawn the train glided into a small station from which all the name indications had been removed. A column of three-axle off-road limousines was awaiting him in the semi-darkness. For half an hour he and his entourage were driven through the little Eiffel villages. He broke the silence only once. Turning to the Luftwaffe adjutant sitting next to Schaub on the jump seats of his car, he asked, ‘Has the Luftwaffe taken into account that here in the west the sun rises several minutes later than in Berlin?’ Von Below set his mind at rest. when his limousine stopped, Hitler clambered stiffly out. A former anti¬ aircraft position on the side of a hill had been converted to serve as his field headquarters.The nearest village had been completely evacuated and would serve for his lesser staff. It was already daylight. The air was filled with the sound of birds heralding the arrival of another dawn. From t lie two main roads on each side of this hill they could hear the heavy rumble of convoys of trucks heading westward. An adjutant pointed wordlessly to his watch: it was 9 : 3 j a.m. Far away they could hear the growing clamour of heavy artil¬ lery begin, and from behind them swelled a thunder of aircraft engines as the Luftwaffe fighter and bomber squadrons approached. Part iv: ‘War of Liberation’ rienzi: Doch hort ihr der Trompete Ruj in langgehaltnem Klang ertonen, dann wachet auf, eilet all herbei, Freiheit verkiind’ ich Romas Sohnen! Doch wilrdig, ohne Raserei, zeig’ jeder, daJS er Romer sei! Willkommen nennet so den Tag, er rache euch und eure Schmach! RICHARD WAGNER’S OPERA Rienzi The Warlord at theWestern Front O n may io, 1940, the Volkischer Beobachter — chief organ of the Nazi Party — rolled off the presses in Berlin, Munich, and Vienna with red banner headlines: ‘Germany’s decisive struggle has begun!’ and ‘the fuhrer at the western front’. After half an hour’s tough arguing, Keitel had persuaded Hitler to allow the OKW communique to end with the announcement that he himself had gone to the western front to take command. Hitler was loath to steal his generals’ thunder. His prestige was high. General Erwin Rommel — now commanding a panzer division in the west — had written in a letter on April 2 1: ‘Ja, if we didn’t have the Fuhrer! Who knows whether any other German exists with such a genius for military leadership and such a commensurate mastery of politi¬ cal leadership too!’ As a military commander, Adolf Hitler remained an enigma even to his closest associates. Alfred Jodi, perhaps his most able strategic adviser, was to write from a prison cell that he still asked himself whether he had really known the man at whose side he had led such a thorny and self-denying existence. ‘I keep making the same mistake: I blame his humble origins. But then I remember how many peasants’ sons were blessed by History with die name The Great.’ General Zeitzler also grappled widi this phenom¬ enon, though more analytically. ‘I witnessed Hitler in every conceivable circumstance — in times of fortune and misfortune, of victory and defeat, in good cheer and in angry outburst, during speeches and conferences, surrounded by thousands, by a mere handful, or quite alone, speaking on die telephone, sitting in his bunker, in his car, in his plane; in brief on every conceivable occasion. Even so, I can’t claim to have seen into his soul or perceived what he was after.’ Zeitzler saw him as an actor, widi every word, gesture, and grimace under control, his penetrating stare practised for hours *95 296 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ before some private mirror. He won over newcomers from the first hand¬ shake and piercing look, and paradoxically appeared the very embodiment of the strong and fearless leader, of honesty and open heart. He cultivated the impression that he cared deeply for his subordinates’ well-being. He would telephone a departing general at midnight: ‘Please don’t fly. It’s such foul weather and I’m worried about your safety.’ Or he would look a minor official in the eye and explain, ‘Now I’m telling you this privately, and you must keep it strictly under your hat.’ The surviving records are full of examples of the congenial impression Hitler made on others. Rommel proudly wrote on June 3: ‘The Fiihrer’s visit was fabulous. He greeted me with the words, “Rommel! We were all so worried about you during die attack!’” Milch wrote down Hitler’s words to him on April 21, 1941, after a particularly hazardous return flight from North Africa: ‘Thank goodness you got back!’ In June 1941 Albert Speer’s office chronicle noted: ‘The Fiihrer sent a telephone message from the Obersalzberg begging Herr Speer to drop the proposed visit to Norway, as tilings are too uncertain up there and Herr Speer is indispensable to him.’ In February 1943 Field Marshal Wolfram von Richthofen wrote in his di¬ ary : ‘ Finally the Fiihrer inquired very anxiously about my healdi.’ In mid-war Hitler would halt urgent conferences with hungry generals for half an hour to allow his stenographers to eat. One wrote in his diary on February 20, 1943: ‘At die noon conference the heater promised by the Fiihrer is indeed there — a small china stove. . . In die afternoon, before a brief reception of seven officers hand-picked for special missions for which the Fiihrer briefs diem in a short speech, he inquired in General Schmundt’s presence whether the stove was warm enough for us. When we said it was, he was hugely pleased and laughed out loud.’ His assessment of character was instant and deadly. A member of Jodi’s staff, Captain Ivo-Thilo vonTrodia, wrote in 1946: ‘My impression was that the Fiihrer clearly recognised the human weaknesses of his colleagues and stood aloof from diem.’ Once he snatched a document from Keitel’s hands and direw it on die floor. Keitel meekly gathered it up. Hitler judged newcomers after only a glance. Of one army commander he sourly com¬ mented, ‘He looks like a schoolteacher!’ — and since for him every teacher was a ‘Steisstrommler,’ or buttock-thrasher, that general’s career was clearly at an end. Haider was to refer to his unusual intellect and grasp, his imagi¬ nativeness and willpower. Jodi wrote that in die French campaign Hitler’s leadership was clear, consistent, and capable. Jodi considered that in draft- The Warlord at the Western Front 297 ing t he terms of the armistice with fallen France, Flitler showed a generos¬ ity tliat: gave cause to hope t hat of the two warring impulses within him it was the better that was gaining ground. In later campaigns he asserted himself to the other extreme. The classi¬ cal early Ffihrer Directive, in which his commanders were given a broad mission and left to their own discretion in carrying it out, was increasingly supplemented and supplanted by Ffihrer Orders, in which Flitler inter¬ vened in die tactical operations at every level. hitler’s headquarters for ‘Yellow’ were at Miinstereifel. He found die underground command post here very cramped. Alone in his room, with its folding bed, table, and chair, he could hear every sound made by Keitel and Jodi next door. He preferred to hold his war conferences in die open air. He privately suggested to his staff that when die war was over diey should all return each year to Miinstereifel, ‘my bird paradise.’ The site remained unchanged until 1944; it had been intended as a permanent me¬ morial to Hitler’s ‘War of Liberation.’ As die Luftwaffe had predicted, May 1 o, 1940, dawned fine. Soon mes¬ sengers brought him die exhilarating news that die British and French armies had begun pouring into Belgium. In October 1941, his armies now before Moscow, Hitler still remembered die thrill of that moment. ‘I could have wept for joy! They’d fallen right into my trap! It was a crafty move on our part to strike toward Liege — we had to make diem believe we were re¬ maining faithful to die old Schlieffen Plan. . . How exciting it will be later to go over all those operations once again. Several times during the night I used to go to the operations room to pore over those relief maps.’ The Belgians and Dutch were not unprepared. As one of Jodi’s staff noted: ‘Our troops were storming an enemy who was ready and waiting for our attack to begin early on May 10.’ Ironically it was Canaris’s Abwehr diat was appointed to find out how die enemy suspicions had been aroused; die Abwehr adroitly diverted suspicion to a senior foreign ministry official. Extreme anxiety reigned at Hitler’s headquarters. One of Jodi’s officers was accompanying the first wave of tanks invading Holland and Belgium widi a radio truck, instructed to report direct to Hitler on the state of die bridges over the Meuse and the Albert Canal. The Dutch had evidently managed to blow up bodi bridges across the Meuse north and soudi of Maastricht. The Abwehr’s Special Battalion 100, die ‘Trojan horse,’ had suffered fearful casualties. But the Belgian bridges across the Albert Canal — 2 gS iv: ‘War of Liberation’ where a hundred troops had silently landed in gliders as dawn broke — were intact, except for one at Canne. By 4:30 p.m., Hitler learned that the 4th Panzer Division had actually forded the Meuse. At Eben Emael a band of intrepid German engineer troops armed with hollow-charge explosives had landed by glider and immobilised the entire fortress: tlie underground gun crews were sealed in, their artillery was knocked out. By early next morn¬ ing, May 11, a temporary bridge had been thrown across the Meuse at Maastricht, and an armoured brigade had crossed. Eben Emael capitulated at midday, and with this, Belgium’s fate was effectively sealed. In the north a four-day battle raged as the Dutch tried to wipe out the paratroops and glider-borne infantry landed at Rotterdam andThe Hague; bomber squadrons had already taken off to relieve the pressure on the para¬ troops at Rotterdam on May 14 when word arrived that the Dutch were capitulating. Only half the bombers could be recalled — the rest dropped nearly a hundred tons of bombs on t he town; nine hundred people died in the subsequent inferno. The next day Holland formally surrendered. It was now time for Hitler’s masterstroke. His main offensive was to start far to the south, at Sedan, where General von Kleist’s armour had just crossed the Meuse. On May 14, Hitler directed that all available panzer and mechanised divisions were to assemble for a rapid push from this bridge¬ head westward and then north-westward to the English Channel: The course of the operations so far shows that the enemy has not per¬ ceived the basic idea of our own operation, the eventual breakthrough by Army Group A [Rundstedtj.They are still moving up powerful forces to a line extending from Antwerp to Namur and apparently neglecting the sector confronting Army Group A. From this moment on, only a resolute commander supported by out¬ standing military Intelligence could have saved France. General Gerd von Rundstedt is said to have remarked t hat he would have found it much more interesting to fight the rest of the campaign in the shoes of France’s Army Chief of Staff, General Maurice Gamelin. Again, as in the Norwegian campaign, Hitler’s nerve briefly left him. When Brauchitsch made his regular twice-daily telephone call, Hitler bom¬ barded him about minutiae of which the army’s t borough preparations had long taken care. As Kleist’s armour swept onward toward the Channel coast, on May 1 7 Hitler intervened to order that they halt to allow the slower The Warlord at the Western Front 299 infantry divisions time to catch up. Flalder’s Intelligence branch, ‘Foreign Armies West,’ had consistently estimated that half the Anglo-French forces were in the north, waiting to be cut off. Victory euphoria gripped Berlin. Goebbels wrote privately on die nineteendi, ‘Since 1938 we have conquered seven European countries.’ Flitler however was fearful of overreaching him¬ self; he drove to Rundstedt’s headquarters, nervously studied die tactical maps, and on his return to his own headquarters spread a wholly unnec¬ essary gloom about die danger from die south. When Flalder and Brauchitsch saw him the next day, he was raging that the army was needlessly running die risk of defeat. Not until May 20 was this crisis over. The army reported that there were at least twenty enemy divisions trapped north of the Somme; in die evening, when Brauchitsch telephoned Flitler widi die news diat die tanks had reached die Channel coast, Flitler was ecstatic with praise for die army and its com¬ manders. His health mirrored these euphoric victories. Personal physician Morell wrote on May 26, ‘Asked the Fiihrer a few days back if he’s got any complaints. He said he feels fine apart from one thing, he still has an appe¬ tite that’s far too large. He really is getting along famously.’ According to Jodi, the Fiihrer spoke of die peace treaty he would now make widi France — he would demand the return of all the territories and properties robbed from the German people these last four hundred years, and he would repay die French for die ignominious terms inflicted on Germany in 1918 by conducting die first peace negotiations at the same spot in the forest of Compiegne. Hitler jubilantly predicted that diis victory would right die wrongs done by the Peace of Westphalia which had concluded die Thirty Years’War and established France as the dominant power in Europe. It was diis victory psychosis, prematurely sprung upon his military staff, diat was to prove his undoing at Dunkirk. for A while Hitler turned his attention to long-range planning. He was not keen to fight die British empire — not because he feared die outcome, but because he liked die English. While freely defaming Churchill and his ministers as war criminals, he often spoke to his private staff and to Dr. Goebbels, certainly no anglophile himself, of diis fondness for the British. ‘The Fiihrer’s intention,’ Goebbels had recorded on April 21, ‘is to admin¬ ister one knockout punch. Even so, he would be ready to make peace today, on condition that Britain stay out of Europe and give us back our colo¬ nies. . . He does not want at all to crush Britain or to destroy her empire.’ 300 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ ‘They [the British] could have had peace on the most agreeable of terms,’ the Fiihrer sighed a few days later to Goebbels. ‘Instead they are fighting a war and shattering their empire to the core.’ And he added some days after that, on May 7: ‘We are neither able nor willing to take over their empire. There are some people whom you can talk sense into only after you’ve knocked out their front teeth.’ The second phase of the campaign faced him therefore with something of a dilemma. On May 20 he already conferred about this with Brauchitsch and Haider. His earlier eagerness for Italian divisions to join in an offensive on the Upper Rhine front had evaporated. He wrote to Mussolini with word of his latest victories, but Mussolini’s replies were an uninspiring amalgam of polite applause and qualified promises of later belligerency. Indeed, an awkward disparity of aims was now emerging: for Italy the main enemy was now Britain, while Hitler hoped and believed that he could oblige Britain to come to terms with him. When Jodi a few days later sug¬ gested that an immediate invasion of England be prepared, the Fiihrer roundly rejected tire idea without explaining why. We must conclude that he believed that the blockade by submarine and bomber operations would force Britain to submit, for he indicated that after France’s defeat he would concentrate on the production of submarines and Junkers 88 bombers. the ever present Russian threat to Germany was still a distant one. From the slow rate at which airfield construction was progressing in the Russian- occupied border regions, it seemed clear that Germany still had a breathing space during which the Kremlin would continue to appease Hitler. Molo¬ tov had expressed Russia’s genuine relief that Germany had managed to invade Norway before the Allies had, and he had received word of‘Yellow’ with equal sympathy; but this honeymoon would not last any longer than served the Russian purpose. How else is one to interpret the Fiihrer’s cryp¬ tic remark to Haider on April 24, 1940: ‘We have an interest in seeing to it that die [Romanian] oil fields keep supplying us until next spring at the least; after that we shall be freer.’ Romania was now exporting over 130,000 tons of oil a mondi to Germany — nothing must endanger diese oil fields. A Balkan quagmire, Hitler’s nightmare! At die end of May die risk be¬ came acute as rumours multiplied of Italian plans to attack Yugoslavia; this would free Hungary to attack Romania and Russia would use this as a pre¬ text to invade Romania as well. On May 20 the German military attache in Moscow quoted to Berlin reliable details of Soviet troop concentrations on The Warlord at the Western Front 301 the Romanian frontier. Molotov denied them, but the facts spoke for them¬ selves. Brauchitsch urged Flitler on the twenty-second to do something to curb these Russian ambitions; Flitler responded t hat he ‘hoped’ to limit the Russian expansion to Bessarabia. Weizsacker wrote a curious passage in his private diary on May 2 3: ‘Assuming there is a crushing victory in the west, die obvious next move would be to create order in the east as well, that will give breathing space and river frontiers — an order diat will endure. Whether Britain submits at once or has to be bombed into her senses, die fact is diere will probably have to be one more squaring of accounts in die east. . .’ nothing yet indicated that London might already have decided to evacu¬ ate nordiern France. On die contrary, Flitler was convinced diat the British would fight to die last round. On May 21 there was a minor crisis when British and French tanks sprang an unexpected attack on the inner flank of die German Fourdi Army at Arras. Both Flitler and Rundstedt took this as a warning that die armoured spearhead of Army Group A had advanced too fast, and Rundstedt ordered die Fourth Army and Kleist’s armoured group to delay dieir advance on the Channel ports until the crisis was resolved. Brauchitsch and Flalder regretted Rundstedt’s overcautious conduct of die operations of Army Group A — bearing up on the Channel ports from die south-west — and without informing Flitler they ordered control of die Fourdi Army transferred to General von Bock’s Army Group B, which was advancing on the ports from die east. Bock was to command the last act of die encirclement. Flitler learned of this when he visited Rundstedt’s head¬ quarters at Charleville the next morning, May 24. The Fourth Army was ordered for die time being to stay where it was. It was tactically foolhardy, claimed Flitler, to commit tanks in die swampy Flanders lowlands to which die War Department would have sent them. The previous day die Fourdi Army’s General Gunter Flans von Kluge had himself persuaded Rundstedt it would be better to allow Kleist’s ar¬ mour time to regroup for a more methodical assault on the twenty-fifth. Rundstedt’s proposal, stated to Flitler on May 24, went one stage further: his armour should remain where it was and give an appropriate welcome to die enemy forces swept westward by Bock’s Army Group B; this pause would give die tanks a valuable respite. There was a political element too in this controversial decision. Flitler desired to spare Belgium’s relatively friendly Flemish population the de¬ struction of property this closing act of‘Yellow’ would entail. 302 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ At all events, Hitler did not hesitate to lend his authority to Rundstedt’s decision to rein in t lie tanks. At twelve-thirty the Fiihrer’s headquarters telephoned the ‘halt order’: the tanks were to stand fast west of the canal line; t lie re could be no talk of his going soft on the British, because that same day, in a directive giving guidelines for the further campaign against Britain, Hitler merely indicated in passing that the Luftwaffe’s present job in the nor t It was to break all resistance of the ‘encircled enemy’ and prevent any British forces from escaping across die Channel. Thus die tanks remained ‘rooted to the spot,’ as Haider bitterly com¬ mented in his diary. Hitler refused to set the tanks in motion. One more factor had arisen. On die evening of die twenty-fifth he explained to his adjutants diat he particularly wanted die SS elite brigade under Sepp Dietrich to join in diis crucial action at Dunkirk. His intention was to show the world that he had troops equal to the best that even such a racially advanced nation as Britain could field against him. By May 26, Sepp Dietrich’s Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler was in position. On diat morning, too, Rundstedt’s staff changed their attitude, since radio monitoring suggested diat dieir appreciation of enemy intentions was wrong. The British seemed to be pulling out. Haider’s Foreign Armies West branch had certainly reported as early as May 2 1 that the unusual number of troops transports seen in Dunkirk and Boulogne might indicate that British troops were about to be evacuated; and die permanent radio link between die war office in London and the BEF in France, first monitored the next day, also suggested that events were being removed from French control. On May 26 at 1:30 p . m . Hitler told Brauchitsch that the tanks might resume their eastward drive at once. They were to get within artillery range of Dunkirk, and die army’s heavy artillery and the Luftwaffe would do die rest. From the air, die Luftwaffe could see diat the British were embarking only dieir troops, abandoning all their equipment as diey fled.The beaches were diick with waiting Englishmen, the roads were choked with truck columns fifteen miles long. Goring boasted of the carnage his bombers were wreaking in Dunkirk harbour. ‘ Only fishing boats are getting dirough. Let’s hope the Tommies can swim!’ The reality, however, was different: the Luftwaffe bombers were largely based on airfields back in Germany, and eidier dieir bombs were ineffective against small ships or diey exploded harmlessly in die sand dunes; more ominously, die German bombers proved no match for the short-range British fighters. The Germans found that for the first time the enemy had local air superiority, and dieir troubles were The Warlord at the Western Front 303 added to by the fact that at the end of May the Luftwaffe’s Eighth Air Corps was grounded by fog for three days. while these momentous events were transpiring in the west, in Germa¬ ny’s new eastern domains a ruthless programme of subjugation and pacification had begun. On Sunday, May 2^, the Reichsfuhrer SS outlined to Hitler and the head of his chancellery, Hans Lammers, proposals for dealing with the various racial strains in Poland. Himmler handed the Fiihrer his six-page plan for screening the population of these new dominions for adults and children of sufficiently pure blood to allow their assimilation into Germany. He pro¬ posed that all other children should be taught only the necessary rudiments: ‘Simple counting up to five hundred, how to write their names, and lessons on tire divine commandment to obey the Germans and be honest, industri¬ ous, and well-behaved.’ Racially acceptable children could be evacuated to the Reich to receive a proper education. As Himmler pointed out: ‘How¬ ever cruel and tragic each individual case may be, this method is still the mildest and best if we are to reject as ungermanic, impossible, and incom¬ patible with our convictions the Bolshevik method of physically exterminating a race.’ After a few years of this racial sifting, he said, a low- grade potpourri of races would remain in the east. ‘This population will be available to Germany as a leaderless labour force. . .They themselves will eat and live better than under Polish rule. And, given their own lack of culture, they will be well appointed to work under t lie strict, forthright, and just leadership of the German nation on its eternal cultural mission.’As for the Jews, Himmler’s plan disclosed, ‘I hope to effect the complete dis¬ appearance of the Jew [from Europe] by means of a mass emigration of all Jews to Africa or some other such colony.’ Afterward, Himmler scribbled in his notebook: ‘Memorandum on Poland. Fiihrer warmly approves.’ A month later, Himmler took the opportunity of a train journey with Hitler to show him an eight-page plan for settling these eastern provinces with strong German stock. Himmler proposed that young unmarried Ger¬ man soldiers be induced to settle and work the land in the eastern provinces for up to eight years before marrying and taking over a farmstead or estate. The foreign labourers were to be kept in serfdom; attempts at sexual rela¬ tions with their German overlords would be punishable by death. He afterward noted on the document: ‘The Fiihrer said that every point I made was right.’ 304 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ by June 2, 1940 the British evacuation of Dunkirk was over. German army Intelligence estimated that half the enemy forces had been swept from the battlefield; Brauchitsch telephoned this information to Hitler that evening. The German army, with 136 divisions, was virtually intact. It would em¬ bark on die final defeat of France widi a two-to-one superiority. Hitler’s blueprint for this operation was largely determined by short-term political factors: Verdun must be captured as rapidly as possible. Overland contact must be made with Spain. Paris itself would be bypassed to the east and west, for Hitler feared nothing more than that an 1871-style Communist uprising in die capital might bring his forces into armed conflict with So¬ viet-backed Communists. The Maginot line would be taken from the rear. This second phase would begin at five a.m. on June 3. Meanwhile, surrounded by Party officials and personal bodyguards, Hitler toured the battlefields in northern France and Flanders. Morell, who ac¬ companied him, reported: ‘We were on die road for two days. Brussels, the Flanders battlefields (Ypres, Loretto,Vimy Ridge, Bensheim, Courtray, and Lille). As these areas were about the most densely populated on earth you can just imagine the devastation. A big square in Lille, piled high with charred tree trunks and automobiles, was littered with dead horses, burned out tanks, and buildings. On die roads along which die British and French re¬ treated there was a higgledy-piggledy tangle of cast-off clodiing, abandoned guns, and broken down tanks, widi stragglers streaming back home on both sides of the road, mostly on bicycles, laden with whatever diey can carry.’ At Brussels, where Bock had assembled his senior generals, Hitler ex¬ plained: ‘Gentlemen, you will have wondered why I stopped die armoured divisions outside Dunkirk.The fact was I could not afford to waste military effort. I was anxious lest the enemy launch an offensive from the Somme and wipe out die Fourth Army’s weak armoured force, perhaps even going so far as Dunkirk. Such a military rebuff,’ as he put it, ‘might have had intol¬ erable effects in foreign policy. . .’ At Charleville the next day, June 2, he addressed Rundstedt and his gen¬ erals. He outlined the new operation to them and informed them that Italy would shortly join in. He spoke of the reparations he proposed to exact from France. Once again he extolled Britain and her mission for the White race. It was not, he said, a matter of inconsequence to him which power ruled India. One general wrote in his diary: ‘He points out that widiout a navy the equal of Britain’s we could not hold on to her colonies for long. Thus we can easily find a basis for peace agreement widi Britain. France on The Warlord at the Western Front 305 tlie other hand must be stamped into the ground; she must pay the bill.’ As he left the villa, crowds of cheering soldiers thronged his car. Flitler, every inch die warlord, acknowledged their acclaim. To Flitler tlie war seemed already won. He said as much to Admiral Canaris on June 3 when the Intel¬ ligence chief came to report on the Abwehr agents who had been killed in the campaign so far, and he repeated it to Admiral Raeder the next day. Hitler’s occupation policy in Holland and Belgium was to establish these Germanic states as border dependencies around a mighty German core. As early as November he had drafted a decree on tlie administration of the countries which were to be occupied in ‘Yellow.’ In the version he had signed on May 9 he had deleted the words ‘There is to be no exploitation of the occupied regions in a selfish German interest.’ In Holland as in Norway he appointed a Reich Commissar to fill the vacuum left by the fleeing monar¬ chy; he chose an Austrian, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, evidently on Himmler’s re commendation. Since Belgium had fought honourably and capitulated unconditionally, Hitler was inclined to leniency. He agreed to Goring’s heartfelt request that King Leopold be chivalrously treated. A senior statesman, Otto Meiss¬ ner, was sent to tell the king that if Belgium now acted sensibly his kingdom might yet survive — otherwise Hitler would create a new gau, ‘Flanders.’ A telegram in German army hies indicates that King Leopold was furious at t lie looting and wilful destruction of his country by die withdrawing French and British troops, so Hitler’s political wisdom in ordering his armies to spare the cities of Flanders from unnecessary visitations undoubtedly paid dividends. Here too Hitler appointed a German military governor: Gen¬ eral Alexander von Falkenhausen was a liberal commander and maintained liaison with the king. There was in consequence little resistance to tire Nazi presence in Belgium. Hitler retrieved for Germany die former German areas of Eupen, Malmedy, and Moresnet which had been annexed by Bel¬ gium in 191 8; he ordered Brauchitsch to separate the Belgian prisoners of war into Flemings andWalloons — the former, 200,000 men of trusty Ger¬ manic stock, were to be released forthwith, while the latter, 130,000 less friendly prisoners, were to be held in continued pawn. for the second half of the French campaign, Hitler’s staff had found a new headquarters site in soudiern Belgium — in the deserted village of Bruly- de-Peche in a forest clearing.The whole headquarters, code-named ‘Forest Meadow,’ was ready with its anti-aircraft batteries and barbed-wire entan- 306 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ elements by the time Hitler arrived on June 6. He never felt as secure here as he did at Miinstereifel. Perhaps it was the swarms of mosquitoes that rose from the dense undergrowth to plague him; or perhaps it was a gen¬ eral impatience to end the war. Brauchitsch often visited in person. Hitler had mellowed toward him, and seems to have taken him more into his confidence about his future military plans. For a while Hitler abandoned his idea of discarding Brauchitsch — he could hardly do this to t lie Commander in Chief of a victorious army, as he mentioned to one adjutant. A member of the headquarters staff wrote of these weeks of waiting for the French collapse: ‘Every evening tlie Fiihrer ate privately with ten or twelve others. . . I remember we all debated the reason why the cuckoo makes a point of laying its eggs in other birds’ nests.’ One of Hitler’s secretaries wrote on June 13: ‘For a week now we have been out front again, in a deserted village. . . Every night we get the same performance: at precisely twenty past twelve, enemy aircraft come and circle over the village. . . If they don’t come then, the Chief’ — meaning Hitler — ‘inquires, “Where’s our airman on duty today then!” At any rate every night finds us standing until half past three or four in the morning with the Chief and other members of his staff in the open air watching the nocturnal aerial manoeuvres until t he reconnaissance planes vanish with the onset of dawn. The landscape at that hour of the morning reminds me of a painting by Caspar David Friedrich. . .’ On June 10, 1940, Italy formally declared war on Britain and France. Hitler made no attempt to disguise his contempt and forbade staff talks with the Italian forces. A member of Keitel’s staff noted: ‘The Fiihrer’s view is that since Italy left us in the lurch last autumn we are under no obligation to her now.’ In the foreign ministry sardonic comparisons were drawn be¬ tween Mussolini and the traditional circus clown who rolled up the mats after the acrobats completed their performance and demanded that the audience applaud him; or again, the Italians were dubbed the ‘harvest hands.’ There survives among the papers of Walt lier Hewel the German gov¬ ernment’s communique announcing Italy’s inauspicious action, with eloquent amendments written in Hitler’s own hand. Where the original text proclaimed: ‘German and Italian soldiers will now march shoulder to shoulder and not rest until Britain and France have been beaten,’ Hitler irritably crossed out ‘Britain’ and then redrafted t he latter part to read ‘. . . and will fight on until those in power in Britain and France are prepared to respect the rights of our two peoples to exist. ’ The Warlord at the Western Front 307 at the last meeting of the Supreme War Council held in France, Winston Churchill, the new British prime minister, begged the French to tie down die German forces by defending Paris. His appeal for yet more French blood to be spilled in Britain’s cause may have rung cynically in his allies’ ears; die French commanders left him in no doubt that for them the war was lost. The next day, June 13, one of Hitler’s secretaries wrote: ‘I personally can¬ not believe the war will go on after June. Yesterday there was a War Council in Paris: Weygand declared the battle for Paris lost and suggested a separate peace, in which Petain supported him; but Reynaud and some odier mem¬ bers diundered their protests against him. . .’ The French Cabinet resigned and die aged Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, veteran and hero ofWorldWar I, took over; Petain desired an armistice and wanted to know die German terms. One of Jodi’s staff later wrote: ‘When he heard this news Hitler was so delighted that he made a little hop. I had never seen him unbend like that before.’ He decided to meet Mussolini to discuss the terms at once. Meanwhile, die Wehrmacht was ordered to take Cherbourg and Brest as a matter of honour, and to occupy the Alsace and particularly Strasbourg as a matter of political geography. For many days Hitler deliberated on the nature of die armistice itself: he would invite the French to undergo the same indignities as they had visited on die defeated German generals in 19 1 8 at Compiegne; it had been rain¬ ing in 1918, and the Germans had been kept waiting in the downpour to humiliate diem.Then however he softened. Hitler wanted to show the British how magnanimous he could be in victory. At Munich, he persuaded Musso¬ lini to shelve Italian territorial claims until a final peace treaty. Only nordiern France and the Atlantic coast down to the Spanish frontier would be occu¬ pied by the Germans.The rest would remain under Petain’s control. When Admiral Raeder asked him on die twentiedi if Germany could claim die fleet, Hitler replied that the German navy had no entitlement to die ships as die French fleet was unbeaten.The armistice therefore formally renounced all claim to die French fleet: die French might retain part to preserve their colonial interests; the rest was to be taken out of commission. Odierwise die ships would be left unmolested — in fact Hitler wished for nothing bet¬ ter than that they might be scuttled by their crews. At noon on June 21, Hitler drove dirough die fog-shrouded roads of nordiern France to the forest of Compiegne.The old wooden dining car in which Marshal Foch had dictated his terms to die Germans on November 308 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ ii, 1918, had been retrieved from its permanent display at Rethondes and set up in the same spot in the forest. Forty minutes later the French ar¬ rived. Flitler sat at the long table in the dining car, while General Keitel read out the preamble. Flitler himself had composed these words: ‘After a heroic resistance, France has been vanquished. Therefore Germany does not intend to give the armistice terms or negotiations the character of an abuse of such a gallant enemy.’ After this twelve-minute introduction Flitler left while Keitel continued to dictate the terms. The railway coach would afterward be shipped to Berlin as an exhibit; the French memorial at Compiegne was demolished with explosives — only the statue of Marshal Foch himself remained untouched, on Flitler’s instructions. Fie could now fulfil a lifelong dream to visit Paris and see its architec¬ ture. Fie sent for his three favourite intellectuals — the architects Speer and Giesler and the sculptor Arno Breker — and they arrived at Bruly-de-Peche that evening, June 2 2 . At four a . m . the next morning they flew secretly to Le Bourget airport. Here at last were the monuments so familiar to him from his encyclopaedias. He was actually inside the baroque Opera, asking the grey-haired usher to show him long-forgotten chambers of whose ex¬ istence he was aware from the architectural plans. For three hours shortly after dawn he wandered around the Eiffel Tower, the Arc deTriomphe, and Les Invalides, where he doffed his cap in awe of Napoleon’s sarcophagus. When it was light enough he gazed out across the city from the forecourt of Sacre-Coeur and Montmartre. At ten that morning he flew back to Bel¬ gium. That evening he commanded Speer to draft a decree for the recon¬ struction of Berlin — it must outshine everything he had seen in Paris. An hour after midnight on June 23, 1940, a bugler of die 1st Guards Company took up station at each corner of the Fiihrer’s village headquar¬ ters. Seated at die bare wooden table in his requisitioned cottage, Hitler waited with Speer, his adjutants, and his secretaries. Throughout Europe millions of radios were tuned in to this quiet forest acre. He ordered the lights in the dining room switched off; and die window opened. A radio turned low whispered a commentary. At 1:35A.M., die moment prescribed for die armistice to take effect, the buglers sounded the cease-fire. It was the most moving moment of his life. For four years he had once fought as an anonymous infantryman, and now as Supreme Commander it had been granted to him to lead his people to a unique victory. After a while he broke die silence. ‘The burden of responsibility . . ,’ he began, but he could not go on, and asked for the lights to be turned on again. The Big Decision W hile A never-ending stream of congratulations reached tire chancellery in Berlin — from the exiled Kaiser in Holland, from die crown prince, from Hindenburg’s daughter, and even from Hitler’s old schoolmaster in Austria — die Fiihrer contentedly toured die Flanders battlefield of die First World War widi his old comrades Amann and Schmidt. At one point he darted off and clambered up an overgrown slope, looking for a concrete slab behind which he had once taken cover. His memory had not deceived him, for the same nondescript slab was still diere, and for all we know it lies there to this day. Colonel Schmundt had prepared an interim headquarters, ‘Tannenberg,’ high up in the Black Forest. Hitler did not want to return to Berlin until he had some unofficial response to the peace feelers he had extended to the British through Sweden. He would then stage a triumphal return to the capital on July 6 and make his formal offer in a Reichstag speech two days later. After that he would be free to attend to Russia in 1941. Stalin was a national leader of whose strategic capability Hitler was in no doubt; he knew how to think in terms of centuries — he set himself distant goals which he then pursued widr a single-mindedness and rudiless- ness that the Fiihrer could only admire. As early as June 2, 1940 Hitler had mentioned to Rundstedt at Charleville, ‘Now drat Britain will presumably be willing to make peace, I shall begin die final settlement of scores with Bolshevism.’ He obviously regarded the August 1939 pact with Stalin with increasing cynicism. It was a life insurance policy to which he had stead¬ fastly contributed but which he now felt had served its purpose; his victory in France had given him a feeling of immortality. There is an abundance of contemporary evidence diat Hitler was still well disposed toward the British Empire. The archives of die High Corn¬ s'^ 3 io iv: ‘War of Liberation’ mand and the navy provide ample examples. This was why Keitel rejected a proposal that Britain’s food supplies be sabotaged, and on June 3 Hitler explicitly forbade Canaris to introduce bacterial warfare against Britain. On June 1 7, Jodi’s principal assistant conhrmed to the naval staff that the Fiihrer has anything but the intention of completely destroying the British Empire, as England’s downfall would be to the detriment of the White race. Hence die possibility of making peace with Britain after France’s defeat and at the latter’s expense, on condition that our colo¬ nies are returned and Britain renounces her influence in Europe. With regard to an invasion . . . die Fiihrer has not so far uttered any such inten¬ tion, as he is fully aware of the extreme difficulties inherent in such an operation.That is also why die High Command has as yet undertaken no studies or preparations. (The Commander in Chief, Luftwaffe, has put certain things in hand, e.g ., die activation of a parachute division.) Together widi Goring, Hitler hatched a plan to offer Britain twelve divi¬ sions for‘overseas purposes’ — die defence of her Empire against aggression. More realistically, Admiral Raeder urged him to launch immediate air raids on the main British naval bases and to prepare a seaborne invasion; Hitler however believed an invasion quite superfluous. ‘One way or anodier,’ he said, ‘the British will give in.’ On June 23 Christa Schroeder, one of his private secretaries, wrote: ‘The Chief plans to speak to the Reichstag shortly. It will probably be his last appeal to Britain. If they don’t come around even then, he will proceed widiout pity. I believe it still hurts him even now to have to tackle the British. It would obviously be far easier for him if they would see reason themselves. If only they knew t hat die Chief wants nothing more from diem than the return of our own former colonies, perhaps diey might be more approachable. . .’ On the same day General Hans Jeschonnek, the Chief of Air Staff, re¬ fused to participate in die invasion planning by die High Command (OKW) since ‘in his [Jeschonnek’s] view die Fiihrer has no intention of mounting an invasion.’ When the air member of Jodi’s staff nonetheless pressed Jeschonnek to help, the general bitingly replied, ‘That’s the OKW’s affair. There won’t be any invasion, and I have no time to waste on planning one.’ Hitler felt diat the British public was being deliberately misled as to his war aims. ‘Naturally, it matters a lot what die Britons expect the Fiihrer’s The Big Decision 311 purpose to be in fighting their country,’ wrote Walther Hewel to a contact in Switzerland on June 30. ‘They were cajoled into this catastrophe by emigres and liberal-thinking people . . . now it is up to them to find some way out of this mess. The point is, can die British grasp the genius and greatness of die Fiihrer, not only as a benefit to Germany but to die whole of Europe too? Can diey swallow their envy and pride enough to see in him not die conqueror but the creator of die new Europe? If diey can they will automatically come to the conclusion that die Fiihrer does not want to destroy the Empire, as claimed by die emigres who are duping diem.’ A few days later Baron Ernst von Weizsacker summed up the situation dius in his diary: ‘Perhaps we automatically shy from taking over die im¬ mense task of inheriting bodi Europe and the British Empire. “Conquer Britain — but what then, and what for?” —This question of die Fiihrer’s is countered by others, like Herr von Ribbentrop, with a comparison to two great trees diat cannot prosper if they grow up close together.’ In Weizsacker’s view Britain would not give in unless clubbed to die ground — and only afterWinston Churchill had been disposed of. deep in the Black Forest, die Fiihrer planned die Reich’s new frontiers. Now that victory was his, he saw no reason not to gadier the spoils of war. He would throw France back to the frontiers of 1 <,40. He personally in¬ structed the two western gauleiters, Joseph Biirckel and Robert Wagner, to re-annex Alsace and Lorraine by stealth; any formal German announce¬ ment that they were doing so might prompt Mussolini to enforce Italy’s territorial claims against France, or even provoke Marshal Petain to trans¬ fer his fleet and African colonies to die enemy. Hitler warned his legal experts to ‘put as little down on paper as possible,’ for the new Germany would have a western frontier not enjoyed since the late Middle Ages. The line he envisaged ran from the Somme estuary southward; it gave Germany die Channel ports of Boulogne, Calais, and Dunkirk, much of Flanders, all of Lorraine, the Franche-Comte and part of Burgundy, as far as Lake Geneva. Under die peace settlement Hitler also intended to oblige his former enemies, as well as the pro-Axis countries, to agree on a uniform solution of die Jewish problem. France would be required to make available Mada¬ gascar to accommodate Europe’s Jews. Hitler revealed this decision to Admiral Raeder on June 2 o and evidently to Ribbentrop and Himmler soon after, for experts in the foreign ministry worked eagerly on the Madagascar plan diroughout the summer. Himmler told a relieved Governor-General 312 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ Hans Frank that t he: Fiihrer had ordered an end to die dumping of Jews in the Generalgouvernement of Poland after all, as they were all going to be deported overseas, including those now in Poland. At a Krakow conference the city’s police chief SS General Bruno Streckenbach quoted Himmler: ‘When and how die deportation begins, depends on die peace settlement.’ it is difficult to relate die political and military developments of the sum¬ mer of 1940 to the industrial — and hence longer-range — decisions that Hitler took. In die second week of June he ordered the arms industry to convert to the special needs of the war against Britain: all effort must be applied to the mass production of Junkers 88 bombers and of submarines. But though the ammunition dumps were to be replenished, the peacetime consumer-goods industry was restarted. The field army was to be reduced in strengdi immediately by diirty-hve divisions, which would provide in¬ dustry widi the manpower it now lacked. The Soviet Union loomed ever larger on Hitler’s horizon. As envisaged under the Nazi-Soviet pact, on June 1 2, Moscow issued an ultimatum to the Baltic state of Lithuania, followed by similar demands on Estonia and Latvia. Soviet army and NKVD police troops invaded these countries, and from the concentrations on Romania’s frontier it was clear that further moves were intended there too. Army Intelligence even recorded a flood of reports that the Russians were going to invade Germany. The rapidity with which Hitler defeated France must have taken Stalin by surprise, for on the twenty-third Molotov informed Germany that despite an earlier promise to avoid war widi Romania over the Bessarabian region, the Soviet Union would brook no further delay and was resolved to ‘use force if the Roma¬ nian government refuses a peaceful settlement.’ To Hitler’s evident consternation, die Russians also laid claim to Bukovina, a region formerly owned by die Austrian crown and never by Imperial Rus¬ sia; Bukovina was densely populated by ethnic Germans. Hitler was determined to avoid a Balkan quagmire at all costs, and under German pressure die Romanian government bowed to force majeure on the twenty- eighth. To his adjutants Hitler expressed all the private anger about these two Russian moves — into the Baltic states and eastern Romania — that he was unable to vent in public. He termed them the ‘first Russian attacks on western Europe’. Since the autumn of 1939 Stalin had now annexed over 286,000 square miles, with populations of over twenty million people. The Big Decision 313 During the last days of June, Hitler had a number of private talks with Brauchitsch, some of which General Haider also attended. Haider was con¬ cerned by Russia’s steady military build-up along the September 1939 demarcation line in Poland, and by her colossal armaments programme. On June 23, Hitler ruled that the army was to be reduced from 1 33 to 120 divisions (although 20 of the 3 3 divisions to be disbanded could be reactivated on short notice if necessary); but he directed that the armoured and mechanised divisions were to be doubled, and that no fewer than sev¬ enteen divisions were to be stationed in the east, together with the headquarters of General Georg von Kuchler’s Eighteenth Army. Two days later, Haider was to be found briefing his staff on die new element in all diis, which was ‘Germany’s striking power in die east.’ In an order to the three army group commanders on June 2 3, General von Brauchitsch mentioned diat the various organisational changes would be effected ‘partly in occupied areas, partly in Germany, and partly in die east.’ On the last day of June, Haider explained to Baron von Weizsacker diat Germany must keep a weather eye on die east. ‘Britain will probably need a display of military force before she gives in and allows us a free hand for die east.’ On July 3 General Haider was even more explicit: ‘It has to be examined from die angle of how best to deliver a military blow to Russia, to extort from her a recognition of Germany’s dominant role in Europe.’ ‘today, Saturday morning,’ Morell had written on June 29, 1940,‘Ispent about half an hour alone widi the Fiihrer. He’s in magnificent healdi. This aromatic air does wonders for him too. He says he slept longer and better last night than almost ever before.’ Tannenberg was not one of his most attractively sited headquarters. The tall pine trees sighed in the wind, and it rained heavily. There were only a few days of sunshine in die week diat he stayed here, beginning on June 2 8. The Italian ambassador called on him here; Hitler hinted diat Germany was on die direshold of‘great new tasks,’ without being more specific. In truth, he had not yet made up his own mind which way to turn. He mentioned to Schmundt that he was turning over in his mind whether or not to fight Russia. The jug-eared Wehrmacht adjutant told Below of this portentous remark afterward, as diey walked gloomily through the dripping forest. (The scene of this exchange remained indelibly in the Luftwaffe adjutant’s memory and helps to fix die timing of Hitler’s decisions in die rush of history that summer.) Hitler also seems to have discussed this possibility 314 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ with his foreign minister; and one of Jodi’s staff — whether on Hitler’s di¬ rect command cannot now be discerned — privately began drafting an OKW operational plan for an attack on Russia.* by late June of 1940, Hitler suspected that the British had no intention of submitting; by the end of the first week in July, this suspicion had hardened to a certainty. That the British planned to fight on — relying on their air force for the defence of their isles and a strategic attack on Germany’s rear — was an unwelcome revelation for Hitler and the OKW operations staff. Hitler or¬ dered his service commanders to start invasion preparations since ‘under certain circumstances’ die need might arise; but the mere diought of com¬ mitting upward of thirty good divisions to an opposed operation ‘overseas’ must have smitten die Fiihrer with grave apprehension. His heart was not in it. ‘The Fiihrer does not really want to press on [against Britain],’ Dr. Goebbels had noted as early as June 27. ‘But he may well have to. If Churchill stays on, assuredly.’ Hitler kept putting off Goring’s plans for a mass air attack on Britain, even though die British bombers continued with dieir forays into Germany. ‘Churchill,’ wrote Goebbels on die twenty-ninth, ‘is just trying to provoke us. But die Fiihrer doesn’t intend to respond, yet.’ This did not mean that Hitler would not continue to threaten an inva¬ sion for the purposes of strategic deception. An OKW directive signed on June 28 by Lossberg — who certainly knew diat a Russian campaign was now on the cards — ordered the Intelligence services to use all available channels to dupe the British into believing that ‘ Germany is preparing war against the British mainland and overseas possessions with all dispatch in the event diat Britain desires to continue the fight.’ A German air offensive would start once die Luftwaffe had recovered its breadi; moreover, so the deception plan was to suggest, Germany, Italy, and Russia would soon open a campaign against the British position in die Middle East — this was the ‘real’ explanation for die five panzer divisions and die infantry divisions being wididrawn from France to the Reich. (These were die divisions be¬ ing moved up against Russia.) Hitler however had drawn up no plans whatever to attack Britain. Send¬ ing for Dr. Goebbels on July 2, he made diis quite plain: he would instead *This was Colonel Bernhard von Lossberg; see page 3 16 for his plan (‘Operation Fritz’). The Big Decision 315 offer them one last chance, in a speech to the Reichstag. If they did not accept, he would defeat them in four weeks: ‘The Fiihrer does not want to destroy the Empire,’ recorded Goebbels after their private meeting, ‘be¬ cause everything it loses will accrue to foreign powers and not to us.’ The very next day Mr. Churchill displayed t lie extent of his determina¬ tion to fight on: on July 3 he ordered his navy to open fire on the remnants of the French fleet anchored at Mers-el-Kebir, North Africa, an act of brigandry which killed 1,297 French sailors who had until few days previ¬ ously been his allies, and wounding 33U more. This was Flitler’s own language, and the message reached him loud and clear. Moreover, docu¬ ments captured in France demonstrated unmistakably the kind of war that Britain was preparing: among the records of die Supreme War Council was one of a November 1939 meeting at which Chamberlain had disclosed diat die British air staff had developed a plan to use its new long-range bombers for the destruction of die Ruhr, site of an estimated 60 percent of German industry. Flitler’s agents had also discovered notes written by Daladier dur¬ ing a visit to Paris by Churchill and British air marshals on May 16. The French prime minister wrote of‘a long technical argument with his gener¬ als, who declare to me that die German advance into France can be slowed down by bombing the Ruhr. I retort it is absurd to believe diat.’ Shocked by Mers-el-Kebir, Flitler scrapped the conciliatory speech he had drafted for delivery to the Reichstag on July 6, 1940, and postponed die session altogedier. that day he returned to Berlin, two mondis after he had sallied forth to fight die French. A public holiday had been declared in the capital, a million swastika flags had been distributed free to the people lining the streets to die chancellery, and roses were scattered in the streets for Flitler’s motor cavalcade to crush. Dr. Goebbels himself broadcast die running commen¬ tary over die radio network as at three p.m. Flitler’s special train pulled into Anhalt station. The choice between attacking Britain or Russia was one that would now occupy him continuously until the end of July and to a lesser degree until autumn. Unexpectedly he was now confronted by two enemies, an ugly prospect at any time; but he had only one bullet left in the breech, as he himself later graphically put it. That the RAF might bomb his industry con¬ cerned Flitler less dian the mischief Britain might create in the Balkans — die source of his oil. The planning documents recently captured in France 316 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ had been an eye-opener, betraying, as they did, the sympathetic attitude shown by Turkey, Greece, and particularly Yugoslavia toward the various moves contemplated by the Allies. In short, the Balkans could prove Hit¬ ler’s undoing, and he told Italy’s foreign minister as much on the day after his return to Berlin.The Italians wished to invadeYugoslavia now, but Hitler urged them not to; because if they did, Hungary could invade Romania and the entire Balkans would go up in flames. ‘The Russians would therefore certainly advance toward their ancient Byzantine goal, the Dardanelles and Constantinople,’ said Hitler. ‘Things might go so far that Britain and Russia, under the pressure of events, could discover a community of interest.’ by now both General von Brauchitsch and Colonel von Lossberg, a mem¬ ber of Jodi’s staff, had already realised that Hitler proposed a Russian campaign. On July i, 1940 Brauchitsch had asked the War Department (OKH) to ‘do some operational thinking’ about this, and Haider had asked General Hans von Greiffenberg to start planning accordingly in the opera¬ tions branch of the General Staff. Simultaneously, Lossberg completed an OKW study of a Russian cam¬ paign, code-named ‘Fritz’ after his son; it was some thirty pages long. Early in July, during the sojourn of the OKW command train Atlas on a siding at Grunewald station in Berlin, he directed Captain vonTrotha to obtain maps of Russia. He was undoubtedly right when he later suggested that there was a psychological factor in Hitler’s decision to deal with Russia first.The Fiihrer realised that victory in France had produced both in his command staffs and in the German people a smugness and a self-satisfaction and a savouring of the peace to come diat threatened to undermine all hope of launching a superhuman crusade against the Bolsheviks. In April 1941 he was to say: ‘The people must always be led by the nose to paradise. Today we are more powerfully armed than ever before. . .That is why we have to use the arms we have now for the real battle — die one that counts, because one day die Russians, die countless millions of Slavs, are going to come.’ In spite of all this, Hitler allowed die phoney invasion preparations against Britain to continue in the hope that this threat would bring die British peo¬ ple to their senses. Admiral Raeder argued that the British would not make peace without, figuratively speaking, a taste of the whip first: he urged Hit¬ ler to order heavy air raids on some big city like Liverpool; an invasion must be regarded only as a last resort. Hitler refused to unleash the Luftwaffe against Britain.The signs were in fact conflicting. He learned diat the expa- The Big Decision 31 7 triate Duke ofWindsor — who had served with die French military mission near Paris but had now escaped through Spain to Portugal — was bitterly attacking Churchill’s needless prolongation of the war and predicting diat ‘protracted heavy bombardment would make Britain ready for peace.’ Flitler was perplexed by England’s continued intransigence. He told Goebbels on July 6 diat he had had his Reichstag speech, with die peace offer, ready to deliver when Churchill’s bombardment of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir had upset the applecart. He assumed diat Churchill had de¬ liberately misinformed his colleagues about Germany’s armistice demands on France, for Ambassador Stafford Cripps was heard to explain in Moscow diat Britain could not make peace ‘because Germany would without doubt demand the entire British fleet to be handed over to her.’ Repeating die now familiar arguments he had heard, Haider wrote on die thirteenth: ‘The Fiihrer . . . accepts diat he may have to force Britain to make peace; but he is reluctant to do so, because if we do defeat the British in die held, die British Empire will fall apart. Germany will not profit diere- from. We should be paying widi German blood for something from which only Japan, America, and others would draw benefit.’ having formally postponed die planned Reichstag session Hitler left Berlin on July 8, announcing to his private staff diat he wanted to think things over. For die next ten days he drifted purposelessly about Bavaria and Aus¬ tria, and then retired to the Obersalzberg for a week of quiet reflection. The Hungarian premier, Count PaulTeleki, brought him a letter from his regent, Admiral Nicholas Horthy, on July 10; die letter is lost, but Horthy’s handwritten draft hinted that Germany was the only power that could pre¬ vent Stalin and die Red Army from ‘devouring the whole world like an artichoke, leaf by leaf.’ With Hitler’s acquiescence, Joachim von Ribbentrop began an extended manoeuvre to win the support of the Duke ofWindsor, who was now stay¬ ing at die Lisbon mansion of one of Portugal’s leading bankers prior to taking up a new post at Bermuda. Hitler’s respect for die duke (whom he had met in 1937) was increased by fresh reports of die latter’s unconcealed loathing of Churchill and the war, and by word of his willingness to accept high office in a Britain humbled by armistice. For die moment, German policy was limited to trying to procure the duke’s arrival in an area widiin Germany’s sphere of influence, for example southern Spain. Ribbentrop genuinely feared the British secret service had evil designs on the duke, for 318 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ he sent Walter Schellenberg to Lisbon with instructions to ensure tint no harm came to him. Schellenberg was also to arrange for tlie duke and his duchess to cross back into Spain if they wished. On July 11 Ribbentrop confidentially cabled his ambassador in Madrid that if the duke so desired Germany was willing to smooth the path for ‘the duke and duchess to occupy the British throne.’ By die last week of July it seemed that Ribbentrop might succeed: die Spanish emissary quoted the duke as saying that he would break widi his brother King George and with Britain’s present policies and retire to a life of peace in southern Spain — but the Lisbon embassy had impounded his passports. When the duke had been told the time might come when he would again play an important part in English public life, and perhaps even return to die dirone, he had replied in astonishment diat the British Constitution made diis impossible for a king who had once abdicated. Ribbentrop’s am¬ bassador reported, ‘When die emissary then suggested that the course of the war might bring about changes even in the British Constitution, the duchess in particular became very thoughtful.’ Small wonder diat Mr. Churchill’s government would make strenuous attempts, after the war, to locate and destroy these compromising secret telegrams. hitler’s suspicion of collusion between Russia and Britain was power¬ fully reinforced by reports of conversations of Russian diplomats in Moscow; these reports were intercepted by the German Intelligence service. Thus on July 3 the Turkish ambassador reported to Ankara on a Moscow conversation widi British ambassador Sir Stafford Cripps: Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin, the President of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, had assured the Briton diat Britain and Russia had many interests in common; it was necessary for diem to arrive at an understanding. Similarly, a decoded Greek telegram, sent to Athens by the Greek legation in Moscow, reported on a two-hour interview with Cripps on July 6. The Englishman had emphasised that the Russians were feverishly mak¬ ing war preparations (‘which is quite correct’ noted the Greek telegram). Significantly the Greek envoy had retorted that ‘it appears dubious to me that if Germany believes die Kremlin definitely intends to attack she will not take action immediately.’ Cripps had claimed in his reply diat because Germany could not be ready to attack Russia before autumn, and even then could not endure a winter campaign, ‘she will be forced to postpone the war against Russia until next spring — by which time die Russians will be The Big Decision 319 ready too.’ Until t lien both parties would avoid any disruption of their mutual relations. Speaking to the Turkish ambassador on July 16 Cripps admitted: ‘I fully understand how delicate this matter is, but faced by imminent Ger¬ man attack . . . we are forced to come to some arrangement with the Russians whatever the cost.’ These intercepted dispatches were placed in Hitler’s hands on his return to Berlin. Defeating Russia was therefore vital; defeating Britain was not. On July 16 Hitler, without noticeable enthusiasm, accepted Jodi’s draft order to the Wehrmacht to prepare an invasion of Britain ‘and if need be carry it out.’ But the navy was more circumspect. The consequent withdrawal of a thou¬ sand heavy barges from the German inland waterways would paralyse large sections of industry; in addition, adequate local air superiority was a sine qua non for any invasion operation. On tlie fifteenth the OKW had orally asked the commanders in chief whether everything could theoretically be ready by August 1 3 ; on his arrival now in Berlin Hitler learned from Raeder that dais would be quite impossible. Nonetheless die Fiihrer ordered die stage to be set — die transport ships and crews were to be marshalled along die Channel coast in full view of die British. His aim was transparent, for die Luftwaffe meanwhile operated widi a decorum and restraint hardly com¬ patible with the strategic objective of fighting for air supremacy. He returned to Berlin on July 19, 1940, and outlined to Dr. Goebbels and die others around his lunch table the long-delayed speech that he now proposed to make to die Reichstag. It would contain a short, truncated peace offer to the British people widi die clear connotation that this was his last word on die matter. The flower-bedecked Kroll Opera-house, the chosen setting for die speech, was that afternoon packed to overflowing. His delivery was as effective as ever, now narrating, now mocking, now ranting, now appealing. Its burden was an ‘appeal to Britain’s common sense.’What was unortho¬ dox was diat he announced an avalanche of promotions for all his principal commanders on the western front. Hermann Goring must have learned diat he was to be created a Reichsmarschall — one rung higher even than field marshal — for he had already ordered a gaudy new uniform. The peace offer fell on deaf ears. That same evening the British journal¬ ist Sefton Delmer broadcast over the BBC a coarsely phrased rebuff, and Churchill even ordered a fresh air raid that night. Hitler still hoped reason would prevail. ‘For die moment,’ Goebbels advised his diary, ‘die Fiihrer does not want to accept that it is indeed Brit- 320 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ ain’s response. He is still minded to wait awhile. After all, he appealed to the British people and not to Churchill.’ before the day was over Hitler confidentially assured the sixty-five-year- old von Rundstedt, now a field marshal, that he had not the slightest real intention of launching a cross-Channel invasion. He also evidently repeated to Brauchitsch his demand diat the general staff properly explore a Russian campaign. The strategic objective that Hitler outlined echoed Lossberg’s draft, code-named ‘Fritz’: ‘To defeat die Russian army or at least to take over as much Russian territory as is necessary to protect Berlin and the Silesian industrial region from enemy air raids. It would be desirable to advance so far into Russia that we could devastate the most important areas there with our own Luftwaffe.’ Before leaving Berlin on July 21, Hitler collected Raeder, Brauchitsch, and Goring’s Chief of Staff, Jeschonnek, in the chancellery and explained to diem die need to take die necessary po¬ litical and military steps to safeguard the crucial oil imports should — as was ‘highly unlikely’ — die Romanian and Russian supplies threaten to dry up. On die question of an invasion of England Hitler concluded: ‘If die prepa¬ rations cannot definitely be completed by the beginning of September, it will prove necessary to ponder odier plans.’ By this he meant diat he would postpone the decision on England until May of 1941, and attack Russia diis very autumn. While awaiting Raeder’s report on die prospects for an invasion of Britain, Hitler toured Weimar and Bayreudi. There were now air raid wardens in die famous dieatre and the printed programme in his hands included a full-page announcement on what to do if the sirens sounded. On the twenty-fifth Hitler was back in the capital. Raeder again tried to dissuade him from an invasion of Britain. Hitler asked him to report again on the position in a few days’ time. His final decision may however have been triggered by a fresh intercepted telegram that was shown him before he left Berlin for die Berghof in Bavaria late diat evening. In it, the Yugoslav ambassador in Moscow, Milan Gavrilovic, quoted Sir Stafford Cripps’s view diat France’s collapse had put die Soviet government in great fear of Germany. ‘The Soviet government is afraid that die Ger¬ mans will launch a sudden and unexpected attack. They are trying to gain time.’ Gavrilovic had also discussed die growing Russian military strength widi hisTurkish colleague. The Turkish ambassador considered war between Germany and Russia a foregone conclusion. The Big Decision 321 Hitler arrived at tho Berghof in time for lunch on July 26. Here over the next few days he held a series of meetings with Balkan potentates. One morning after die regular war conference in the Berghof’s Great Hall, Hitler asked General Jodi to stay behind and questioned him on the possibility of launching a lightning attack on Russia before winter set in.This question was unquestionably an echo of die mocking tone adopted by So¬ viet leaders in dieir conversations with Balkan diplomats. Hitler himself referred to ‘intercepted conversations’ in diis connection on July 31. He explained diat he was perfectly aware that Stalin had only signed his 1939 pact with Germany to open die floodgates of war in Europe; what Stalin had not bargained for was diat Hitler would finish off France so soon — this explained Russia’s headlong occupation of the Baltic states and die Roma¬ nian provinces in the latter part of June. It was clear from die increasing Soviet military strength along the eastern frontier, on which Germany still had only five divisions stationed, that Russia had furdier acquisitions in mind. Hitler feared diat Stalin planned to bomb or invade the Romanian oil fields diat autumn. Russia’s aims, he said, had not changed since Peter the Great: she wanted the whole of Poland and die political absorption of Bulgaria, dien Finland, and finally the Dardanelles. War with Russia was inevitable, argued Hitler; such being die case, it was better to attack now — diis au¬ tumn. He would make one last political attempt to explore Stalin’s intentions before finally making up his mind. when the Fiihrer called his OKW, army, and navy chiefs to die Berghof on July 31, 1940, his reluctance to reach a firm decision on an invasion of Britain contrasted strongly with his powerful arguments in favour of at¬ tacking Russia. Admiral Raeder sedulously gave the impression that the navy would be ready for die invasion of England by mid-September 1940; but having done so he also advanced formidable technical reasons why diey should wait un¬ til May 1941. In the coming autumn only two moon and tide periods were attractive — from August 20 to 26, and from September 19 to 26; die first was too early, die second fell in a traditional foul-weadier period. If Hitler waited until May 1941, on die odier hand, the navy’s fleet of battleships would be brought up to four by die new Tirpitz and Bismarck; diat said, die admiral returned to Berlin. After he had gone, Hitler commented to Brauchitsch and Haider diat he doubted the technical practicability of an invasion. He was impressed by 322 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ Britain’s naval supremacy and saw no real reason to take ‘such a risk for so little.’The war was already all but won. With more marked enthusiasm the Fiihrer turned to the other means of dashing Britain’s hopes. Submarine and air war would take up to two years to defeat Britain. Britain still had high hopes of the United States, and she was clutching at Russia like a drowning man: if Russia were to drop out of the picture, then the United States must too, because with the USSR elimi¬ nated Japan would be released as a threatening force in the Far East. That was the beauty of attacking Russia. ‘If Russia is laid low, then Britain’s last hope is wiped out, and Germany will be master of Europe and the Balkans.’ There was, alas, no time after all to commence a Russian campaign that autumn, as winter would set in before the operation could be concluded; but if it were started in the spring — May 1941— the army would have five clear months in which to defeat the Soviet Union. The army he had so re¬ cently ordered cut back to 1 2o divisions would now be expanded to a record 180 divisions; whereas on June 23 he and Brauchitsch had agreed to allo¬ cate 17 infantry divisions to the east, he now proposed that by spring his strength diere be built up to 120 divisions. Neither Field Marshal von Brauchitsch nor General Haider, chief of the General Staff, offered any objections. The Dilemma F or twenty years Adolf Hitler had dreamed of an alliance with Bri¬ tain. Until far into the war he clung to the dream with all the vain, slightly ridiculous tenacity of a lover unwilling to admit that his feelings are unrequited. Goebbels watched this undignified scene with dis¬ quiet, revealing to his diary on the first day of August 1940: ‘Feelers from here to Britain without result. Via Spain as well. London is looking for a catastrophe.’ As Hitler told Major Quisling on the eighteenth: ‘After mak¬ ing one proposal after another to the British on t he reorganisation of Europe, I now find myself forced against my will to fight this war against Britain. I find myself in the same position as Martin Luther, who had just as little desire to fight Rome but was left with no alternative.’ This was t lie dilemma confronting Hitler that summer. He hesitated to crush the British. Accordingly, he could not put his heart into die invasion planning. More fatefully, Hitler stayed die hand of the Luftwaffe and for¬ bade any attack on London under pain of court-martial; the all-out saturation bombing of London, which his strategic advisers Raeder, Jodi, and Jeschonnek all urged upon him, was vetoed for one implausible reason af¬ ter anodier. Though his staffs were instructed to examine every peripheral British position — Gibraltar, Egypt, the Suez Canal — for its vulnerability to attack, die heart of die British Empire was allowed to beat on, unmolested until it was too late. In these mondis an adjutant overheard Hitler heatedly shouting into a chancellery telephone, ‘We have no business to be destroy¬ ing Britain. We are quite incapable of taking up her legacy,’ meaning die empire; and he spoke of the ‘devastating consequences’ of die collapse of diat empire. The views of the Duke ofWindsor may have coloured Hitler’s view of die British mentality. It was reported from Lisbon diat die duke had de- 3 2 3 324 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ scribed the war as a crime, Lord Halifax’s speech repudiating Hitler’s ‘peace offer’ as shocking, and the British hope for a revolution in Germany as child¬ ish. The duke delayed his departure for die Bahamas as long as he could. ‘Undiminished though his support for die Fiihrer’s policies are,’ reported the Lisbon ambassador, ‘he diinks it would be premature for him to come right out into die open at present.’ Ribbentrop cabled his Madrid ambassador to send confidential word to the duke’s Portuguese host, a banker, diat Germany was determined to use as much force as was necessary to bring Britain to the peace table. ‘It would be good if the duke could stand by to await further developments.’ Firmly escorted by armed ScotlandYard detectives, the duke left however for the Bahamas on August i. In his last conversation with his host he replied to Ribbentrop’s message: he praised Hitler’s desire for peace and reiterated that had he still been king diere would have been no war, but he explained that given an official instruction by his government to leave Europe for the Bahamas he had no choice but to obey. To disobey would be to show his hand too soon. He prearranged a codeword with die banker for his immedi¬ ate return to Lisbon. From an agent in die State Department in Washington, Hitler obtained copies of the current despatches of the American ambassador in London, Joseph P. Kennedy; Kennedy was predicting in these that die Germans had only to continue the blockade — Britain’s east coast harbours were already paralysed, die rest badly damaged.This was Hitler’s view too.To Goring it was one more reason not to sacrifice his Luftwaffe in preparations for an invasion which he believed would never take place. ‘If die losses we sustain are within reason,’ recorded Goebbels after conferring with Hitler on the sixth, ‘dien the [bombing] operation will proceed. If diey are not, then we shall try new ways. Invasion not planned, but we shall hint at it subliminally in our propaganda to confuse the enemy.’ Hitler, it seems was transfixed by his own foolish amour for England. On August 6 the army’s Chief of Staff complained in his diary: ‘We now have a peculiar situation in which the navy is tongue-tied widi inhibitions, the Luftwaffe is unwilling to tackle die task which diey first have to accomplish, and the OKW — which really does have some Wehrmacht commanding to do here — lies lifeless. We are die only people pressing ahead.’ To his Berlin lunch guests on the eighth, Hitler airily explained diat the weadier was still not good enough for bombing London. He then returned to die Berghof, where he awarded Frau Bormann die Mother’s Cross in The Dilemma 325 gold for her considerable procreative accomplishments, and he inspected die new beehives Bormann had laid out — as diough there were no more pressing problems at this hour in Germany’s history. at the Berghof, die tapestry was drawn aside at one end of die Great Hall and a cinema screen was set up at the other. Every available Russian and Finnish newsreel him of dieir recent war widi one another was run and rerun, while Hitler and his staff studied the Russians’ weapons and the tac¬ tics that the dims revealed. The Intelligence reports now reaching Hitler were unmistakable and disconcerting: a gigantic rearmament effort had begun in Russia; in addition, according to Reinhard Heydrich’s organisa¬ tion, the Soviet trade missions were spreading Communist propaganda and organising cells in German factories. One day at the Brown House, die Nazi Party headquarters in Munich, Hitler told Ribbentrop that he did not intend to stand idly by and allow die Soviet Union to steamroller Germany; Ribbentrop begged him not to contemplate war widi Russia, and he quoted Bismarck’s dictum about die unwillingness of die gods to allow mere mortals a peek at die cards of Fate. When Keitel submitted a handwritten memorandum against waging war widi Russia if it could possibly be avoided, Hitler summoned him to a pri¬ vate interview and scadiingly reduced the held marshal’s arguments one by one: Stalin had as little intention of adhering to their treaty as he did; moreo¬ ver, he pointed out, Stalin was alarmed by Hitler’s military successes. Keitel was hurt. Without a word he turned on his heel and left die room. Hitler retained die memorandum. Presumably it vanished into his safe along widi his collection of other incriminating documents. Keitel had already, on August 2, instructed his staff at die OKW that die Fiihrer now recognised diat Britain might not collapse that year. In 1941 die United States might intervene and ‘our relationship to Russia might undergo a change.’The OKW’s Admiral Canaris was also briefed inAugust on Hitler’s intention of attacking Russia in the spring. The OKW issued an order camouflaging die build-up of German strengdi in the east, and transparently, or perhaps super-cunningly, code-named it ‘Eastern Build-up.’ Admiral Raeder however was informed by Hitler during August in die opposite sense — that diese growing troop movements to die eastern front were just an outsize camouflage to distract from die imminent invasion of Britain. 326 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ In fact, the truth was the reverse.The OKW’s war diary stated explicitly on the eighth: ‘“Eastern Build-up” is our camouflage order for preparations against Russia.’ Hitler’s mind was on the shape of the Greater German Reich to come — and above all on how Germany was to police die more turbulent and dissi¬ dent peoples diat would come widiin the Reich’s frontiers.This, he declared to Colonel Schmundt on August 6, must be die peacetime task of hisWaffen SS.There would never be any need to call on die regular forces to take up arms against their fellow countrymen. These police troopers, noted Schmundt, must be unconditional champions of the Nazi ideology — a body of men who would never make common cause with the seditious prole¬ tariat; to increase their audiority in the eyes of the people, the Waffen SS must prove their value on die coming battlefields; diey must be an elite. The Wehrmacht objected bitterly to this further entrenchment of Himmler’s private army, but Keitel agreed with Hitler’s arguments and ordered them given the widest circulation within the army. goring told Hitler he needed three days of good weather to begin the air attack on the British fighter defences. On August i 2, he announced that the attack would begin die next day. Hitler left for Berlin. When Raeder warned on die diirteenth that die invasion was a last resort, not to be undertaken lightly, Hitler reassured him that he would first see what results the Luft¬ waffe obtained. But diose who knew him realised the invasion would never take place. ‘Whatever his final decision, the Fiihrer wants die threat of inva¬ sion of Britain to persist,’ the naval staff’s war diary noted on August 14. ‘That is why the preparations, whatever die final decision, must continue.’ The newly created field marshals assembled in the chancellery on Au¬ gust 14 to receive their bejewelled batons from Hitler’s hands. There are two surviving records written by held marshals. Hitler referred to Germa¬ ny’s greatest strengdi as her national unity. Since Britain had rejected Hitler’s offer, a conflict was inevitable but would be initially restricted to Luftwaffe operations. ‘Whether the army will have to be employed can’t be predicted. In any case it would only be used if we were absolutely forced to.’ Leeb’s account is important enough to quote at length: Probably two reasons why Britain won’t make peace. Firstly, she hopes for U.S. aid; but die U.S. can’t start major arms deliveries until 1941. The Dilemma 327 Secondly, she hopes to play Russia off against Germany. But Germany is militarily far superior to Russia.The him of Russian warfare in Finland contains quite ludicrous scenes.The loss of gasoline [imports from Rus¬ sia] can easily be made up by Romania. There are two danger-areas which could set off a clash with Russia: number one, Russia pockets Finland; this would cost Germany her domi¬ nance of die Baltic and impede a German attack on Russia. Number two, further encroachment by Russia on Romania. We cannot permit this, because of Romania’s gasoline supplies to Germany. Therefore Germany must keep fully armed. By tlie spring there will be 180 divisions. As for Europe: there is no justification for the existence of small na¬ tions, and they particularly have no right to big colonial possessions. In die age of air forces and armoured divisions small nations are lost. What matters today is a unified Europe against America. Japan will have to seek contact with Germany, because Germany’s victory will tilt the situ¬ ation in the Far East against Britain, in Japan’s favour. But Germany is not striving to smash Britain because the beneficiaries will not be Ger¬ many, but Japan in the east, Russia in India, Italy in the Mediterranean, and America in world trade. This is why peace is possible with Britain — but not so long as Churchill is prime minister. Thus we must see what the Luftwaffe can do, and await a possible general election. the first two days of the Luftwaffe attack on England were a disappoint¬ ment.The unpredictable English summer foiled every effort to co-ordinate die operations of Goring’s diree air forces (Luftflotten). A ‘total blockade’ of die British Isles was declared, but even diis was a half-measure, for it was shortly followed by an OKW compendium of practices forbidden to die German forces: Elitler called attention to his strict on-going embargo on air raids on London and he forbade any kind of‘terror attack’ widiout his permission. On die evening of the sixteenth, Elitler again left Berlin for die Obersalzberg; such hopes as he may have reposed in die Luftwaffe’s cam¬ paign were temporarily disappointed. At the Berghof Elitler busied himself less with plans for invading Britain dian with other ways of crushing her will. He studied an earlier Brauchitsch proposal that an expeditionary force should be sent to Libya to support an Italian attack on the British position in Egypt; he also asked Ribbentrop to explore ways of bringing Spain into 328 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ the war. General Franco however was reluctant to declare war, for his coun¬ try’s economy had not yet recovered from three years of civil war. Shortly Hitler had renewed cause for anxiety about the Balkans. After a week of talks between Hungary and Romania on the disputed Transylvania region, war between those two countries became imminent on August 23. Romania appealed to Germany to arbitrate the dispute and — without con¬ sulting Moscow, as he was bound to under the pact with Stalin — Hitler agreed. Meanwhile he ordered the German army to stand by to occupy the vital Romanian oil region to prevent ‘third parties’ — meaning Russia — from getting there first should the arbitration talks break down. Canaris already had several hundred counter-sabotage troops in the region. When Field Marshal von Brauchitsch visited the Berghof on the twenty-sixth, Hitler explained to him the need to safeguard Romania without ‘as yet’ provoking the Russians too much; he asked the army to move ten good divisions east¬ ward to die Generalgouvernement and East Prussia at once. The next day Colonel Schmundt flew to East Prussia widi Dr. Fritz Todt armed with instructions to search for a suitable site for die Fuhrer’s head¬ quarters during the coming Russian campaign. one night late in August 1940 British aircraft appeared over Berlin for the first time and dropped a few scattered incendiary bombs. In the early hours of the twenty-ninth word was telephoned to die Berghof diat die bombers had again struck Berlin and diat diis time ten civilians had been killed. Evi¬ dently die Reich capital now faced an ordeal of fire by night. That same afternoon Hitler flew back to Berlin. He did not like this new development at all. Rudolf Hess, his deputy Fiihrer, had nightmares, as he told a British cabinet minister a few mondis later, of coffins — rows upon rows of diem, filled with dead children, with their weeping mothers standing behind them. Suspecting diat his peace feelers were not getting through to die ordinary English people, Hitler asked Hess to establish contact secretly with his friends in Britain. On the last day of August Hess discussed this extraordinary mission widi his old professor, Karl Haushofer, and diree days later the professor wrote to his son Albrecht: ‘As you know everything has been prepared for a very drastic attack on the island concerned and the Boss Man only has to press the but¬ ton.’ Hess asked Haushofer whether he could see any way of setting up peace talks ‘at some odier location,’ perhaps with die Duke of Hamilton, a Scottish nobleman whom he had met briefly at die Berlin Olympics in 1936. The Dilemma 329 Hess’s nightmares of children’s coffins gave way to heroic daydreams, of flying single-handedly to England — he was an accomplished pilot — and of ending the war. He took his mission very seriously and flew to Messer- schmitt’s Augsburg factory on November 8 to inspect the new Me-11 o long range fighter plane; by the end of 1940 he was flying one solo. In October or November Hess sent his driver to Munich’s local airport to fetch a map of England, and then his valet to Lanai’s bookstore to buy two maps of north-western Europe. Once, entering Hess’s study which was normally a forbidden sanctum, his valet had found it strewn with charts. Hess asked die factory to fit auxiliary fuel tanks to ‘his’ Me-11 o. Once, Messerschmitt’s instructor inquired why he was asking whether it could still carry a bomb or torpedo as well as die drop-tanks — was he planning to fly to England widi the plane then? ‘No, no,’ Hess had responded widi a smile; then he hinted to his staff that he was thinking of trying out for himself a new method of mining British ports. In January, he ordered from die Munich sports outfitters Schuster’s a leadier flying-suit and fur-lined boots (he had previously borrowed diem from Messerschmitt’s). Hess’s adjutant Karlheinz Pintsch would tell a fellow adjutant over a glass of beer on April 20 that their chief was worried, because he knew how reluctant die Fiihrer was to destroy England, and because he saw war looming with die United States and the Soviet Union; he was planning to make personal contact widi peace-loving circles in Britain, said Pintsch, and had been work¬ ing on a memorandum to be handed to Hitler‘after his departure.’ In April, Hess would obtain several books on the British Constitution, and visit Schwarz the Tailors in Munich’s Prielmayer-Strasse to order a blue-grey Luftwaffe captain’s uniform.* Not relying on Rudolf Hess alone, in August 1940 Hitler had simultane¬ ously sent die Berlin attorney Dr. Ludwig Weissauer to Stockholm with die task of briefing die British envoy orally on his peace offers: diese included political independence for all the European countries occupied by Ger¬ many, including a future ‘Polish state’ but excluding Czechoslovakia; an end to die economic division of Europe; and no German claims on die *The Luftwaffe uniform cost around i marks. It gained an almost mystical significance for the superstitious Hess. From that Munich outfitters it began an extraordinary jour¬ ney that ended over fifty years later when it was returned by Berlin police authorities to Hess’s adult son (it had been stolen from the 93 -year-old Rudolf Hess’s prison cell in Spandau by British soldiers a few days before his mysterious death in 1987). 330 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ empire or British colonies. This was, the attorney was to make plain, Brit¬ ain’s ‘last chance’ of avoiding an intensification of the hostilities. On Churchill’s instructions Weissauer was not even received in die Stock¬ holm legation; and the private letter from Haushofer which Hess caused to be sent to the Duke of Hamilton, via a female acquaintance in Lisbon, was intercepted by Churchill’s secret service in London. The prime minister’s response was to order the heart of the German capital to be bombed again. On die following day Hitler lifted the embargo on bombing die centre of London, but still widiheld die actual order. Those coffins of which Hess had dreamed would soon start filling. on September 4, 1940 Hitler delivered one of his most forceful public orations. He mocked die diesaurus of reassuring predictions used by Brit¬ ish officialdom to hint at his ever-imminent downfall. ‘For example diey say, “We learn that,” or “As we understand from well-informed circles,” or “As we hear from well-placed authorities,” or “In the view of the experts” — in fact they once went as far as announcing, “It is believed diat diere may be reason to believe. . .”’ He mocked that after Germany had dirown the Al¬ lies out of Norway they had changed their tune: ‘We only wanted to lure die Germans up diere. What a unique triumph diat was for us!’After France’s defeat Britain had rejoiced that now she need only defend herself. ‘And if Britain is now consumed with curiosity and asks, Well, why doesn’t he in¬ vade? I answer, Calm down, he’s coming!’ As for die night bombardment of Germany’s Ruhr cities diat Churchill had begun three months before, Hitler now announced he would reply measure for measure and more. ‘If they proclaim diey will attack our cities on a grand scale, we shall wipe their cities out!’ On the fifdi however Church¬ ill’s bombers came again to the Reich capital, killing fifteen more Berliners. Over lunch on September 6, it was plain diat Hitler’s patience was at low ebb. ‘The Fiihrer,’ noted Goebbels, ‘is fed up. He clears London for bomb¬ ing. It is to begin tonight.’ Whether Goring had formally been advised that Hitler proposed to fulfil his cherished ambition of attacking Russia is uncertain. Jodi’s staff certainly noticed on die fifth that the Reichsmarschall showed no interest in prepar¬ ing for die invasion of England, ‘as he does not believe it will be carried out.’ Goring established a headquarters on the Channel coast and person¬ ally directed the new air offensive, which opened that night with a bombardment of London, though still only the docks and oil refineries. The Dilemma 331 Hitler’s naval adjutant had privately informed Admiral Raeder t hat a Fiihrer headquarters was already being built for the Russian campaign. On September 6 the naval chief, whom Hitler had inherited from t lie outgoing Weimar Republic, arrived at the chancellery with a series of powerful new arguments as to why Germany ought to concentrate her attack on Britain’s Mediterranean positions and on a sea and air blockade of the British Isles. Raeder warned Hitler that it would be impossible to launch both the attack on the Soviet Union, which t lie admiral discreetly referred to as ‘the S- problem,’ and the invasion of Britain simultaneously; tire navy preferred die latter attack to be undertaken when the ice in die Baltic was melting, as diis would tilt die balance against the Russian navy. Hitler assured the ad¬ miral that if he did drop die invasion, he would eject the British from die Mediterranean diat coming winter; and for the first time he mentioned diat Germany and Italy must secure footholds in die Azores, the Canaries, and die Cape Verde Islands. As Raeder summarised it to the naval staff: ‘The Fiihrer’s decision to invade Britain is by no means definite. . .’ Hitler again postponed the fateful invasion decision for diree more days; die navy tact¬ fully termed die current weather ‘wholly abnormal.’ The bombing of London had now begun in earnest. It was die ‘ Blitz ’ diat Churchill desired and Hitler did not. Discussing the new campaign with his lunch guests on die tenth, Hitler again vacillated. Would Britain now give in, he asked? ‘The military share my viewpoint,’ wrote Goebbels privately. ‘A city of eight million cannot stand this for long. . . We have wiped die smirk off their lordships’ faces. We shall thrash them until diey whimper for mercy.’ When Hitler assembled his commanders on die fourteenth — with Field Marshal Milch deputised to represent Goring, who was still posturing on die Channel coast — he began with a political survey. Milch wrote a detailed note in his diary: ‘Moscow is dissatisfied widi die way diings have gone; diey were hoping we would bleed to deadi.’ He was giving military aid to Ro¬ mania because Germany needed die oil, and to Finland because of die balance of power in the Baltic. While it was difficult to see into die future, anything might happen. ‘New conflicts are quite possible.’ He did not expect Ameri¬ ca’s modest rearmament to take effect before 1944, and he certainly did not want die war to last that long. ‘We have attained our objectives, so we have no interest in prolonging it.’ From now on it would be a war of nerves, widi the bomber attacks and the threat of invasion gradually wearing die British people down. ‘If eight million inhabitants [of London] go crazy, diat 332 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ can lead to catastrophe. If we get good weather and can neutralise the en¬ emy air force, tlien even a small-scale invasion can work wonders.’ He proposed, therefore, to wait a few more days before finally cancelling the operation. If it were dismantled altogether, it would come to the ears of the enemy and the nervous strain would be that much less. He would still not permit the Luftwaffe to carry out saturation bombing raids on London’s residential districts, as Goring’s Chief of Staff Jeschonnek had requested. ‘That is our ultimate reprisal! ’Three days later Hitler postponed the inva¬ sion ‘until further notice.’ His commanders knew what that meant; from now on only the threat of invasion was to be maintained. In reality, Hitler’s mind was elsewhere. during September 1940, foreign diplomats in Moscow reported mount¬ ing Soviet bitterness toward Hitler over the controversial Vienna Award and his guarantee to Romania — a guarantee which could only be inter¬ preted as directed against Russia. There were caricatures of Hitler, Goring, the ‘Nazi hydra,’ and the omnivorous ‘Fascist shark’ in Red Army barracks. German Intelligence learned of a meeting of die Supreme Soviet on August 2 in which diey were warned against trusting Germany because ‘certain information indicated that after her victory in the west she [Germany] would start a war against Russia.’ ‘Indeed,’ the officials had continued, ‘we must get in our attack before our thieving neighbour in the west can get in hers.’ Under the now familiar rubric of‘dispersing the forces tightly concen¬ trated in die west,’ Brauchitsch personally signed an order for additional divisions to move east on September 6; two more armies were to join the Eighteendi Army diere — the Fourth and die Second. This would bring up to thirty-five the number of divisions on die eastern frontier. On that same day, General Jodi ordered die Abwehr to feed to Russian agents false infor¬ mation indicating diat die bulk of Germany’s strengdi was at the southern end of die front; die Russians were ‘to draw the conclusion diat we are able to protect our interests in the Balkans from Russian clutches at any time widi powerful forces.’ In fact for strategic reasons Jodi’s staff recommended that die main mili¬ tary effort at die start of the attack on Russia should be in the north. Here, explained Colonel Lossberg in his draft campaign plan (‘Fritz’) submitted to Jodi later in September, diere were better road and rail facilities, and the Russian influence in the Baltic region could be quickly extinguished; above all, an attack in die nordi would rapidly bring Leningrad and Moscow un- The Dilemma 333 der the German guns.Tactically, they must prevent the Russians from with¬ drawing in strength into their vast hinterland, as they had before Napoleon’s Grand Army in 1812. ‘Fritz’ undoubtedly formed the basis of Flitler’s later strategy against Russia. The main thrust north of the Pripyet Marshes was proposed by t he colonel as follows: ‘An attack by two army groups from the general line east ofWarsaw to Konigsberg, with the southern group the more powerful (the group assembling around Warsaw and southern East Prussia) and be¬ ing allocated the bulk of the armoured and mechanised units.’ Lossberg predicted that resistance south of the Pripyet Marshes would be feebler — plagued by internal unrest in die Ukraine fomented by the Abwehr’s ad¬ vance subversive operations. The further strategy of the campaign must depend on whether and when Russia caved in under die force of the initial German onslaught. Only one possibility remained open to Moscow — to take the offensive first in order to disrupt the half completed German invasion preparations; or to invade the Romanian oil fields, perhaps using airborne troops alone. It would be die job of a future German military mission in Romania to fore¬ stall such a Soviet move. In Lossberg’s view, however, the Russians would be forced for political reasons to try to thwart the German attack close to die frontier; odierwise they would be abandoning the flanking positions diey had so recently secured on the Baltic and Black Sea coasts. in Romania the king had abdicated in die crisis that had been triggered by die Vienna Award, and die rudiless but incorruptible General Ion Antonescu had been appointed the national leader and dictator. Antonescu secretly asked Hitler to modernise the Romanian army widi German tanks and ar¬ tillery and to lend him German staff officers. In return, he promised to deploy his forces exclusively on the Russian frontier and away from die Hungarian. On September 19 die OKW issued a document stating that die ‘real jobs’ — which were not to be made apparent to either the Romanian or die German mission’s members — were as follows: 1. to protect the oil fields from the clutches of a diird power, and from destruction; 2. to enable the Romanian forces to fulfil specific tasks to a rigid plan aligned with German interests; and 334 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ 3. to prepare the operations of German and Romanian forces from Ro¬ manian soil in the event we are forced into war widi Soviet Russia. The reader should be reminded however that even at t his stage no irrevo¬ cable order for an attack on Russia had been given; Hitler was still only preparing die military machine. Treading on the shadows of arms raised in salute, Himmler leaves headquarters in Munich,followed by his chief lieutenant Heydrich (author’s collection) Molotov ^ ^ he six weeks preceding die doom-charged visit of Vyacheslav Molotov to Berlin in November 1940 are a period when Hitler’s ^ 1 — foreign policy becomes almost impossible to disentangle. He took counsel witli t lie Spanish and Italians on ways of striking die British Empire at the periphery; he brought Japan into the Axis in aTripartite Pact, and he even pawed over die possibility of an alliance with France. This much is clear. But what are we to make of his more determined attempts to lure die Soviet Union into joining the Tripartite Pact as well? The impulse toward a peripheral solution was provided by Admiral Raeder. Early in September Raeder had examined with Hitler die strategic options open to Germany; by the twenty-sixdi, when he came for a long private talk on the subject, he was convinced there were ways of pacifying Russia more elegant than brute force. Germany should throw die British out of die Mediterranean; it should provide assistance to Italy for die capture of die Suez Canal, and then advance through Palestine to Syria. Turkey would dien be at Germany’s mercy. ‘Then the Russian problem would assume a very different aspect. Russia is basically frightened of Germany’ — a point on which Hitler agreed. ‘It is unlikely that any attack on Russia in the north would dien be necessary.’ Hitler appeared to like diis plan: diey could then invite Russia to turn toward Persia and India — again on the British periphery — which were far more important to her dian the Baltic. After die admiral left, the Fiihrer mentioned to his naval adjutant, Puttkamer, diat the interview had been enlightening, as it had checked with his own views. The most intractable barrier to Franco-German co-operation was die interest that both Italy and Spain were declaring in substantial portions of France’s African territories. Hitler postponed reaching a final decision on 333 336 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ their claims until he could meet their leaders and Mussolini. Small wonder that die High Command’s exasperated war diarist lamented: ‘Our com¬ mand policy of late seems to be dictated only by regard for t he feelings of the Reichsmarschall and die Italians.’ Of one thing Hitler was certain by late September 1940. If Spain were to join the war and seize Gibraltar, and if France were also to be encour¬ aged to join die grand coalition, he must resort to ‘fraud on a grand scale,’ as he disarmingly put it to Ribbentrop: each aspirant would have to be left in the happy belief that his wishes would be largely fulfilled. The first claimant to be deceived was Benito Mussolini, whom he met on die Brenner frontier between Italy and Germany on October 4. Hitler cunningly suggested diat they lure Spain into the war by promising to deal widi her colonial demands in the final peace treaty with France; Mussolini was promised Nice, Corsica, and Tunis. There would be something for eve¬ rybody in die coalition. For three days at the Berghof Hitler idled in the autumn sunshine, reflecting on his new political strategy. His timetable was clearly mapped out: he would first like to see die former French ambassador, Andre Francois- Poncet (whom he had always liked) in Berlin; dien he would embark on a grand tour, seeing Marshal Petain in France and next General Franco in Spain, before returning to France to settle with Petain the terms of their future collaboration. First, however, he would write to Stalin to tempt him with a share of Britain’s legacy in return for Russia’s participation in the coalition. ‘If we manage that,’ Brauchitsch was told, ‘we can go all out for Britain.’ Hitler instructed Goring to ensure that all die Russian contracts with German industry were punctiliously fulfilled so diat Stalin would have no cause for complaint; but he also audiorised die Luftwaffe to start extensive high- altitude photographic reconnaissance missions far into Russia. On October 9, Hitler was back in the chancellery in Berlin. Ribbentrop suggested a summit meeting between Stalin and the Fiihrer, but Hitler pointed out that Stalin would not leave his country. Hitler himself dictated a lengthy letter to Stalin on the thirteenth inviting Molotov to visit them very shortly in Berlin. If Molotov came to Berlin, the letter concluded, Hitler would be able to put to him die joint aims diey could pursue. on October i 2 , Hitler had issued a secret message to the services formally cancelling all invasion preparations against Britain. As Hitler gloated to a Molotov 337 visiting Italian minister on the fourteenth: ‘Let the British announce what they will — the situation in London must be horrific. . . Let’s wait and see what London looks like two or three months from now. If I cannot invade diem, at least I can destroy the whole of their industry!’The aerial photo¬ graphs which his bomber crews brought back proved the extent of die damage done to Britain night after night. What perplexed Hitler was the total lack of plan and purpose behind die British bombing offensive. Germany had feared a ceaseless onslaught on her oil refineries, yet Churchill was making the fundamental error of at¬ tacking Germany’s civilians and inflicting only negligible damage on her war effort in die process. The uncomfortable realisation that as yet diere was no defence against die enemy night-bomber confronted Hitler widi a host of new problems. If only one aircraft approached Berlin, should the entire city be sent scurry¬ ing for die air raid shelters by sirens? On the night of October 14 a typical episode angered Hitler: there was an all-clear followed by a fresh alert as more enemy bombers were spotted approaching over Magdeburg. The popu¬ lation of Berlin’s hospitals was twice forced to trek down into the shelters — diis was not a burden he had planned to inflict on the German population at all. He sent for Milch the next day and ordered him to sort die matter out. Hitler was glad he was leaving Berlin for the tranquillity of die Berghof that night. Back in Berchtesgaden, his only engagement of consequence was a pri¬ vate visit from die Italian Crown Princess Maria-Jose, die elegant spouse of Crown Prince Umberto and sister of King Leopold of Belgium. Hitler en¬ tertained her at afternoon tea on die seventeendi in die mountaintop ‘Eagle’s Nest .’The princess haltingly begged Hitler to release die Belgian prisoners. When Hitler refused, she steadfastly repeated her request. Hitler was im¬ pressed by her plucky manner. After die princess left his mountain, he joked: ‘She is the only real man in the House of Savoy!’ in the special train Amerika, Hitler left Bavaria toward midnight on Octo¬ ber 20, 1940, on die first leg of a rail journey diat was to cover over four diousand miles within the next week. The French leaders were still una¬ ware that Hitler was coming to them. Hitler’s train pulled into die little railroad station at Montoire at 6:30 p.m. on October 22.The station area had been freshly gravelled and a diick red carpet had been rolled out. At seven, the short, stocky Pierre Laval arrived by automobile. In die dining 338 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ car Hitler briefly indicated his wish to speak with Petain in person about the lines diat France’s future collaboration with Germany might take; Laval earnestly assured him that he too desired Britain’s defeat. Britain, said Laval, had dragged France into an unwanted war, abandoned her, and then be¬ smirched her honour at Mers-el-Kebir and more recently at Dakar. Laval promised to return with Petain in two days’ time. Upon General Franco’s willingness to enter the war would depend the tenor of the main approach to Petain. By four p.m. on die twenty-diird Hitler’s train had reached die frontier town of Hendaye. Franco’s train drew alongside on anodier platform, where the Spanish-gauge railway ended. The argument that followed was to haunt Hitler to the end of his life. He later told Mussolini, ‘I would rather have three or four teeth extracted than go through diat again.’ In vain he tried to persuade die Spanish dictator to enter into an immediate alliance and allow German troops to capture Gi¬ braltar. Franco refused to rise to Hitler’s bait. It was clear he doubted the likelihood of an Axis victory. Hitler barely controlled his fury when Fran¬ co’s foreign minister several times interrupted in a tactless way — usually at the precise moment when Hitler believed Franco was on die point of ac¬ cepting die German terms. Once he stood up abruptly and said there was little point in talking any longer, but talk on he did until dinner was served in his dining car. Hitler tackled Franco again, arguing widi him about Spain’s requirements of guns, gasoline, and foodstuffs until far into the ni ght. When at 2: i£ a.m. die Spanish leader’s train left die little frontier sta¬ tion to die strains of the Spanish national anthem, General Franco was no nearer to joining the Axis. It was clear to all who crossed Hitler’s padi in these hours of his jolting journey back to Montoire diat he was furious. He mouthed phrases about ‘Jesuit swine’ and the Spaniards’ ‘misplaced sense of pride.’ Over the next weeks, his anger at having been cold-shouldered turned to contempt. ‘Widi me, Franco would not even have become a mi¬ nor Party official,’ he scoffed to Jodi’s staff. At three-thirty the next afternoon, October 24, Hitler arrived back at Montoire. He nervously left his train after lunch to make sure diat a proper guard of honour was waiting to greet die ‘victor of Verdun.’ Petain stepped out of his car wearing a long French military greatcoat and a general’s red cap, beneadi which gleamed silver hair. Laval followed. Petain was evidently gratified at the dignity of the German welcome, but he would go no further than to confirm in principle his country’s readiness to collaborate with Molotov 339 Germany. Petain’s military bearing had enhanced Hitler’s admiration for him. He afterward said, ‘France should be proud to have such a leader, a man who wants only the best for his own country.’ He believed the Montoire conferences had accomplished all he had set out to achieve, and this was echoed in the first paragraph of the next directive he issued to the armed forces: It is tire aim of my policy toward France to collaborate with that country in the most effective possible way to fight Britain in the future. For the time being there will fall to France the role of a ‘non-belligerent’ obliged to tolerate military steps taken by the German war command in her territories, and particularly in the African colonies, and to support those steps where necessary by operations of her own defensive forces. Hitler’s special train remained overnight at the Montoire station. He had planned to return to Berlin, but now something unexpected occurred. Hewel brought him a long, jealous letter from Mussolini which had just arrived via the OKW’s coded-teleprinter service.The letter, dated five days before, contained an impassioned appeal by the Duce to the Ffihrer to aban¬ don his dangerous flirtation with t lie French. As for his own plans, Mussolini mentioned that the British menace looming over Greece was comparable with that which Hitler had so successfully forestalled in Norway. ‘As far as Greece is concerned,’ Mussolini noted, ‘I am determined to act without hesitation — in fact to act very rapidly indeed.’ Hitler took fright and instructed Ribbentrop to arrange a meeting with Mussolini in a few days’ time in Upper Italy. Surely the Italians would not attack Greece now, with the autumn rains and winter snows almost upon them?That would be ‘downright madness’ — it would be an open invitation to the British to occupy Crete and other Greek islands well within bomber range of the Romanian oil fields.The Balkan quagmire! During his Brenner meeting with Mussolini, on October 4, Hitler had probably given theoretical support for an Italian occupation of Greece if— and only if—necessary to forestall a British invasion. Admittedly theAbwehr had reported rumours of an Italian attack on Greece some days earlier; during Friday October 24 t lie German military attache in Rome cabled t hat Marshal Badoglio himself had informed him that they now had infor¬ mation that the British intended to occupy Greek territory and that die Italians had for their part taken all necessary precautions to intervene the 340 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ moment the first Briton set foot on Greek soil. But Badoglio had reassured him: ‘I will inform you if it comes to that.’ Hitler’s train eventually reached Munich late on Saturday. The two key dispatches from Rome that Sunday evening — the military attache’s discov¬ ery that Italy was going to attack Greece next morning, and the ambassador’s report on Ciano’s communication to the same effect at nine p.m. — were not deciphered by tlicit Berlin recipients until Monday morning and had cer¬ tainly not reached Hitler when his train left Munich punctually at six a.m. for Florence. Mussolini’s troops had invaded Greece at five-thirty that morn¬ ing. The stunning news reached Hitler’s train at Bologna, fifty miles north of Florence. Hitler’s purpose until now had been to persuade the Duce not to attack Greece; Hitler also wanted to be in a position to give his friend his expert advice on the best thrust direction for the offensive, and to mount a German airborne assault on t he island of Crete by divisions first moved to North African soil. Possession of Crete was after all die key to the com¬ mand of the eastern Mediterranean. By the time Hitler’s train steamed into Florence an hour later, eleven a.m. , however, he had pocketed his intense disappointment at his ally’s rash move, though he was hard put to control his anger when Mussolini strutted up to him and announced in German: ‘Fiihrer — wir marschieren!' ‘We are on die march! ’ All Hitler’s fears proved only too well founded. Italy had not committed nearly enough strength to die campaign. On the day after the Florence meeting, British forces landed on Crete. On November 3 die first British army units landed on the Greek mainland. Within a week Hitler had been forced to order die Wehrmacht to prepare an offensive against Greece to take the pressure off his harassed and headstrong ally. The schedule for spring 1941 <— already crowded widi possible major operations in east and west — was finally thrown out of joint. Nevertheless, die signs had been diere to see, had Hitler not been so afflicted with blind trust in Mussolini; nor can Ribbentrop escape his share of die blame. Hitler’s naval adjutant, Puttkamer, has stated diat his chief refused to take the warning signals seriously. On October 18 Jodi’s staff had hrst heard rumours. On the seventeendi a colonel on die Italian Gen¬ eral Staff had confidentially told a German liaison officer in Rome that the Italian attack would begin eight or nine days later. A senior official of the foreign ministry had then drafted a telegram to die German ambassador in Rome directing him to deliver a stern demarche to the Italian government, Molotov 341 but Ribbentrop had prevented t ho dispatch of this telegram, saying that t he ambassador should merely direct a ‘friendly inquiry’ to Count Ciano. Hit¬ ler saw a full report by the ambassador on a conversation with Ciano. In this exchange, the Italian foreign minister pointed out: ‘Italy has complete free¬ dom of action over Greece. The Flihrer has conceded this to the Duce’ — words which caused Ribbentrop to telephone his ministry and stop even die telegram about the ‘friendly inquiry.’ Hitler’s decision was that Italy must be trusted, and that no inquiry was to be sent to Rome. for the next two weeks — ending widi Molotov’s arrival from Moscow — Hitler lost die initiative, thanks to Mussolini. He unendiusiastically exam¬ ined one peripheral project after anodier. Now he began to regret diat he had not invaded Britain. During diis period of indecision, only die Luftwaffe bombing — which had now killed fourteen thousand people in Britain — and die U-boat blockade continued. Some time before, on returning dirough France from his meeting widi Franco, he had cabled Admiral Karl Donitz, die wiry commander of the German U-boat fleet, to join his train; he or¬ dered him to build huge concrete shelters in the new submarine bases in western France, to protect die U-boats from enemy air attacks. The Axis alliance such as it was had again reached low ebb. Throughout die summer die German army had encouraged Hitler to offer Italy armoured units to ensure victory in Egypt; at die Brenner meeting early in October die Duce had hinted diat he could use German tanks, and Hitler had pre¬ pared to send his 3rd Panzer Division to help the Italians capture Marsa Matruh; the army had sent a panzer general to carry out an on-the-spot investigation in North Africa. By the time die general reported to Hitler at die beginning of November, the Fiihrer had determined to let the Italians stew in dieir own juice all winter. The panzer general’s report from North Africa was die last straw. Hitler ‘wrote off’ all idea of sending troops to North Africa; he ordered planning to continue on a caretaker basis only. Ironically, it was to General Rommel that the Fiihrer now bluntly pro¬ claimed, ‘Not one man and not one pfennig will I send to North Africa.’ A few days later die disgrace of die Italians was complete.They had kept their battle fleet in harbour rather than risk it in an assault on Crete; now a hand¬ ful of British torpedo planes attacked Taranto harbour and crippled diree battleships, including Mussolini’s most modern battleship. Hitler’s lack of strategic purpose was most clearly expressed in his ram¬ bling discussion with his supreme commanders on November 4 and in die 342 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ resulting Wehrmacht directive issued a week later. He now told his com¬ manders that he wanted to speed up Spain’s entry into die war and tackle Gibraltar as soon as the political negotiations were out of die way. In the Balkans, an operation for the occupation of nordiern Greece (Macedonia andThrace) was to be planned should need arise. That Hitler desired die Dardanelles to come under German control is also evident. On November 4 however he commented to General Haider: ‘We cannot go on down to die Dardanelles until we have defeated Russia.’ Russia remained die one great area where Hitler could take a bold initia¬ tive, and it still came higher in his list of priorities dian invading Britain. At the end of October, a member of Jodi’s staff had noted: ‘No orders of any kind have been issued for Case East, nor are any as yet to be expected.’ In the admiralty it was optimistically believed diat ‘Case East is no longer considered likely, as diings are going at present.’ On November 4, however, Hitler remarked to General Haider diat Russia remained the nub of Eu¬ rope’s problems: ‘Everything must be done so diat we are ready for the final showdown.’ What triggered Hitler’s remark?The Nazi Party seems to have reminded Hitler where his real mission lay. On the last day of October Arthur Greiser complained at the way die eyes of the German people were currently turned west; Lebensraum could only be assured by conquests in die east. ‘The Fiilirer agreed diat this opinion was a correct one,’ noted Bormann, ‘and emphasised that when peace is concluded absolutely every young and capable civil servant aspiring to promotion will have to serve a number of years in the eastern territories.’ On die eve of Molotov’s arrival in Berlin, Hitler visited Field Marshal von Bock, his formidable new Commander in Chief in the east. Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, convalescing in hospital, wrote: The Fuhrer called, sat half an hour at my bedside, and was very friendly and concerned.The overall situation was covered in detail. He is furious at Italy’s escapade in Greece. . .The ultimate — and highly undesirable — outcome is that die Romanian oil fields will be direatened by the British air force units from Salonika. This danger is so great that it may oblige us to take countermeasures. . . What will transpire in die east is still an open question; circumstances may force us to step in to forestall any more dangerous developments. Molotov 343 Much would depend on die outcome of Molotov’s visit. In die secret directive which he circulated to his commanders on November i 2, Hitler approved dais wording: ‘Russia. Political discussions have been initiated with die aim of establishing what Russia’s posture will be over the coming pe¬ riod. Irrespective of the outcome of these discussions, all the preparations orally ordered for the east are to continue.’ The Soviet foreign minister arrived at Anhalt station with a big body¬ guard. Weizsacker described them as ‘good gangster types for a him’ — he found it depressing that 130 million Russians were being represented by such a shabby bunch. Molotov was accompanied by a young official, osten¬ sibly an interpreter, though he spoke not one word to the Germans. Weizsacker wrote in his diary: ‘All are obviously afraid of us. Many of diem quote Bismarck and his concept of a German-Russian collaboration.’ And some days later: ‘So long as die country is ruled by officials like those we have seen here, it’s less to be feared than when the czars were in power!’ Not since his talks widi the British before Munich, in 1938, had Adolf Hitler heard such tough language as Molotov used on November 1 2 and 13. As Ribbentrop had done before him, Hitler harangued die Russian minister as though he were at a Party rally: if Russia wanted to share in die booty as die British Empire fell apart, then now was die time to declare Soviet soli¬ darity widi the Tripartite Pact powers. He sympadiised, he said, widi Russia’s desire for an outlet to the high seas, and suggested that she should expand southward from Batum and Baku toward the Persian Gulf and India; Ger¬ many would expand into Africa. As for Russia’s interest in die Dardanelles, Hitler restated his willingness to call for the renegotiation of the 1936 Montreux Convention, which governed the straits, to bring it into line widi Moscow’s defensive interests. The demands which Molotov stated were shockers. Russia wanted an¬ other stab at Finland — she intended to occupy and annex the whole country, which had, after all, been assigned her by the 1939 pact which he had signed widi Ribbentrop in Moscow. Hitler, however, needed Finland’s nickel and timber supplies. When Molotov announced Russia’s intention of inviting Bulgaria to sign a non-aggression pact which would permit the establish¬ ment of a Soviet base near the Dardanelles, Hitler ironically inquired whether Bulgaria had asked for such assistance; pressed later by Molotov for a reply to Soviet terms, Hitler evasively answered that he must consult Mussolini! Each of Molotov’s conferences with Hitler was terminated by the warn¬ ing of approaching British aircraft, and his dinner at the Soviet embassy on 344 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ the thirteenth ended abruptly for the same reason. Ribbentrop invited Molotov to the concrete shelter at his home; here the Soviet foreign minis¬ ter revealed that Moscow could never entirely forgo an interest in die western approaches to die Baltic eidier — the Kattegat and Skagerrak. When Ribbentrop told his Fiihrer of this, Hitler was stunned. ‘He de¬ manded diat we give him military bases on Danish soil on die outlets to the North Sea,’ Hitler was to recall in the last week of his life. ‘He had already staked a claim to them. He demanded Constantinople, Romania, Bulgaria, and Finland — and we were supposed to be die victors!’ While the public was deliberately fed die impression that die formal Nazi—Soviet discussions had been harmonious and successful, widiin the chancellery there was no doubt that diey had reached the parting of the ways. Irrevocable and terrible in its finality, the decision which Adolf Hitler now took was one he never regretted, even in the abyss of ultimate defeat. In happier times, Hitler visits Italy. He was ‘afflicted with blind trust in Mussolini,’ and this eventually proved his undoing (author’s collection) The ‘Barbarossa’ Directive O pinion among Hitler’s principal advisers was divided about the Russian campaign. Ribbentrop had been convinced there was no alternative. Brauchitsch certainly did not oppose it. Keitel’s opposition had been stilled. Jodi unquestionably regarded the Russian cam¬ paign as inevitable. Goebbels, upon whom would fall the task of preparing die German people, had not been informed. Only Goring and Raeder voiced pertinent objections. Heinrich Himmler probably echoed Hitler’s views most closely in a November 1940 speech to Party officials: Up to now, by means of this [Russo-German friendship] pact Russia has subjugated entire countries and nations, apart from Finland, widiout drawing her sword from its scabbard; she has annexed large territories on her western and soudiern frontiers. Her appetite direatened to grow gigantically, so it became necessary for us to map out our mutual inter¬ ests to each odier afresh. During his long-overdue visit to Berlin, Molotov has been given the necessary instructions. If what I have heard is true, then Stalin is not permitted to start any wars for die moment, or any fighting, as otherwise he will be dealt a sharp rebuke by our own guns. This order holds good bodi for her [die Soviet Union’s] evil designs on Finland and for any she may have in die south or south-east. She is permitted to launch military operations only widi the Fiihrer’s express permission.To put muscle into our orders, we have based enough troops along our eastern frontier for die Red czar in Moscow to take diem seriously. . . Russia is militarily quite harmless. Her officer corps is so poor diat they do not even bear comparison with our NCOs; her army is as badly equipped as trained.They cannot possi¬ bly be any danger to us. 345 346 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ Before ten days had passed, it became even more evident that the Rus¬ sians’ aims were irreconcilable with Hitler’s. Ribbentrop had submitted to Moscow a draft treaty embodying die substance of Hitler’s oral offer to Molotov: Germany’s territorial expansion would take place in Central Af¬ rica; Italy’s in north and north-east Africa; Japan’s in die Far Fast; and die Soviet Union’s toward the Indian Ocean. On November 25, Molotov sub¬ mitted the four conditions on which Russia would sign. The first two — a demand that Hitler evacuate from Finland die troops sent in August 1940, and diat Bulgaria conclude a pact widi Russia granting her military bases within range of the Bosphorus — were wholly unacceptable to Hitler. He instructed Ribbentrop to make no reply at all. hitler had retreated from these traumatic events in Berlin on November 16, and spent die next few days at die Berghof. He privately notified King Boris of Bulgaria of die proposals diat Molotov had outlined for Soviet ‘pro¬ tection’ of his country. The short, swarthy Bulgarian monarch spoke fluent German and had an easygoing manner which tended to win over the Fiihrer. He liked to stroll through Munich’s bohemian quarter and die English Gar¬ dens. He was a shrewd businessman, and provided that Hitler did not compromise him too early he expressed himself willing to let German di¬ visions cross Bulgarian territory when the time came to attack northern Greece. Hitler offered him western Thrace as an outlet to die Aegean if Bulgarian troops would participate, but in the king’s view diis was going too far. Bulgaria was also reluctant to join the Tripartite Pact at present. She joined on March 1, 1941, simultaneously widi the entry of the first Ger¬ man divisions. By die end of the following week, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia had all joined dieTripartite Pact. InVienna, die Hungarian prime minister agreed to allow German troops to cross into Romania.Yugoslavia would have to be cajoled into refraining from molesting the German movements toward the Greek frontier: Hitler insisted on luring Yugoslavia toward die Axis by offer¬ ing her part of northern Greece (Salonika) and guaranteeing her possessions. Italy’s disgrace in die Balkans made it easier to reshuffle Spanish and Italian claims on African territory — all the more necessary now diat die Gibraltar operation’s importance had been enhanced by die British foot¬ hold in Greece. When General Franco’s foreign minister, Serrano Suner, visited die Berghof on die eighteenth, Hitler gave him ‘the friendly advice’ to declare war on Britain as soon as possible. He promised to supply all the The ‘Barbarossa’ Directive 347 wheat and oil that Spain would need. He could offer however no real an¬ swer to the minister’s argument that the Spanish people were not psychologically ready for a new war, and he could make no concrete moves to replace the vague assurances he had tendered both at Hendaye and in a secret agreement that Spain had since signed with Italy and Germany con¬ cerning the African territories it was to receive. Hitler was well aware that if he made public die inroads that were to be made in Morocco, the French there would immediately declare for De Gaulle. There were already signs that Petain was treating with the enemy.The Spanish foreign minister advised Hitler that Pierre Laval was one of the most hated men in France for collaborating with Germany, and that this fact indicated the true sentiments of the French people. When Washington announced the appointment of an admiral as ambassador to Vichy in place of its present lowly charge d’affaires, Hitler’s suspicions of the ‘old fogy’ — Petain —intensified.The Forschungsamt had reported on November 11 diat secret talks were going on in New York between emissaries of Petain and Churchill. A number of untidy residual problems remained. King Leopold of Bel¬ gium had been brought to the Berghof on November 19, where he had hinted that if Hitler would broadcast an explicit guarantee of Belgium’s future independence — as the British were doing — the Belgians might be open to military and political agreements. Hitler did not rise to die bait: he saw no need. The second area that attracted Hitler’s attention was southern Ireland. The Irish Republic had remained neutral, though with pronounced pro- German sympathies. In mid-November, the OKW had examined the possibility of soliciting an appeal from Dublin for German aid; but it was not until the twenty-second that German army Intelligence picked up a British radio message and deduced that a British invasion of southern Ire¬ land was imminent. On the twenty-seventh Hitler asked his High Command to analyse the pros and cons of invading Ireland. If the republic fell into German hands it would surely spell the end of Britain. The answer he re¬ ceived was that a prolonged German occupation of Ireland in the face of Britain’s huge naval superiority was quite out of the question. Perhaps no episode illustrates so vividly die whims which inspired Hitler’s ad hoc mili¬ tary strategy. Despite die remarkable resilience of the British people under heavy air attacks, all of his advisers saw die continued bombing of British industry 34 S iv: ‘War of Liberation’ and dockyards — coupled with the submarine campaign — as the most likely way to bring Britain to her knees. Coventry and Birmingham were devas¬ tated by night attacks before worsening weather once again forced a halt to German raids. Hitler still lacked the rudilessness to use die strategic bomber force to maximum effect. On die morning after the Luftwaffe’s first raid on Birmingham he told a Hungarian visitor that he was sorry about the fine cities and die people being destroyed in Britain; it was all the fault of in¬ competent British politicians. Himmler also explained to Party officials: ‘The Fiihrer has no desire to destroy die British people or dieir empire.The British are a race related to our own and in their bones they are as unbowed as ever. This is displayed by the unheard-of toughness with which the Brit¬ ish people has taken its beating from the Luftwaffe, mondi after month. . .’ On November 23, Hitler explored with Milch and Jeschonnek ways of attacking the British position in die eastern Mediterranean. The most im¬ portant target would be the British fleet at Alexandria, but diis could not be tackled until the Italians had taken Marsa Matruh. Meanwhile the Luftwaffe was to help die Italians out of dieir predicament by attacking military targets in Greece.The Italian squadrons which had briefly assisted in the attack on Britain were to be transferred to Albania. Hitler complained to the two air force generals diat the Italians were ‘frittering’ their forces away, and had brought die British bomber squadrons so close diat Germany must now supply sorely needed anti-aircraft batteries to Romania (to pro¬ tect her oil interests) and to southern Germany. On December 4, Milch brought Hitler details of Goring’s proposals: by basing the Tenth Air Corps in soudiern Italy, Germany could effectively block the narrows between Sicily and North Africa. Jeschonnek’s deputy wrote after this conference: ‘Discussion between Fiihrer and Milch on possibilities of battering British position in Mediterranean. This is necessary as the Ital¬ ian disaster in Greece is having psychological effects quite apart from any military disadvantages: Africa and Spain are beginning to waver in their attitude toward us.’ Hitler handed Milch a letter to carry immediately to Mussolini. In it he warned the Duce diat he must have these squadrons back by early February for use elsewhere. By the sevendi, Milch and the Deputy Chief of Air Staff were back from Rome, reporting to Hitler on Mussolini’s optimism about die situation in Greece. ‘Midday, back in Berlin,’ wrote Jeschonnek’s deputy. ‘Conference widi Fiihrer, who is considerably upset by the unpleasant consequences of die situation in the Mediterranean. He fears this may have an effect on Spain’s attitude.’ The ‘Barbarossa’ Directive 349 That this was no idle fear was shown a few days later. On November 28, Ribbentrop’s ambassador in Madrid had reported that General Franco was willing to proceed with the preparations for Spain’s proposed entry into the war; Flitler assumed that this meant ‘proceed immediately,’ and on De¬ cember 4 he sent Admiral Canaris to Franco with a personal letter proposing that German troops formally cross die Spanish frontier on January 10, which would mean starting die assault on Gibraltar, six hundred miles from die frontier, in the first week of February. In a long audience on the evening of die seventh, Franco bluntly educated Canaris that for economic reasons Spain could not be ready by January 10; Spain could only join in the war if Britain was on the brink of collapse. The alacrity with which Flitler now abandoned ‘Felix’ suggests diat his instinct was screaming warnings against accepting any obligations whatsoever toward a second Latin nation. molotov’s negative reply to Flitler’s proposals at die end of November 1940 dispelled whatever hesitations he still had about attacking Russia. Vis¬ iting die sick Fedor von Bock again briefly on December 3, the field marshal’s sixtieth birthday, Flitler warned that die ‘eastern problem’ was now com¬ ing to a head. This in turn made a joint Anglo-Russian enterprise more likely: ‘If the Russians are eliminated,’ he amplified, ‘Britain will have no hope whatever of defeating us on the Continent.’To Brauchitsch, two days later, Hitler announced, ‘The hegemony of Europe will be decided in the fight with Russia.’ Thus his strategic timetable took shape. He would execute die attack on Greece (code-named ‘Marita’ after one of Jodi’s daughters) early in March 1941. Of course, if the Greeks saw the light and showed their British ‘guests’ die door, he would call off‘Marita’ altogether — he had no interest what¬ ever in occupying Greece. Then he would attack Russia during May. ‘In diree weeks we shall be in Leningrad!’ Schmundt heard him say. Virtually nothing was known about the Red Army: a complete search of archives in France — Russia’s own ally — had yielded nothing. Hitler was confident diat the German Mark III tank with its 40-millimetre gun pro¬ vided clear superiority over die obsolete Red Army equipment; diey would have 1,400 of diese tanks by spring. ‘The Russian himself is inferior. His army has no leaders,’ he assured his generals. ‘Once the Russian army has been beaten, die disaster will take its inevitable course.’ At diree p.m. on December 4, Hitler’s military advisers came to die chancellery to mull over each phase of diese coming operations. Now for 350 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ the first time the two varying concepts of the Russian campaign were brought into informal synthesis. Haider’s General Staff proposal was distinguished by a particularly powerful main drive toward Moscow. Lossberg’s OKW study ‘Fritz’ attached more weight to the northernmost army group and the occupation of the Baltic coast; in his reply to Haider the Fiihrer now drew heavily on Lossberg’s arguments. Both Haider’s plan and Lossberg’s assumed that the Russians must of necessity defend the western areas of the Soviet Union and the Ukraine; and both stated that tire Russians must be prevented from staging an or¬ derly retreat as in 1812. The army and OKW were also agreed that they must occupy as much Soviet territory as necessary. This would prevent the Russian air force from reaching Reich territory. Haider proposed that the offensive end along a line from the Volga River to Archangel. Where Hitler took exception was to Haider’s insistence that nothing detract from the main assault on Moscow. Hitler wanted the Russian forces in the Baltic countries to be encircled first; a similar huge encirclement action by Army Group South, south of the Pripyet Marshes, would liqui¬ date the Russian armies in the Ukraine. Only after t hat should it be decided whether to advance on Moscow or to bypass the Soviet capital in the rear. ‘Moscow is not all that important,’ he explained. When the first draft direc¬ tive for the Russian campaign was brought to Hitler by Jodi, it still conformed with Haider’s recommendation of a main thrust toward Moscow (‘in con¬ formity with the plans submitted to me’). Hitler however ordered the document redrafted in the form he had emphasised: the principal task of the two army groups operating north of the Pripyet Marshes was to drive the Russians out of the Baltic countries. His motives were clear. The Baltic was the navy’s training ground and the route which Germany’s ore supplies from Scandinavia had to take; besides, when the Russians had been de¬ stroyed in the Baltic countries, great forces would be released for other operations. The Russian campaign must be settled before 1941 was over — for from 1942 onward the United States would be capable of intervening. toward the United States Hitler was to display unwonted patience de¬ spite extreme provocations for one long year. American nationals were fighting in the ranks of the Royal Air Force, and United States warships were shadowing Axis merchant ships plying their trade in transatlantic wa¬ ters. The admiralty in Berlin knew from its radio reconnaissance that the Americans were passing on to the British the information about these block- The ‘Barbarossa’ Directive 351 ade runners. In vain Admiral Raeder protested to Hitler about this ‘glaring proof of the United States’ non-neutrality.’ He asked whether to ignore this was ‘compatible with the honour of the German Reich.’ Nothing would alter Hitler’s determined refusal to take up the American gauntlet. Nor would he be side-tracked into invading England. In a secret speech to the gauleiters on December 11 he declared the war as good as won, and assured them that ‘invasion [is] not planned for the time being.’ ‘Air supremacy necessary first,’ concluded Dr. Goebbels after¬ wards in his diary, and added his own one-word comment on Hitler’s psychoses: ‘Hydrophobia’ — Hitler had an aversion to carrying any military operation across the seas; he had also shrewdly refrained from revealing to Dr. Goebbels his plan to attack the Soviet Union. ‘He’s frightened of die water,’ Goebbels recorded after again speaking to Hitler on the twenty- second about invading England; to which he added: ‘He says he would undertake it only if he was in the direst straits.’ Unbeknownst to t he propaganda minister, Hitler’s eyes were fastened upon Russia. On December 18, Jodi brought him the final version of the campaign directive, retyped on the large ‘Fiihrer typewriter.’ It had been renamed ‘Barbarossa.’ Partly the handiwork of Jodi, whose spoken German was very clear and simple, and partly the product of Hitler’s pen, the eleven- page document instructed the Wehrmacht to be prepared to ‘overthrow Soviet Russia in a rapid campaign even before the war with Britain is over.’ All preparations were to be complete by mid-May 1941. from now on his intention of disposing of the Soviet menace was the one constant in Hitler’s grand strategy. His goals in Africa and his policies to¬ ward Spain and France had been reduced to a shambles by Italy’s military humiliation. Mussolini’s advisers had promised him it would take little more than a ‘military two-step’ to invade Greece but now the Greek army, coun¬ terattacking, was deep inside Albania, outnumbering the Italian divisions by more than two to one. On December 9 a further disaster began for Italy as the British army in Egypt opened a counteroffensive which was to throw back t he Italian forces into Libya and result within a matter of days in the capture of thirty-eight thousand Italian troops and four of Mussolini’s gen¬ erals. British casualties were a little over a hundred men. Not that Italy’s disgrace was wholly a disadvantage; as Hitler explained to General Haider, he could now promise France everything if she would collaborate with the Axis. This honeymoon was to last less dian a week, 352 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ however. In the early hours of December 14 the text of a letter from Mar¬ shal Petain reached Hitler. He thanked the Fiihrer for his honourable intentions in transferring to Les Invalides in Paris die mortal remains of Napoleon’s beloved son, the Duke of Reichstadt, which had since 1832 reposed in Vienna; but he also advised Hitler t hat he had dismissed Pierre Laval and replaced him by Admiral Jean Francis Darlan, in whom Vichy had greater confidence. In vain Ribbentrop tried to secure Laval’s restora¬ tion; the luckless minister was held incommunicado on Petain’s orders. Even greater was die further affront to Hitler of Petain’s refusal to attend the ceremony at Les Invalides; die marshal initiated die rumour that this was just a German trick to lure him to Paris and kidnap him — a canard which enraged Hitler. So now a new harpy tapped at his door — the possi¬ bility of signing a peace treaty with Britain, but this time at France’s expense. something distantly resembling the spirit of Christmas overcame Hitler. Instructing Goring’s Luftwaffe to suspend all bombing missions against Brit¬ ain until the Christian festival was over, he set out with his personal staff on a Christmas tour of the western front. He planned to inspect the big gun batteries, and he wanted to celebrate the holiday with the aircrews of Goring’s fighter and bomber squadrons. (Goring himself was spending a comfortable Christmas and New Year at his Rominten hunting estate, some twenty miles from the Russian frontier in East Prussia.) A frosty interview widi Darlan, Petain’s ‘crown prince,’ chilled die at¬ mosphere of Hitler’s special train; Darlan recounted how his family had always hated the British and had been fighting diem now for diree hundred years — a perhaps inappropriate confidence, given Hitler’s present mood. Christa Schroeder wrote to a friend: ‘We have not stopped moving since December 21. Christmas on the French coast — Calais and Dunkirk. As we were eating dinner in our special train on die twenty-third at Boulogne, the British came and started bombing, and our anti-aircraft roared back at diem. Even though we were shunted into a safe tunnel I couldn’t help feeling “a bit queer”. . . On New Year’s Eve die mood was more dian painful.’ Hitler returned to the Berghof. Dr. Goebbels would be making die tra¬ ditional New Year’s Eve broadcast. Hitler had already approved die script, and marked it up with his spidery black-ink amendments. They were of a trivial nature, except perhaps for one: where Goebbels had wanted to pro¬ claim ‘Never shall we capitulate, never shall we tire, and never shall we be despondent,’ Hitler had expunged the first four words. Let Europe Hold its Breath H itler entered the New Year, 1941 , with two distantly related ambitions: to knock out Soviet Russia and thus force Britain to submit with no injury to her empire, and to rescue Fascism in Italy from threatened oblivion. Through Admiral Canaris he had offered, using obscure diplomatic channels, to mediate between Greece and Italy, but in vain. ‘The fact is, for better or for worse, Germany is tied to the Duce,’ explained Flitler on January 4. ‘In the long run you can only make history through loyalty,’ he mused virtuously. In the Balkans a dangerous situation had developed since Italy’s ill-timed attack on Greece in October. Over Flitler’s broad desks at the Berghof flowed die dispatches from Ribbentrop’s experts. Familiar and unfamiliar Balkan potentates and diplomats were ushered past. In January the prime minister of Bulgaria arrived, followed a week later by King Boris again, still promis¬ ing to join the Tripartite Pact but genuinely fearing diat die Russians would invade the moment the Germans set foot in Bulgaria. Here too was Antonescu, reaffirming die Romanian willingness to fight for Hitler but asking now for mines and for big guns to defend his Black Sea port of Constanta (where seven hundred diousand tons of German oil was stock¬ piled) against Russian attack. No terrain could be less promising for modern armies than the Balkans. Before Hitler’s troops could even get into Bul¬ garia, they would have to throw pontoon bridges across die swirling Danube River, nearly a mile wide. The roads were virtually impassable in winter and became morasses when the snow thawed.The crumbling bridges cross¬ ing the countless Balkan streams and dikes would never support the loads an army would impose on them. Nevertheless, die Wehrmacht overcame all diese obstacles: in the re¬ maining weeks before ‘Marita’ German staff officers in plain clodies and 353 354 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ Volkswagens were sent throughout Bulgaria to supervise the strengthening of the bridges and the resurfacing of the roads. To Hitler, early in 1941, die Balkans meant two things: die Ploesti oil held in Romania, now well within the reach of die RAF bombers even if the Adiens government still refused them die necessary overflight permission; and Salonika, in nordiern Greece, from which the Allies had launched their deadly assault on Austria-Hungary in World War I. He called togedier his leading military advisers and Ribbentrop for a council of war at the Berghof. It began on January 7 and ended on the ninth with a major secret speech in which he outlined die reasoning underlying his grand strategy, at a length and level of frankness unfamiliar since his harangues of 1939. People had over-confidently predicted, he remarked, that Britain would cave in under die pressure of die Luftwaffe bombing offensive. Now, not even Hitler accepted that: die British people’s ‘toughness’ was a wholly unexpected factor, he admitted. ‘Terror raids by the Luftwaffe have little point or prospect of success,’ he explained.The Luftwaffe must concentrate on reinforcing the naval blockade and on attacking bottlenecks in the arms industry. Britain was already admitting a 1 o percent loss in arms output. Rumours of Britain’s growing military strength could easily be discounted by die simplest analysis of the raw materials position; at present Germany was producing twenty-four million tons of iron a year compared with less than eight million in Britain. Germany could marshal far greater reserves of manpower; in Britain the number of jobless was actually increasing — a sure measure of her industrial problems. The German naval blockade was only just beginning. ‘The destruction of the English modier country is in¬ evitable in time,’ Hitler concluded. ‘Britain is propped up by her faidi in the United States and Russia.’ Her wooing of Stalin was betrayed by many clues: from intercepts Hitler was aware of die diplomatic overtures Britain was preparing in Moscow; Britain had disclaimed any interest in the Darda¬ nelles; and Russia’s chorus of increased demands since the summer of 1940 was unlikely to be coincidence. Stalin was infinitely clever — he must be seen as an ice-cold blackmailer who would not hesitate to tear up every written treaty if it served his purposes. Apart from Russia, Germany’s position was now impregnable — at least for the coming year, Hitler added. Norway was safe from invasion. Occu¬ pied France wanted an end to the war; the unoccupied half still dreamed of a reverse in its fortunes, but he had prepared ‘Operation Attila’ to occupy this sector should General Weygand, that ‘German-hater,’ declare North Let Europe Hold its Breath 355 Africa for the Allies. He was still undecided about Spain: Franco had more than once broken his promise concerning Gibraltar, and he would still go no further than agree to enter t lie war once Britain was down and almost out. In the Balkans, only Romania was unreservedly friendly; Antonescu had made ‘the best impression imaginable’ on Hitler. Bulgaria was loyal, had feared Russian intervention until recently, but would join the Tripartite Pact in good time. Hungary was ‘usable’ at present.Yugoslavia was cool. Therefore Russia must be Britain’s last hope. ‘They will only give up when we have smashed this last hope on the continent to smithereens .’The British were no fools, said Hitler; t hey must realise that if they lost this war t hey would no longer have the moral authority to hold their empire to¬ gether. ‘On the other hand, if diey can pull through and raise forty or fifty divisions, and if the United States and Russia help them, then Germany will be in a precarious situation.’ He had always believed, he said, in destroying the enemy’s most power¬ ful positions first. ‘That is why Russia must now be defeated. True, the Russian forces are a clay colossus with no head, but who knows how t hey will develop in the future?’ The defeat of the Soviet Union must be swift and final; under no circumstances must the Russians be allowed to regroup after the first, brutal breakthrough. Again he called for the rapid occupa¬ tion of the Baltic coast first of all. The generals’ strategic targets were the annihilation of the Russian army and die occupation of die oil fields at Baku — on die Caspian Sea. Though immense and new, this latter demand should not, however, daunt diem; their armies had also covered immense distances in the few weeks of the French campaign, Hitler reminded diem. He con¬ cluded, ‘When we fight diis campaign, let Europe hold its breath!’ From now until June 1941, Hitler made no mention whatsoever of Russia in his public speeches. ON January 5, 1941 a small British force had captured die Italian fortress of Bardia in Libya, taking forty-five thousand Italians prisoner. There were now only five Italian divisions left in Cyrenaica and five more inTripolitania. Meanwhile the Luftwaffe corps which Hitler had transferred to die Medi¬ terranean had opened its attack on January 6, sinking a British cruiser and damaging an aircraft carrier. Hitler sought for other ways of helping die Italians out of dieir self-created mess, like sending a mountain division to Albania, and a small ‘blocking force’ of German tanks and engineers to help the Italians hold on to Tripoli; his ambassador in Rome accompanied 356 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ Ribbentrop to the Berghof on the ninth and urged that Germany exert a greater influence on Italian strategy, but Hitler characteristically refused to do anything that would damage t ho Duce. Two days later he signed the directive ordering the army and Luftwaffe to prepare to support the Italian defence of Albania andTripolitania. Mussolini finally agreed to come to a meeting but stipulated that there must be no fuss and no photographers. Hitler collected him from a small railroad station near Salzburg at ten a.m. on January 19. Two days of con¬ ferences and strolls about the snow-clad Obersalzberg followed. Hitler had one 90-minute talk privately widi the Duce, but from the record of the other conferences it is clear he revealed nothing he had not already stated to his own generals on the ninth, except that he made no mention of his plan to attack Russia soon. Indeed, he again averred that so long as die wise and prudent Stalin was alive Russia would adhere to her treaties. This meeting brought to an end Mussolini’s dream of fighting an inde¬ pendent war, parallel to Hitler’s, in the Mediterranean. He accepted the offer of a ‘blocking force’ for Tripoli but could not accept the mountain division for Albania, as he needed the Albanian port space for his own rein¬ forcements. His humiliations continued. On January 2 2,Tobruk fell into British hands with twenty-five thousand Italians. The whole of Tripoli tania was now in peril. The panzer specialist General Hans von Funck, sent to Nordi Africa in mid-January, reported to Hitler on February 1 in die most pessimistic terms at the chancellery in Berlin: die Italians had no will to resist the British onslaught in North Africa. ‘The crazy feature is,’ said Hitler after¬ ward to his staff, ‘diat on the one hand the Italians are shrieking for help but on the other hand diey are so jealous and childish that diey won’t stand for being helped by German soldiers. Mussolini would probably like it best if our troops could fight in Italian uniforms diere.’ In conference with his army and Luftwaffe chiefs two days later, Hitler again declared that militarily the loss of Italian North Africa would mean little; however, its political and psychological effects could be devastating; Hitler decided to send more than just a ‘blocking force’ to Nordi Africa; he would send a light infantry and a panzer division to Libya, widi a German corps staff. He chose Erwin Rommel to command this Afrika Korps. In August 1942 he explained to Italy’s Ambassador Dino Alfieri: ‘I chose Rommel because he’s like Dietl — he knows how to carry his troops forward widi him; and Let Europe Hold its Breath 357 this is absolutely vital for the commander of an army fighting under ex¬ tremes of climate, be it in North Africa or in die Far North.’ On February 6 he briefed Rommel and General Enno von Rintelen, die military attache in Rome, in Berlin. He instructed Rintelen to ask Musso¬ lini to put all the Italian mechanised units in Libya under Rommel’s command. Rommel was to holdTripolitania for die Axis powers, tying down die British and preventing them from breaking through to the French in Tunisia. ‘Saw army’s Commander in Chief [Brauchitsch] first,’ wrote Rommel to his wife. ‘Then the Fiihrer. There’s no time to be lost. My luggage is being sent on afterward. . . My head reels to diink of all diat can still go wrong. It will be months before tilings take effect! ’ His first troops began disembarking at Tripoli, in Nordi Africa, on the twelfdi. spurred on by die ambiguous attitude ofVichy during January 1941, Hit¬ ler put renewed pressure on General Franco to revise his views on Gibraltar; die British were certain — he argued — to let Spain down in die end. Franco, of course, had no inkling of the strict timetable Hitler had already drawn up; this explains die increasing irritability of Ribbentrop’s telegrams to Madrid over the next two weeks. On the twentiedi die ambassador cabled from Madrid diat the ‘Caudillo,’ Franco, had cleverly skirted around die central issue — ‘As to whether Spain would enter the war diere is no ques¬ tion . . . it is only a question of when.’ The German ambassador was instructed to read out to Franco six points which would do little for the dictator’s vanity. The first point read: ‘With¬ out die help of die Fiihrer and die Duce there would not be any Nationalist Spain today. Nor any Caudillo.’ If Franco did not abandon his ‘vacillating attitude,’ dien the end of Nationalist Spain was only a matter of time. Franco angrily denounced diis as unjust: he had never vacillated. The ambassador cabled Ribbentrop that the Caudillo seemed more hesitant than before. Ribbentrop cabled him to see Franco and read out a message beginning: ‘Only the immediate entry by Spain into die war is of any strategic value to die Axis.’ (This was die harsh trudi.) Given the necessary promise Ger¬ many would at once release one hundred thousand tons of grain from Lisbon. On January 2 8, Jodi pointed out to Hitler that it would be impossible to launch die actual assault on Gibraltar before mid-April, which meant diat die hundreds of artillery pieces and troops involved could not be released for ‘Barbarossa’ in mid-May. Hitler evidently still pinned some hopes on Mussolini’s talks with die Caudillo on February 1 2. A few days beforehand 358 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ he wrote the Caudillo a personal letter suggesting that in times of crisis nations could be saved ‘less by prudent foresight than by a bold heart.’ On the fourteenth Ribbentrop telephoned to the Berghof a message from the Duce. Franco had made it abundantly clear that Spain would not join the war. Spain was to be granted the whole of French Morocco; and the assault on Gibraltar was to be executed by Spanish forces, perhaps with German support. Walther Flewel wrote in his diary that day: ‘The Fiihrer is going to drop Spain. They will just go under.’ ‘In the evening, we sat for a long time with the Fiihrer around the fireside,’ continued Hewel’s diary. ‘The Fiihrer talked about his pension — that of a middle-grade civil servant! He is going to write books — a third volume of MeinKampf. . .’ Earlier that afternoon he had spent two-and-a-half hours nervously try¬ ing to persuade theYugoslav prime minister to join theTripartite Pact. Hitler suggested that it was illusory to expect the British to evacuate their foot¬ hold in Greece now. ‘Only when our dive-bombers and armoured corps appear will diey get out of Greece as hastily as they have on every other occasion that we employed these means. Germany has no demands what¬ ever against Greece. Here as elsewhere Britain is die root cause of all the difficulties.’* When die Yugoslavs left die Berghof they said diey would re¬ port to the prince regent in Belgrade and let Hitler know. On die outcome would depend ‘Marita,’ and Hitler had reason to be nervous. the first wave of divisions was now moving toward die frontier with Rus¬ sia — only a slow procession as yet; not until mid-March 1941 would the second wave begin. As Lossberg had pointed out, the German railway net¬ work was so superior to the Russian system that when die real race began, Germany could muster seven divisions a day and the Russians only five; the farther west the ‘Barbarossa’ divisions waited the better — ‘the bigger will be the Russian surprise when die German troop concentration begins.’ When Field Marshal von Bock reported to Hitler on February 1, their conversation ranged across the attack on Russia: Bock agreed that if the * Had Italy not attacked Greece, the difficulties would not have arisen. But Hewel was echoing his master’s views when he wrote to a friend on January 23, 1941: ‘It is actually regrettable that we are forced to smash and destroy so much that we do not want to smash and destroy and that should not have been destroyed for European culture and the mastery of the Germanic races.’ Let Europe Hold its Breath 359 Russians stood their ground and fought, they would be defeated; and he wondered whether t hey could be forced into an armistice. This might be one consequence of the German capture of the Ukraine, Moscow, and Leningrad, replied Hitler; otherwise t lie Wehrmacht must advance toward Yekaterinburg. ‘Anyway,’ he concluded, ‘I am glad t hat we carried on with arms manufacture so that we are now strong enough to be a match for anybody. We have more than enough material and we already have to begin thinking about converting parts of our industry. Our Wehrmacht manpower position is better than when war broke out. Our economy is absolutely firm.’ The Fiihrer rejected out of hand any idea of yielding — not that Bock had hinted at it. ‘I am going to fight,’ he said; and ‘I am convinced that our attack will flatten them like a hailstorm.’ Two days later Field Marshal von Brauchitsch brought Chief of General Staff Franz Haider to the chancellery to outline die army’s operational di¬ rective on ‘Barbarossa.’ Aldiough army Intelligence believed the Russians might have as many as 10,000 tanks, compared widi their own 3,300, die Russian armoured vehicles were a motley collection of obsolete design. ‘Even so, surprises cannot be ruled out altogedier,’ warned Haider. As for die Russian soldier, Haider believed the Germans were superior in experi¬ ence, training, equipment, organisation, command, national character, and ideology. Hitler naturally agreed. As for Soviet armament, he was some- diing of an expert on arms production, he said; and from memory he recited a ten-minute statistical lecture on Russian tank production since 1928. Hitler approved the army’s directive, but once again he emphasised die capture of the Baltic coast and of Leningrad. The latter was particularly important if the Russians were falling back elsewhere, as this northern stronghold would provide die best possible supply base for die second phase of die campaign. Hitler knew that Haider had just had a first round of talks widi his Finnish counterpart, General Erik Heinrichs, in Berlin. He was convinced the Finns would make ideal allies, aldiough Finland’s political strategy would be problematical as she wished to avoid a complete rupture widi the United States and Britain. As he said to his staff, ‘They are a plucky people, and at least I will have a good flank defence there. Quite apart from which, it is always good to have comrades-in-arms who are thirsting for revenge. . .’ Widi the third wave in mid-April, continued Haider, the maximum- capacity transport plan would begin, and die troop concentrations could 360 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ no longer be concealed except as a vast decoy operation ‘to distract from an invasion of Britain’; but when the fourth and final wave of panzer divisions that had been re-equipping and resting in central Germany started rolling eastward from April 23 onward, an invasion of Britain would become an obviously impossible cover story. Hitler admiringly agreed with all t ha t Haider had said. ‘When “Barbarossa” gets going, the whole world will hold its breath — it won’t move a muscle!’ probably no major campaign has ever been launched upon scantier Intel¬ ligence. The services had furnished their lower commands with only the most inadequate information on die Russians. Maps were non-existent.The Russian aircraft industry was an unknown quantity on which die veil was only gradually being lifted. Recent indications were diat it was being ex¬ panded at a disconcerting speed. Goring was apprehensive that the Russian air force might prove more formidable dian the army Intelligence figures indicated. While Haider had confidently advised the Fiihrer on February 3 that they would face only a small Red Army superiority in numbers, 155 divisions, by early April diat figure had been raised to 247 divisions; four mondis later, when it was too late to retreat, the army admitted it had now identified 360 Soviet divisions in combat widi them. The whole of Hitler’s strategy was based on the assumption that Russia would be laid low in a Blitzkrieg of only a few months. Now, on February 8, Keitel learned from his staff that while the Luftwaffe and navy would have enough fuel to last until the coming autumn, gasoline and diesel fuel for the army’s tanks and motor transport would not hold out beyond mid-August, unless of course the oil fields of die Caucasus could be reached in time. The rubber supply situation allowed for even less leeway. Much of Ger¬ many’s rubber supplies had reached her from the Far East along the Trans-Siberian railroad. War with Russia would cut that link, leaving only an uncertain trickle supplied by blockade-running ships. Later in February die OKW submitted to Hitler and Goring a survey of the economic side-effects of‘Barbarossa.’ Keitel’s economics expert Gen¬ eral Thomas noted after meeting Goring on February 26: ‘He shares the Fiihrer’s opinion that when German troops march into Russia the entire Bolshevik state will collapse, and diat for this reason we need not fear the destruction of the stores and railway system on a large scale, as I do. The main diing is to get rid of die Bolshevik leaders rapidly first of all.’ Goring’s anxiety was about the weakness of die German supply lines. ‘He recalled Let Europe Hold its Breath 361 Found in a Pennsylvania dumpster in 2001:After lawyer Robert Kempner died, hisjamily threw out files he had flched Jrom Nuremberg — among them the priceless war diary ofTaslforce Oldenburg, set up in November 194 ° 10 plan the exploitation of the Soviet Union after its defeat (author’s collection) that supply failures proved Napoleon’s undoing. For this reason he has kept urging the Fiihrer to concentrate more on the supply organisation and less on activating fresh divisions, some of which would not come under fire.’ Hitler however was already thinking beyond ‘Barbarossa.’ On t he seven¬ teenth, Jodi instructed his staff that the Fiihrer wished them to study the problems of assembling troops in Afghanistan for an assault on India. on Sunday February 16, Hitler’s chief Wehrmacht adjutant, Rudolf Schmundt, who had flown to North Africa with Rommel die week before, 362 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ reported back to the Berghof with photographs of Rommel’s arrival and a first analysis of the position. Not surprisingly, Hitler awaited Rommel’s operations ‘feverishly,’ as Schmundt wrote a few days later. Colonel Schmundt described to him the enthusiasm with which Rommel had thrown himself into his task. Hitler sanctioned all his requests — for antitank guns, mines, and Luftwaffe reconnaissance and close-support aircraft. Rommel’s first troops had covered the 3^0 miles to the Italian front west of El Agheila in twenty-six hours. Before he left Tripoli he set in train the rapid manufacture of scores of dummy tanks mounted on Volkswagen chassis to dupe the British into thinking he had a powerful armoured force. The letters Rommel sent to Schmundt exuded optimism from every line. Hitler decided to send out the 1 <;di Panzer Division as soon as he could. In mid-March Rommel reported to Hitler in person, and then returned to Africa. Without waiting for the new armoured division to arrive, and against the explicit instructions of the Italian Supreme Commander, Italo Gariboldi, this German general launched a bold assault in early April; he did not halt until he had reached the Egyptian frontier and taken three thousand British prisoners, including five generals. by the end of February 1941 the last major crisis before ‘Barbarossa’ had been overcome — or so Hitler believed. At seven a.m. on February 28, since Greece still proudly refused to offer peace terms to Italy, the German Wehrmacht began throwing three big army bridges across the mile-wide, fast-flowing Danube from Romania into Bulgaria. After several false starts, Hitler dictated to FrauleinWolf an important letter assuring Turkey’s President Ismet Inonii that he saw ‘no reason, either now or in the future, why Germany andTurkey should ever be enemies.’* Inonii replied calmly, and Hitler was well pleased. On March 1 we find Hitler in Vienna, where King Boris had authorised his prime minister to sign Bulgaria’s formal entry into the Tripartite Pact. Within one week the first German soldiers would be standing on the Greek frontier, facing British and Greek troops just as they had in 1918. This time things would surely be different: neitherTurkey nor Russia would move a muscle against them. * Johanna Wolf’s shorthand pad with the letter to President Inonii would be found by American soldiers raking through the ruins of the Berghof in 194^. Behind the Door A few days after Hitler’s combined armies invaded Russia, Swe¬ den as the protecting power gave Germany discreet permission for die Soviet embassy in Paris to be searched.The building was forcibly entered by a major general of the German police and a squad of forensic experts of Heydrich’s security service. Heydrich’s report to Ribbentrop related: ‘There were twenty-six Soviet Russians in t lie building. Five of them (four men and a woman) had locked themselves into strong rooms specially shielded by heavy armourplate steel doors; they were busy destroying documents and other materials in four furnaces specially constructed and installed in there. They could not be prevented from doing tills, as even using special technical gear it would still have taken hours to force the rooms open.’ Heydrich’s officers were less impressed by the haul of radio gear, time fuses, detonators, and explosives than by the furnaces found in the special wing of the building used by the GPU, the Soviet secret police. Investiga¬ tion indicated that they had been used for cremating bodies. Ribbentrop brought this report to Hitler, but Hitler had already heard t he details firsthand from Admiral Canaris, one of whose department heads had himself inspected the Paris building. He had recorded: ‘The completely isolated wing of the embassy in which the GPU’s offices and execution chambers were located can only be described as a criminals’ and murder¬ ers’ workshop of the most outstanding technical perfection: soundproof walls, heavy, electrically operated steel doors, hidden spy-holes and slots for guns to be fired from one room into another, an electrical furnace, and a bathtub in which the corpses were cut up, completed the macabre inven¬ tory of these rooms, in addition to housebreaking implements, poison capsules, and the like.Thus there is every probability that . . . many an awk- 363 364 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ ward White Russian emigre or opponent of the Soviets in France vanished in tliis way — they literally “went up in smoke.’” Hitler ordered the Soviet embassy buildings in Berlin searched. In the Soviet trade mission headquarters at 11 Litsenburgerstrasse, the same ar¬ moured strongrooms widi the same furnaces were found, and again there were stocks of guns and ammunition. In a cynical diary entry Goebbels wrote: ‘These Soviet embassies are in fact the refuges of criminals. If a crimi¬ nal gang comes to power, then they will use criminal means to conduct their policies. It is a good thing that Bolshevism is being got rid of once and for all in our eastern campaign.There was, after all, no room for the two of us in Europe in the long run.’* hitler expected die war in the Soviet Union to be merciless. Bolshevik methods were familiar to him. The brutality of the Bolsheviks in die Span¬ ish Civil War, in Stalin’s half of Poland, and most recently in the hapless Baltic states indicated that this was a permanent trait. In the Baltic coun¬ tries Stalin had appointed commissars (usually Jewish) who had supervised the deportation and liquidation of the entire intelligentsia within a matter of weeks; diese commissars had then been replaced by Russians who had disposed of their predecessors. In the western campaigns Hitler had instructed the Wehrmacht to fight with discipline. In die armistice diat followed he had explicitly ordered all troops in the occupied territories to perform their duties ‘flawlessly’ and widi proper reserve; any drunkenness or violence was to be severely pun¬ ished — if necessary by ‘death and dishonour.’ In the eastern campaign, however, no holds would be barred on eidier side. A member of Jodi’s staff later wrote: ‘For Hitler, Bolshevism is not an enemy widi whom one chiv¬ alrously crosses swords. In his view we must expect all manner of knavery and cruelty. So Hitler proposes to meet him widi the same fighting medi- ods from the start.’ Heydrich ordered that where the native Baltic populations initiated pogroms against dieir Jewish ‘oppressors’ they were to be actively encouraged. To some extent die Bolshevik leaders by having refused to sign the Ge¬ neva Convention of 1929 on die treatment of prisoners of war had paved * In the German edition of this work Hitler und seine Feldherren (UllsteinVerlag, West Ber¬ lin, 1975), these paragraphs were deleted without the author’s knowledge ‘for fear of an injunction from the Soviet embassy in Bonn.’The author stopped sales of the edition. Behind the Door 365 the way. They could do what they liked with German prisoners in their hands, but they could expect no quarter from Hitler either. He issued these orders to Jodi in March 1941 as a guideline for the Wehrmacht for ‘Barbarossa’: The coming campaign is more than just a clash of arms. It will result in a conflict of two ideologies. Given the vastness of the country, it will not be enough to defeat t lie enemy armed forces if the war is to be ended. . . Wishful thinking alone will not rid modern Russia of t lie socialist idea; so this idea alone can function as the domestic political basis for the creation of these new states and governments. The Jewish-Bolshevik in¬ telligentsia as the present ‘subjugators’ of die people must be got rid of. The former bourgeois aristocracy, in so far as it survives abroad, is also useless — diey are rejected by the Russian people and are anti-German in any case. . . In addition we must do everydiing to avoid allowing a nationalist Rus¬ sia to supplant die Bolshevik one, as history shows it will always be anti- German. Our job is to set up as soon as possible, with a minimum of military effort, socialist mini-states dependent on us.These tasks will be so difficult diat they cannot be entrusted to die army. The army’s actual zone of operations was to be a belt as shallow as prac¬ ticable, while in die rear Himmler’s SS and various ‘Reich commissioners’ would see to die founding of die new state governments. The High Com¬ mand (OKW) records speak obscurely of die need to put ‘all Bolshevik headmen and commissars’ out of harm’s way: Himmler had been ordered by Hitler to carry out on his own responsibility ‘certain special duties’ of a kind to be expected in a fight between two diametrically opposed political systems. The army’s records portray Hitler’s purpose more bluntly. Haider re¬ corded die Fiihrer as telling him: ‘We have to set up de-Stalinised republics. The intelligentsia appointed by Stalin must be destroyed. . . In the whole of Russia it will be necessary to employ the most naked brute force.The ideo¬ logical bonds are not yet strong enough to hold die Russian people together. Once die officials are disposed of, the nation will burst apart.’ Haider’s quartermaster general (traditionally responsible for army occupation policy) attended that conference; after discussing police matters widi Heydrich, a few days later he drafted an army order giving the SS ‘task forces’ a free 366 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ hand to execute certain grim assignments within the army’s zone of opera¬ tions. In a speech to his army and Luftwaffe generals at the end of this month, March 1941, Hitler prepared them too for the different character of the coming fight in Russia. He compared the Communist ideology with legal¬ ised criminality. ‘We must put the arguments of soldierly comradeship right out of our minds,’ he told his generals. ‘The Communist is no comrade and never will be.’ He suggested that ‘commissars and GPU officials are crimi¬ nals and must be treated as such.’ In conclusion, Hitler noted: ‘I do not expect my generals to understand my orders to this effect. But I demand that they obey them.’ early in March 1941 the British navy executed a lightning raid on the Lofoten Isles in Norway. Hitler regarded it as an unacceptable blow to Ger¬ man prestige and issued orders for the execution of all Norwegians who had aided the enemy. Admiral Hermann Boehm, the admiral commanding Norway, was summoned to the Berghof. At this conference Hitler decided it would no longer be possible to release 40 percent of the military strength in Norway for ‘Barbarossa.’ For the next three years the fear that the British would mount an invasion of Norway never left him. As the ice thawed in Central Europe, the Wehrmacht’s timetable began to unfold. Hitler’s secretary, Christa Schroeder, wrote at die Berghof on March 7: It will soon be time to return to Berlin; we have been down here long enough. We shall probably be back in Berlin in die middle of the mondi. . . We have to be injected again against cholera and typhus — and that hap¬ pened before all our big journeys! Goring had now returned from his extended leave, and on March 6 he secured a long interview with Hitler in which he repaired the fences diat had been broken in his absence. At diis time Goring’s prestige was low following his defeat in the Battle of Britain. He was also embarrassed by die exaggerated claims of his pilots when ‘destroyed’ enemy aircraft, battleships, and aircraft carriers turned up intact. It is significant diat although Goring referred to himself in Febru¬ ary 1941 as ‘the second man in die state,’ Hitler was privately explaining to Keitel and Jodi that one reason why a powerful OKW would become nec- Behind the Door 367 essary in the future was that ‘a man might later step into his shoes who might well be the best statesman but might not have as much military knowl¬ edge and ability at his fingertips as he did.’This could hardly refer to Goring. Admiral Raeder had become bolder in his attacks on the absent Reichsmarschall, producing air photographs of Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Cardiff to show the ineffectiveness of t lie Luftwaffe bombing and pointing out that the crescendo of RAF attacks on Germany was proof that the en¬ emy air force was anything but defeated. Only in bombing the enemy’s sea lanes could the Luftwaffe be used to best advantage. These arguments were accepted by Hitler in his directive for economic warfare against Britain on February 6. He identified the loss of British merchant shipping as the most potent factor in the destruction of her war economy; Hitler emphasised: ‘No decisive effect is to be expected from systematic terror raids.’ The facts bore this out. A French diplomat who had left Britain in De¬ cember reported to the German authorities t hat although the night bombing of London and Coventry had affected public morale to some extent, New¬ castle, where he had been stationed, had hardly suffered. Hitler personally underlined witli blue pencil the man’s remarks that ‘massive attacks on Newcastle had not taken place up to his departure.’The diplomat had ex¬ pressed puzzlement at this, ‘as at present the Vickers Armstrong shipyards at Newcastle were building an aircraft carrier, two battle cruisers, a light cruiser, six or seven destroyers, and three or four submarines.’ Hitler ordered this brought to the Luftwaffe’s attention, but he refused to injure Goring’s pride by giving t lie navy direct control of the air force units tliat it needed. In Albania, die Italian minor offensive, launched on March 14, had fizzled out. Hitler was secretly pleased that the Duce had again burned his fingers. The Greek general commanding the northern army secretly let the Ger¬ mans know diat he would agree to an immediate armistice in Albania if die Italian troops there were replaced by Germans; they would also talk about territorial claims, provided diat there were no Italians at the conference table. Hitler however told both Brauchitsch and Raeder that even if Greece would now agree to evict the British, Germany would still have to occupy die whole country so diat the Luftwaffe could command the eastern Medi¬ terranean. By March 24, when Hitler departed for Vienna to attend Yugoslavia’s signing of the Tripartite Pact, die British were believed to have disembarked up to forty diousand troops in Greece. The OKW instructed die German military attache in Washington to see to it that die size of die 368 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ British force in Greece was given maximum publicity. ‘The bigger the Brit¬ ish talk, the better will be t ho propaganda effect of their defeat.’ Arriving in Vienna, Hitler was in high spirits as his train pulled into the station. He stayed at the Imperial Hotel, redolent with memories of March 1938. Once, his adjutants allowed a ‘ Frau Wolf ’ in to see Hitler — his younger sister, Paula, working incognito as a secretary in a military hospital. For a while they chatted about family affairs. Paula said, ‘Sometimes when I am in the mountains and I see a little chapel I go in and pray for you.’ Hitler was deeply stirred, and after a time replied, ‘Do you know it is my absolute conviction diat die Lord is holding His protecting hand above me?’ Paula had been eleven when their modier died, and Adolf eighteen. He had not seen her for diirteen years after that; she remained of die opinion that it was a pity he had not become an architect as he had always wanted. it had taken all of March to persuade the ambivalent Yugoslavs to sign the Tripartite Pact, but the psychological blow to Britain was well worth the time invested; in addition, Hitler’s armies fighting in Greece would depend on a line of communications extending for some 2 30 miles along, and only 1 2 miles away from, the Yugoslav border. Once, die Yugoslav regent Prince Paul visited him unofficially at die Berghof. He laid down harsh terms for his country’s compliance with Hitler’s plans: Yugoslav territory was not to be crossed by Axis troops; she was to make no military contribution her¬ self, but was to receive Salonika as a reward. It was not until Germany agreed to diese terms that die Yugoslav privy council agreed to sign the pact; however, anti-Italian feeling was running so high in Belgrade diat sev¬ eral ministers resigned over the issue. After the pact was signed, Hitler sent for Keitel and expressed his pleasure diat there would now be no further unpleasant surprises for diem in the Balkans.The quagmire, the quagmire! Seldom was a pact shorter-lived than diis one widiYugoslavia. Early on March 27, Hewel brought Hitler the stunning news that diere had been a coup d’etat in Belgrade. Prince Paul had been overdirown. Crowds were demonstrating outside the German legation, the German tourist office had been destroyed, die Swedish envoy had been mistaken for a German and beaten unconscious, and British flags — distributed by die British legation — were appearing everywhere. Crowds were singing ‘The Red Flag’ in die streets. The coup had been engineered by Yugoslavia’s air force commander, General Dusan Simovic, a Serb known to be hostile to Germany. His revo- Behind the Door 369 lutionary Cabinet did'not ratify the entry into the Tripartite Pact, but mouthed protestations of loyalty toward Germany. Hitler set little store by diem — he had mouthed enough such protesta¬ tions of his own in die past. Storming that this revolution was as though somebody had smacked his fist into a basinful of water, he sent for Keitel and Jodi. As a result of his Austrian upbringing he had always been uneasy about the chauvinistic Serbs in Belgrade. He could hardly credit his good fortune diat all diis had happened now, and not later, hi mid-May ‘ Barbarossa’ was scheduled to begin; had die overdirow of Prince Paul occurred only dien, it would have enormously complicated Hitler’s plans. ‘Luckily die enemy unmasked diemselves now,’ he crowed, ‘while our hands are still free!’ Hewel wrote in his diary: ‘Goring, Brauchitsch, and Ribbentrop are sent for immediately. Decisions are rapidly taken.The mood is exhilarating. The Hungarian and Bulgarian envoys are summoned forthwith.’ Shortly, die Forschungsamt tapped into a revealing telephone conversation going on between Simovic and his ambassador in Washington, Foltic — die former on his real plans, the latter on his talk with President Roosevelt. Hitler told die Hungarian envoy Dome Sztojay that his message for die regent of Hungary, Horthy, was this: die hour had struck for Hungary’s revenge; die Fiihrer would support her territorial claims against Yugoslavia to the hilt. ‘March back into the Banat! ’ he advised, referring to territories which Hungary had lost at Trianon; and he offered to Hungary die port of Fiume as an outlet into the Adriatic, which Admiral Horthy must surely desire. Shortly afterward Hitler received die Bulgarian envoy, Draganoff, and offered to him what was to have been Yugoslavia’s share of Greece — Macedonia. ‘The eternal uncertainty down diere is over,’ he rejoiced. ‘The tornado is going to burst upon Yugoslavia with breathtaking suddenness.’ In a brief war conference with Haider, Brauchitsch, and Ribbentrop, Hitler settled die broad plan of attack in the Balkans. ‘Politically it is vital for the blow to fall on Yugoslavia without mercy.’ Goring would open the campaign widi waves of bombers against Belgrade. By die small hours of die morning following the war conference, the formal directive was in Hit¬ ler’s hands: ‘Yugoslavia is to be regarded as an enemy and is therefore to be destroyed as rapidly as possible, whatever protestations of loyalty she may momentarily utter.’ The attack on Russia would now have to be postponed for up to four weeks. Even here fate was on Hitler’s side: the spring of 1941 had brought unusually heavy rains to Central Europe, and the ground would have been 3 J 0 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ too marshy for the panzer divisions; the rivers and dikes were flooded throughout western Russia. The divisions Hitler now committed to the Balkans would have remained idle until June anyway. punctually at four p.M. on March 27, outwardly unruffled by the breath¬ taking events of the past few hours, Hitler received die Japanese foreign minister,Yosuke Matsuoka, at the chancellery. Hitler saw in Japan’s territo¬ rial aspirations in the Far East a further powerful means of bringing about Britain’s submission. It was Admiral Raeder who had first brought Hitler’s attention to Singapore, die key to British supremacy in the Far East. Late in December, Raeder had shown him a letter from his naval attache in Tokyo, reporting that certain Japanese naval circles were seriously in favour of capturing Singapore as soon as possible; Raeder suggested to Hitler diat it would be very much in Germany’s interest if Japan became embroiled with Britain, however lengdiy and profitless her campaign. Hitler had hinted obscurely to die departing Japanese ambassador, Saburo Kurusu, in early February diat ‘mutual friends could one day become our mutual enemies’ — meaning Germany and Russia — but this message left no visible impression on Tokyo. Hitler instructed the OKW to draft a plan for wide-ranging joint consultation between Germany and Japan. The Wehrmacht and German industry must give dieir ally generous insight into all their most up-to-date secret weapons and designs, in the tacit hope that Japan would ‘take active steps in the Far East as soon as possible.’ Later in February Hitler and Ribbentrop had urged the new Japanese ambassador, General Hiroshi Oshima, to recommend a Japanese attack on Singapore. Oshima said that Japan now felt it must prepare for war not only widi Britain but with the United States and that this would take time; die preparations for attacking Singapore would be concluded by the end of May. On February 27, Ribbentrop cabled his ambassador in Tokyo: ‘Please use every means at your disposal to get Japan to take Singapore as soon as possible.’ Hitler still refused to play his trump card — revealing to die Japa¬ nese his firm plan to attack Russia. In a directive issued early in March, die OKW pointed out that this attack on Russia would provide Japan with an opportunity to launch her own campaigns, but warned that ‘no hint what¬ soever is to be given to die Japanese about Operation Barbarossa.’ In response to General Haider’s urging on March 17 Hitler merely agreed to drop a hint as to die possibility when Matsuoka saw him. Hitler observed how cagey Matsuoka was about Singapore — die visitor stressed in painful Behind the Door detail how little weight his voice carried on this issue in Tokyo — and made his own most direct reference to ‘Barbarossa’ in an aside to General Oshima at the luncheon given for Matsuoka on the twenty-eighth. He noted: ‘If the Soviet Union were to attack Japan, then Germany would not hesitate to launch an armed attack on the Soviet Union.’When a few days later Matsuoka passed through Berlin Hitler offered him a similar guarantee in the event that Japan should find herself at war with the United States. On April i o, Ribbentrop was to be even more explicit, stating that ‘ Germany might yet start a war against the Soviet Union before the year is out; it depends on how she behaves.’ But the Japanese response was disappointing — indeed, while passing through Moscow on his return to Tokyo, Matsuoka signed an agreement of neutrality between Japan and Moscow. hitler had left several of his key ministers in the dark about Barbarossa. He had not informed even Dr. Goebbels until shortly before Matsuoka’s visit, because it was not until the propaganda chief attended Hitler’s ban¬ quet for the Japanese minister on March 28, 1941, that he jotted these telling words in his diary: ‘[AfterYugoslavia] tlie biggest operation will then follow: Against R. It is being meticulously concealed, only a very few are in tlie know. It will be initiated with massive west-bound troop movements. We divert attention every which way, except to t lie east. A feint invasion operation is to be prepared against England, then, like lightning, every¬ thing goes back [east] and up and at ’em.’ It would call for a masterpiece of propaganda, he admitted, but: ‘Great victories lie in store.’ Once more, on March 30, Hitler’s generals and admirals were sum¬ moned from all over Nazi-occupied Europe to hear a secret speech in Berlin. He explained at some length his decision to attack Russia, starting signi¬ ficantly with Britain’s refusal to makepeace in June 1940. He spoke scathingly of Italy’s misfortunes, charitably distinguishing between the plucky but poorly led Italian soldiers and their bumbling and devious political and mili¬ tary commanders. ‘Why has Britain fought on?’ he asked. He identified two primary reasons — the influence of the Jews and of Britain’s international financial entanglements, and the dominant influence of t he Churchill clique. The RAF’s night bombing of Germany boosted British domestic morale far more than it damaged German industry. Now Britain was hitching her for¬ tunes to die United States and Russia, declared Hitler. Of die United States he was not afraid. But Russia must be defeated now. ‘We have die chance to smash Russia while our own rear is free.That chance will not recur so soon. 372 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ I would be betraying the future of the German people if I did not seize it now!’ Hitler urged his generals to have no compunctions about violating their treaty with Russia. Stalin had only cynically signed it; but he also urged them not to underestimate die Russian tanks or air force, or to rely too heavily on Germany’s allies in diis fight. He drilled into his generals that this would be a war between great ideologies, and as such very different from the war in die west. ‘In die east cruelty now will be kindness for the future.’The Russian commissars and GPU officials were criminals, and were to be treated as such. ‘It is not our job to see that diese criminals survive.’ In a masterpiece of rapid General Staff work, the entire Balkan cam¬ paign plan was dismantled and remounted within nine days to make provision for the invasion of Yugoslavia by German forces. The rich and fertile Banat region would be returned to Hungary, the Dalma¬ tian coast and Montenegro assigned to Italy, and Serbia itself placed under German military rule. Croatia was to become an autonomous state. It all seemed a very satisfactory end to the Balkan nightmare before it had really begun. Russia’s stance in the Balkans remained uncertain. Rumours multiplied. Was Stalin offering Yugoslavia’s new regime a non-aggression pact? Had he secretly offered diem arms and supplies? Was Stalin preparing to seize Ro¬ mania? On April 3 the Romanian General Staff reported to Hitler that die Russians were stepping up photographic reconnaissance sorties over Ro¬ mania, and that a new paratroop school had just opened at Kiev. The die was cast. Hitler instructed Ribbentrop to ignore any fresh prot¬ estations of loyalty from Belgrade. When Count Ciano phoned after dinner on March 3 1 with news diat die deputy premier ofYugoslavia was asking to see Mussolini, Hitler advised, ‘Keep him away for the next few days.’ On April ^ the political clouds began to clear: Hewel brought to Hitler a disturbing Forschungsamt intercept proving that Stalin was on the point of signing a pact widi die new anti-German regime in Belgrade. It was, therefore, now or never. An hour after midnight — it was now April 6, 1941 — he sent for Dr. Goebbels. He needed company. He told Goebbels that he was going to prosecute diis war against die Serbs without pity. Hit¬ ler sipped tea until five-twenty, the appointed zero hour for his attack, then retired to bed as German armoured and infantry divisions began storming the frontiers of Greece and Yugoslavia. Three hundred German bombers were in die air, heading for Belgrade. A Bitter Victory H itler had fully taken into account the susceptibilities of his new allies; in a directive issued at the beginning of April 1941, he stated that he would himself assign the necessary campaign objectives for the Italian and Hungarian forces. I lordly was no problem, but the Duce — his amour-propre injured by a succession of defeats — obliged Hitler to adopt public postures and contortions on Italy’s behalf that for once united the OKW, the foreign ministry, the army, and t he navy in a seething, uncomprehending anger at dieir Fuhrer’s indulgence of his inept ally. Within twelve days of Hitler’s attack,Yugoslavia was defeated.The Brit¬ ish Expeditionary Force found itself fighting a hopeless rearguard action against die German armoured and mountain corps which had comfortably side-stepped die formidable Metaxas line to pour into Yugoslavia and Greece. The British had committed a real blunder in purchasing die coup d’etat in Belgrade. Hitler had ordered the attack to begin widi the saturation bombing of Belgrade — with an eye to die deterrent effect on other powers, notably Turkey and die Soviet Union. As many as 17,000 civilians were killed in die air raid; robbed of their nerve centre, die Yugoslav armies caved in. Over 340,000Yugoslav soldiers were taken prisoner; the Germans lost only 1 p 1 dead although they bore the brunt of the fighting. Throughout die campaign, the Italians and die Hungarians displayed a marked reluctance to attack until die enemy had first been soundly beaten by die German troops. Horthy expressed die pious hope that in the coming fighting die Hungarian armies would not be ‘led too far astray from Hungary’; at that time he had no knowledge of Hitler’s plans to launch a coalition war against Russia within diree months. 373 374 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ on the afternoon of April 9, German radio broadcast the first string of six special bulletins on the victories in the south-east. Hewel noted the ‘magnificent mood’ at Hitler’s chancellery. The mood was dimmed briefly when fifty British bombers arrived over Berlin. Hitler took refuge in his air raid shelter and, after the raid was over, sent Hewel to tour the blitzed area. Bellevue Castle, the crown prince’s palace, the State library, and the university had been badly damaged; in the State Opera House Unter den Linden the fires were out of control. Churchill claimed he had killed three thousand in Berlin; wanting to play off die casualties in Berlin against those in Belgrade, Goebbels suppressed the real figure — just fifteen. In revenge, a week later Hitler sent the Luftwaffe to raid London continu¬ ously for ten hours with a diousand tons of bombs. Late on April 10 his train left Berlin for Munich, and on the eleventh he continued through Vienna toward Graz. Here a tunnel took the single-track railway dirough the Alps.The OKW command train, Atlas, halted on the far side of the ice-cold, three thousand-yard-long tunnel; Hitler’s Amerika stopped before entering it, near the little station of Monichkirchen. This heavily guarded area was to be his headquarters for the next two weeks. His only contacts with die outside world were die OKW’s communications system, die showing of rough-cut newsreels at the nearby Monichkirchener Hof Hotel, and die visits of his generals and ministers. On April 1 2, die Nazi banner was already flying over the ruins of Bel¬ grade. On die fourteendi die Greeks began evacuating Albania. On the fifteenth die OKW learned that the British expeditionary force was in full flight toward its ports of embarkation. Broadcasting to the Yugoslav nation, Churchill offered deceptive comfort: the British were still standing right behind diem, an unfortunately ambiguous statement which Goebbels in¬ structed his press media to exploit to die full. Hitler’s instructions to the OKW were diat if Greece surrendered, all Greek prisoners were to be released — as a mark of his admiration for the valour widi which they had defended dieir frontiers. Hitler laid down die principle that surrender offers were always to be accepted by German commanders, however small die enemy unit involved. Field Marshal List formally accepted die Greek ar¬ my’s surrender on April 21 even though die Greek commander, General Tsolakoglu, made it plain that he was not surrendering to the Italians, whom his forces had soundly defeated (and, indeed, had not seen for some days). Mussolini was livid. Italy, blustered the Duce, had been fighting with 500,000 men and lost 63,000 dead in her six mondis of war widi Greece. A Bitter Victory 375 Then suddenly die SS Life Guards had advanced so far diat diey held a bridge which actively blocked the Italian pursuit of die Greeks! Hitler re¬ luctantly backtracked and told Jodi that List was wrong to have accepted die surrender and that the fight must go on until the Greeks surrendered to die Italians too. Ribbentrop visited Hitler diat afternoon, April 21. Hewel noted: ‘Sur¬ render talks are in progress with the Greek army. Obstacle: the Italians. Everybody is furious, even die Fiihrer. He is always torn between soldier and politician.’ Not only had the Greek army surrendered to die Germans and laid down its arms, but the greater part of it was already in captivity; how were die Greeks now to continue fighting for Italy’s benefit? Hitler sent word to die Duce’s headquarters diat perhaps die Italians would like to send a repre¬ sentative to assist Jodi in settling the surrender terms widi die Greeks die next morning, April 22. Mussolini’s forces had however opened a bedrag¬ gled offensive on die Epirus front as soon as word of the Greek surrender to List reached him; the Greeks were not only still fighting there, they were inflicting heavy casualties on die Italians. The OKW rushed a draft of die surrender terms to Rome. When Mus¬ solini read in the draft diat the Fiihrer wanted to allow the Greek officers to retain their swords and daggers, he protested. Here however die Germans were adamant — die whole world had marvelled at the Greek army’s pro¬ longed resistance, and Hitler considered it proper to recognise their bravery. That apart, Hitler blindly accepted die Italian demands. To die fury of Admiral Raeder he announced that die Yugoslav and Greek navies were to be handed over to die Italians when they arrived; to the fury of both die OKW and army, Hitler also bowed to Mussolini’s demand that the Axis troops stage a ceremonial entry into Athens, with Italians and Germans side by side. The nearest Italians were still a week’s march away from Ath¬ ens, which did not make diings easier. At Salonika, the surrender document was signed by all three parties on die afternoon of April 2 3, after Mussolini had played his final trick on Hit- ler.The Fiihrer had forbidden premature release of the surrender news, but at ten a.m. die Italians had already suddenly broadcast it to the world. ‘The enemy armies of Epirus and Macedonia have laid down their arms. The surrender was tendered by a Greek military delegation yesterday at 9:04 p.m. to the commander of die Italian Elevendi Army on die Epirus front.’ Hewel summed it up in his diary: ‘The Italians are acting like crazy idiots.’ 3 j 6 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ In Croatia a breakaway movement had been fomented by Canaris’s un¬ derground forces. General Sladko Kvaternik, an officer of the old Austro-Hungarian army, had seized power in Zagreb, aided by the Abwehr’s ‘Jupiter’ organisation, and with Hitler’s blessing he had set up an independ¬ ent state with Dr. Ante Pavelic, who had spent long years exiled in Italy, as its Poglavnik, or chief. Hitler’s decision to transfer the Dalmatian coastal region to Italy caused intense resentment in Zagreb. However, the Fuhrer closed his eyes to the hatred Germany would reap from the Croats by this action. On April 24, Canaris’s lieutenant, Colonel Lahousen, interviewed General Kvaternik, the new Croat war minister in Zagreb. Lahousen found that this ancient, upright nationalist’s admiration for Germany and her Fuhrer was boundless, but so was his hatred of the Italians, who were now wreak¬ ing their revenge on Dalmatia. ‘The Croats are a people of honour, with a long military tradition,’ complained Kvaternik, ‘and it is bitter beyond words to be trodden down and humiliated now by an army that has not been able to pin one victory to its colours.’ Kvaternik feared that this ‘completely irrational political attitude of the Italians’ would sow the seeds of serious future danger. On April 24, 1941 the Hungarian regent, Admiral Horthy, visited Hit¬ ler’s train. Hitler had received from the admiral many letters, written in a quaint, archaic German style. The most recent had come in mid-April; in it, Horthy had once more suggested a German attack on Russia and hinted that Hungary would participate if the whole of Transylvania — at present partly under Romanian rule — were promised to him. ‘Nobody else knows I have written this letter, and I shall never mention it, even in any memoirs I may write.’ On April 19, Hitler had acknowledged to the Hungarian envoy Sztojay that Horthy obviously felt deeply — as this letter showed — about the Russian menace; he nevertheless inwardly rejected making any commit¬ ment to Hungary at Romania’s expense. According to Hewel’s diary the Hungarian ‘talked and talked’ during the luncheon, and even argued, using one of Hitler’s favourite phrases, diat Greece had been defeated because she was a democracy, where ‘the votes of two idiots count for more than that of one wise man.’ Keitel lured Horthy into plying Hitler with hunting anecdotes, knowing that Hitler abominated huntsmen.Those who knew Hitler well were famil¬ iar with his loathing of horses. When three years later, SS General Hermann Fegelein, Himmler’s new liaison officer, clanked in wearing riding spurs, Hitler sardonically invited him to ‘ gallop next door’ to fetch a certain docu- A Bitter Victory 377 ment. But nothing could now darken Hitler’s mood. The British were in full flight: Hitler had killed or captured another twenty-two thousand elite troops. At Jeschonnek’s suggestion Hitler ordered an airborne assault on Crete prepared as well. hitler’s own mind was made up on die Russian campaign, but he still wanted to convince Ribbentrop of its necessity. He knew he would not win over the foreign ministry as such. Since its failure to give him advance warn¬ ing of the Belgrade putsch, the ministry’s stock had sunk still further in his estimation. He had decided to appoint the Party’s chief thinker, the Baltic- born Alfred Rosenberg, to manage die new eastern dominions —impressed, apparently, by Rosenberg’s early writings on the Bolshevik menace. Small wonder that Hewel’s diary shows Ribbentrop ‘off sick’ for most of April 1941 — malingering, furious at diis fresh erosion of his powers. On about April 2 j Hitler telephoned Ribbentrop in Vienna, summoned him to his special-train headquarters, and told him he had decided finally to attack Russia. Ribbentrop later recalled: He said that all the military Intelligence reaching him confirmed that die Soviet Union was preparing in a big way along the entire front from die Baltic to the Black Sea. He was not willing to be taken by surprise once he had recognised a danger. Moscow’s pact with the Serbian putschist government was a downright provocation to Germany and a clear de¬ parture from die German-Russian treaty of friendship. In diis conversation I recommended that he listen first to our [Mos¬ cow] ambassador, Count [Werner von der] Schulenburg. . . I wanted to try a diplomatic settlement with Moscow first. But Hitler refused any such attempt and forbade me to discuss die matter with anybody; no amount of diplomacy could change the Russian attitude, as he now rec¬ ognised it, but it might cheat him of die important tactical element of surprise when he attacked. On April 26 Hitler’s train left Monichkirchen for the former Yugoslav frontier. He motored to Maribor — newly renamed Marburg — and toured die German-speaking provinces which his Second Army had regained for die Reich. Everywhere diere was a huge and fervent welcome, especially at Marburg’s town hall. ‘Then by train back to Graz,’ recorded Hewel. ‘An enormous reception there. . . The Fiihrer is very happy — a fanatical wel- 3 jS iv: ‘War of Liberation’ come. Wonderful singing. The museum. Lunch at Hotel Wiesler, then left for Klagenfurt in the evening. . . Coffee at the castle, with infinitely ugly maidens provided from the gau’s leadership school. But they could sing very nicely.’ Here in Klagenfurt, Hitler die next day met his old history teacher, Professor Leopold Poetsch; he had written in Mein Kampf that it had per¬ haps altered the whole course of his life that fate gave him such a history teacher — able to bring the subject alive. By April 2 8 Adolf Hitler was back in his chancellery in Berlin. That evening, Ribbentrop’s ambassador in Moscow was ushered in. Hit¬ ler granted to Count Schulenburg just thirty minutes of his time. Schulenburg had not been officially informed of‘Barbarossa’; Hans Krebs, his military attache, had been forbidden to tell him. But Schulenburg was no simpleton.The rumours sweeping Central Europe told him all he needed. To the ambassador it seemed that t he Fuhrer had drawn all his precon¬ ceived ideas from Vidkun Quisling, who had first whispered to Hitler that after the very first military defeats the unpopular Bolshevik regime would collapse. Hitler asked him what devil had possessed the Russians that they had signed that pact with the putschist regime in Belgrade — was it an attempt to frighten Germany?The ambassador’s opinion was that the Russians were just openly staking their claim on the Balkans; they were very uneasy about the rumours of a coming German attack as well. Hitler retorted that it was the Russians who had begun the mobilisation race, but the ambassador sug¬ gested it was characteristic Russian overreaction to German moves. If Stalin had not allied himself wi th France and Britain when both were still strong and intact, he would hardly opt for diem now. To Hitler diis was a facile argument: in 1939 Stalin had wanted to en¬ courage war between Germany and die West; how could he have foreseen that Hitler would emerge victorious so soon? Hitler decided now that ‘Barbarossa’ would begin on June 22, a Sunday, with the onset of die final top-capacity transport programme one mondi earlier. The German armies in the south would be numerically inferior to the enemy. Army Group South could not mount die pincer movement origi¬ nally planned to destroy die Russian forces soudi of the Pripyet Marshes but had to attempt an almost impossible encirclement action with its north¬ ern wing. Nonedieless, Brauchitsch was still confident that after four weeks of stiff fighting on the frontier die Russian resistance would melt away. A Bitter Victory 379 Persistent rumours of‘Barbarossa’ were soon sweeping Moscow. The most substantial evidence came to Moscow from Romania and in¬ directly from Belgrade. Hitler had been most frank in his overtures to General Antonescu. When Goring had seen Antonescu in Vienna on March <, he had explained that ‘one day die other oil supplier might drop out.’ Goring had asked how many Romanians now lived on Russian territory, and he had made a scooping gesture by way of explanation. Evidently Hitler had also toldYugoslavia’s prince regent about ‘Barbarossa’ at die Berghof on March 4. British Foreign Secretary Eden told Sir Stafford Cripps as much; Eden identified his source as King George of Greece, die prince regent’s brodier. The Hungarian Intelligence service learned of diis in Moscow and passed die information back to Admiral Canaris on April 11. A few days later the German naval attache in Moscow was cabling diat Cripps was now predicting diat Hitler would attack Russia on June 22, a canard so ‘obviously absurd’ diat he would do all he could to kill it. Stalin’s reaction to the warnings was illuminating. At Cripps’s suggestion die Yugoslav envoy in Moscow had at die begin¬ ning of April warned Stalin about ‘Barbarossa.’ Stalin had cockily replied, ‘Let them come. We will be ready for them!’ hitler’s blitzkrieg victory in die Balkans had wiped the smile off Stalin’s face. An extraordinary period ensued in which the Soviet government tried to appease Hitler: grain, petroleum, manganese, and other materials began flooding westward, and the Soviet government even laid on a special goods train to rush rubber to Germany along the Trans-Siberian railway. On die day die Japanese foreign minister departed for Tokyo, Stalin made a stunning personal appearance on the railroad platform, embraced die Japanese officials, and dien searched out Ambassador Schulenburg and loudly pronounced in front of the assembled diplomatic corps, ‘We must remain friends, you must do all you can for that!’ Hitler studied all the reports, including one submitted by the Forschungsamt, on diis puzzling Moscow scene. Equally remarkable was the politeness of the Soviet remonstrance over eighty German violations of Soviet air space in die first half of April. After a conference with Keitel on Abwehr operations planned inside Russia, Ad¬ miral Canaris noted: ‘General Jodi disclosed to me [afterward] that diey are greatly worried about the Russians’ soft and indulgent attitude toward us, and he added half in jest, in a reference to our No. 800 “Special Duties” 3 So iv: ‘War of Liberation’ Training Regiment Brandenburg, “If these chaps” — meaning the Soviet Russians — “keep on being so accommodating and take offence at nothing, t hen jo (i will have to stage an incident to start die war.’”* throughout March, Russian troop movements close to die frontier had been so intense, with a heavy flow of reinforcements from Moscow toward Smolensk and Minsk, diat General Haider became anxious diat die Rus¬ sians might launch a preventive action. ‘The disposition of Russian forces gives food for diought,’ he wrote on April 7. ‘If we discount the slogan that the Russians want peace and won’t attack anybody diemselves, then it has to be admitted that the Russian dispositions could allow them to go over very rapidly from defence into attack ~ and this could prove highly embar¬ rassing for us.’ The Fuhrer himself was in no doubt. At the end of it all, in 1941;, he was to say, ‘I didn’t take die decision to attack Moscow lightly, but because I knew from certain information diat an alliance was being prepared be¬ tween Britain and Russia. The big question was, Should we hit out first or wait until we were overwhelmed at some time in the future?’ The naval attache reported from Moscow that the Soviet naval construc¬ tion programme was in the process of building three battleships, eleven cruisers, sixty-one destroyers, and nearly three hundred submarines; most of this fleet would be concentrated in the Baltic. After April 7 , the German embassy in Moscow observed an increasing tide of conscription. On the eighth, the families of the Russian trade mission began leaving Berlin. On the twenty-third there were fresh reports from Bucharest of Soviet rein¬ forcements massing in Bukovina and Bessarabia.The next day the German military attache in Bucharest reported diat Soviet troops were arriving at Odessa and being transported by rail to die Bug and Dniester. On die twenty- fifth die naval decoders intercepted a dispatch from die British military attache in Moscow to die War Office in London: ‘Our military attache in Budapest,’ this read, ‘who was travelling to Moscow a few days ago, saw at Lemberg [Lvov] at least one tank brigade ... on die railway line between Lemberg and Kiev heading westward; he passed seven troop trains of which four were conveying tanks and mechanised equipment and diree troops.’ The German attaches also saw many military transports heading west be¬ tween Minsk and Baranovichi. By May 5 , Antonescu was able to tip off the *The ‘Brandenburg’ was the German commando regiment. A Bitter Victory 381 Germans that Soviet troops were massing between Kiev and Odessa and that reinforcements were still pouring westward from Siberia. ‘The tiring worth noting is that factories around Moscow have been ordered to trans¬ fer their equipment into the country’s interior.’ A team of Goring’s engineers had been allowed to tour eight or nine of die biggest Russian factories producing ball bearings, alloys, aircraft, and aero-engines, and to see the advances made by Soviet research. It was clear diat the Soviet air force was a far greater menace dian Hitler had bargained for. The aircraft factories were die biggest and most modern in Europe. When the German experts attended a dinner party, the leading Soviet air¬ craft designer, Mikoyan, stated explicitly, ‘We shall valiantly ward off any attack, whatever quarter it comes from! ’ On Red Army orders foreign diplomats were prevented from travelling freely. On May 13 a German consul in the heart of China reported that six days before Moscow had instructed all missions to ascertain die probable attitude of other countries in die event of a German-Soviet conflict. On die sixteendi the Russian envoy in Stockholm was reported to have stated diat at no time in Russian history had more powerful troop contingents been massed in the west (which confirmed die estimate of the Swedish air attache in Moscow that by mid-March alone 60 percent of the Red Army had been massed in western Russia, particularly confronting Romania). stalin’s trainloads of rubber, ores, oil, and grain kept rolling westward to Hitler’s Germany even as June 2 2, die date for ‘Barbarossa,’ approached; but the date on which Stalin secretly proposed to resume die Soviet pro¬ gramme of expansion, now temporarily halted by Hitler’s obduracy, also came closer. On May 3, Stalin delivered two secret speeches at a Kremlin banquet to a thousand officers graduating from Moscow’s staff colleges. Among die officials who passed dirough the Kremlin’s Trinity Gate that evening were Molotov, Mikoyan, Voroshilov, Kalinin, and Lavrenti Beria; diere were also two generals and one major who later fell into German hands and independently described die speeches to German interrogators widi a high degree of unanimity. * * These speeches by Stalin are mentioned in the Russian-language memoirs of Marshal Zhukov but not in the English and German editions. Ullstein, publisher of the German edition of Hitler’s War , deleted every reference to these speeches. The speeches’ contents have since been confirmed by historians working in the former Soviet archives. 382 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ Had Schulenburg — who heard merely that Stalin had delivered a forty- minute speech — been there, perhaps even his optimism about the Soviet Union’s designs would have been dispelled. Stalin launched into a sober account of the need to prepare for war with Germany: New tank models, the Mark i and 3, are on their way; these are excel¬ lent tanks, whose armour can withstand 76-millimetre shells. In die near future diere will also be a new tank graced widi my own name. . . Our war plan is ready, we have built the airfields and landing grounds, and the front-line aircraft are already there. Everything has been done by way of clearing out the rear areas: all the foreign elements have been removed. It follows that over the next two months we can begin the fight with Germany. . .We have to take our revenge for Bulgaria and Finland. The partisan movement painstakingly built up throughout Europe, Sta¬ lin continued, would assume a vast scale and would paralyse the German army’s supplies. By the end of die first year Germany would have exhausted her limited stockpiles of scarce raw materials. ‘Germany may be able to build aircraft and tanks, but she will lack the warriors diemselves.’ Stalin emphasised: ‘There is no such thing as an invincible army, whatever the country of its allegiance.’ A lavish banquet followed, with drinking far into the night. One of the generals, the director of the famous Frunze military academy, was toasting Stalin’s genius for ‘preserving die peace’ of Europe when Stalin irritably waved for him to stop, tottered to his feet, and delivered a second speech of his own. During the years of the capitalist encirclement of die Soviet Union we were able to make good use of the [‘peaceloving’] slogan while we ex¬ panded the Soviet Union’s frontiers to die north and west. But now we must discard this slogan for the reactionary and narrow¬ minded slogan that it is, as it will not serve to win us one more square inch of territory. It is time to stop chewing that particular cud, Comrade Chosin: stop being a simpleton! The era of forcible expansion has begun for the Soviet Union. Raising his glass, Stalin announced a new and different toast: ‘Long live the active policy of aggression of the Soviet nation!’ Hess and Bormann A s A german and as a soldier I consider it beneadi me ever to belittle a brave enemy,’ exclaimed Hitler to his assembled Reichstag deputies on May 4, 1941. ‘But it seems necessary to me to do something to protect the Truth from the boastful lies of a man who is as miserable a politician as he is a soldier, and is as wretched a soldier as he is a politician.’ Hitler was declaiming on theWehrmacht’s fresh Balkan triumph. ‘Just as he did after Norway and Dunkirk, Mr. Churchill — he also began this campaign — is trying to say something that he might yet be able to twist and distort into a British victory. . . Mr. Churchill may be able to lay down a smokescreen before his fellow-countrymen, but he cannot elimi¬ nate die results of his disasters.’ Now die brave Greek people had paid for dieir pro-British monarch’s folly. ‘I regretted it from die start. For me as a German, born and bred to revere and respect die art and culture of diis country whence the first rays of mortal beauty and dignity emerged, it was a hard and bitter experience to see this happening and be able to do nodiing to prevent it.’ From the French and British documents found in France, he said, he had realised how far the Greek government had drifted into Brit¬ ain’s arms. Rudolf Hess sat between Hitler and Ribbentrop diroughout diis Reichstag speech. Ribbentrop said later diat Hess’s eyes looked completely abnormal all evening. Constitutionally ‘Deputy Fiihrer’ of the Party since April 1933 and second in line of succession after Goring, Hess was an eccentric — just how eccentric we now know, from die recently recovered Gestapo interro¬ gations of his private staff. Kriminalrat Franz Lutz, his detective, would describe in detail die plediora of doctors, therapists, dowsers, magnetopadis, hypnotists, and masseurs with a distaste evidently born of his boss’s re¬ quirement diat each of these dubious medical practitioners first test their 383 384 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ methods on his staff. Hess had been born in British Egypt and was unabash¬ edly pro-British, a pacifist, and an idealist. According to his secretary, Hess spoke privately with him at the end of this Reichstag speech, but merely inquired whether the Fiihrer still stood by the programme he had set forth in Mein Kampf— of marching side by side with Britain. Hitler had nodded; he claimed to have attached no impor¬ tance to this inquiry. Very shortly after the speech, at eight-fifteen that evening, May 4, 1941, he left Berlin by train for the dockyard at Gotenhafen, on the Baltic, to inspect Raeder’s new ships, the Bismarck and the Tirpitz. the later Gestapo interrogations established that Hess’s private audience widi Hitler had occurred on May 3, the evening before the speech, and not on May 4; and they put a rather different slant on it. Hess’s adjutant Gunther Sorof related that on May 3 Hess had gone to Munich’s Riem airport to fly up to Berlin by government plane, and that ten minutes before take-off Professor Karl Haushofer had come to speak with Hess; that Haushofer had thereafter asked the adjutant to stay behind and await a phone message from him to forward to Hess in Berlin; and that on that evening, May 3, Haushofer had phoned this message to Sorof to pass to the Deputy Fiihrer: ‘On a scale of 1 to 6, tilings stand at around 3 or 4, and more needs doing.’ His son Albrecht, he added, would report as soon as he got back from Por¬ tugal. Pintsch, who had mistrusted the younger Haushofer as a ‘spongy half-Jew’ and wondered why Party headquarters allowed him to come and go the way he did, dutifully passed the cryptic message to Hess in Berlin. Hess had arrived in Berlin at 3:20 p.m. on May 3. He had ordered his staff to bring his brand new Luftwaffe-Hauptmann’s uniform with them, so he was certainly up to something. He knew that the younger Haushofer had left Germany to contact the anti-Churchill opposition. ‘That evening,’ confirmed his detective later to Gestapo interrogators, ‘ Comrade Hess was with the Fiihrer.’ The adjutant Pintsch confirmed that, upon receiving this important phone message from Haushofer, Hess had taken it straight over to the Fiihrer; he added, ‘I believe it was from Portugal.’ After talking with Hess, Hitler now made a crucial alteration to the text of his next day’s speech to the Reichstag — what that was, we do not know. Hess’s staff had been aware for some weeks that he was toying with the idea of flying to Scotland. Detective Lutz, torn by uncertainty over whether to report this to Himmler, asked Pintsch next day, the fourth, whether Hess Hess and Bormann 385 had told the Fiihrer of his intention. The adjutant replied that their boss had told him that yes, he had now spoken with the Fiihrer about his plan. ‘The Fiihrer was not averse to it,’ he had said. the last time that Hitler had seen Tirpitz was at her launching at Wilhelmshaven two years before; he still recalled the keen, honest features of tlie shipyard workers — ‘A real aristocracy of tlie working class,’ he remi¬ nisced.The two new battleships dominated die dockyard.The Bismarck, with her twenty-eight diousand miles of electrical circuits and her radar-con- trolled guns, was the most advanced warship afloat. Indeed, the navy considered her unsinkable, and Admiral Giindier Liitjens, the gaunt-faced fleet commander, emphasised this word to Hitler in his cabin. He reported on the brilliant marauding operation he had commanded widi die battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, raiding Atlantic convoys bring¬ ing war supplies to Britain from the United States. When Hitler voiced qualms at Liitjens’s proposal to risk the capital ships very soon against die Atlantic convoys die admiral put his mind at rest. ‘Mein Fiihrer,’ he said, ‘there is nothing that can go wrong for me, with a ship like diis.The only danger diat I can see is torpedo-aircraft coming at us from aircraft carriers.’ Hitler returned to Berlin. He again commented unhappily to Dr. Goebbels on the ruin that Mr. Churchill was wreaking on die British em¬ pire, and on Italy’s series of military reverses. ‘Without diem,’ he remarked, scoffing at die Italians, ‘Petain would have stayed at our side, Franco might have joined us after all, and Gibraltar would be in our hands. Then Turkey would have been wide open to offers too.’ It just did not bear thinking about, Goebbels lamented, recording these re¬ marks in his diary, as Hitler continued soudi to Berchtesgaden — where he was to meet Darlan on May 11. Briefly, Hitler turned his attention to Iraq. On April 2 a coup d’etat had brought the anti-British lawyer-politician Rashid Ali al-Gailani to power; when die British diereupon landed in strengdi at the port of Basra on die Persian Gulf, Rashid Ali’s small army encircled the British air base at Habbaniya some twenty-five miles west of Baghdad and fighting broke out. The Iraqis appealed to Germany for aid. German military experts were flown out, followed by a diminutive force of Messerschmitt and Heinkel aircraft, which Darlan allowed to land on theVichy French airfields in Syria. That Saturday evening, May 10, a bulky packet was delivered to die Berghof. Told it was from Hess, Hitler pushed it aside. 386 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ toward noon the next day he was standing in the Berghof’s Great Hall when there was a commotion. One of Hess’s adjutants burst in. He handed Hitler a slim envelope. There were two pages inside. Hitler put on his eye¬ glasses and began to glance over them indifferently. Suddenly he slumped into a chair and bellowed in a voice that could be heard all over the house: ‘Oh my God, my God! He has flown to Britain!’ Hess’s adjutant confirmed that his chief had taken off at Augsburg airfield at 5^:40 p.m. the previous evening. Hitler rounded on Bodenschatz. ‘How is it, Herr General, t hat the Luftwaffe let Hess fly although I forbade it? Get Goring here!’ He now found that the bulky packet from Hess contained a long-winded account of his motives for flying and of his proposed peace plan, apparently written in October 1940. Hess promised not to betray ‘Barbarossa’ to the British. Bodenschatz telephoned Goring at his castle Veldenstein, near Nurem¬ berg. The Reichsmarschall petulantly asked why he was required at the Berghof. Hitler snatched the telephone, shouted, ‘ Goring — you are to come at once!’ and slammed the instrument down. The Deputy Fuhrer’s adju¬ tant, the bearer of the ill-tidings, was arrested and led away. A wave of hysterical speculation gripped the Berghof. ‘ Every possible construction,’ wrote Schmundt’s wife in her diary. Hitler confided to Julius Schaub what he feared. ‘If Hess really gets there just imagine: Churchill has Hess in his grasp! What lunacy on Hess’s part. . . They will give Hess some drug or other to make him stand before a microphone and broadcast whatever Churchill wants.’ Bodenschatz began immediate technical inquiries. Perhaps Hess might have crashed en route, or run into foul weather? admiral darlan — now Petain’s deputy premier, foreign minister, navy minister, and minister of the interior in one — arrived after lunch with Ribbentrop. But now that Hitler had decided on ‘Barbarossa,’ his interest in the Mediterranean had waned, and his inborn mistrust of the French was not easily overcome. In the Yugoslav files captured in Belgrade, a document had been found indicating that General Weygand was preparing to transfer his allegiance to De Gaulle. Canaris was to note at this time: When I turned to our Abwehr subversive operations in Syria and Iraq, the field marshal [Keitel] explained that the Fiihrer is inclined to be scep¬ tical about t he French attitude over this issue, as he is indeed about their whole attitude toward collaborating with Germany. . . The chief of the OKW mentioned in passing a discussion on the subject of De Gaulle in Hess and Bormann 387 the course of which the Fiihrer interrupted Ribbentrop — who had ut¬ tered a derogatory remark about De Gaulle — with the words: ‘Now, now, my dear Ribbentrop, if you found yourself in die same situation you would be the first to become a Gaullist!’ Since February Ribbentrop had seriously flirted with the notion of win¬ ning over France to collaboration — the French should place their fleet at die Axis disposal for the fight against Britain, and concede bases to Ger¬ many in French Africa. Hitler, however, remained sceptical and cool toward Darlan. A break for tea was taken at live-thirty, but Hewel noticed diat die Fiihrer’s mind was elsewhere. Small wonder, Hitler’s mind was on Hess. The Reichsmarschall arrived at nine p.m. Hewel recorded diat night: ‘A long discussion widi die Fiihrer downstairs in the Hall: die Fiihrer, foreign minister, Goring, Bormann. Very irritable. Much speculation.’Throughout diis day and the next die argument raged back and fordi as to whether Hess had arrived in Britain or was by now dead. ‘A very upset day,’ wrote Hewel on die twelfdi. ‘Goring and Udet believe Hess could not have managed die difficult flight to Glasgow. . . Fiihrer thinks Hess could have pulled it off.’ It was Ribbentrop who sagely pointed out that if diey waited any longer, die British might announce the news at any moment — indeed, they could claim that Hess had brought an official offer for a separate peace. That would set the cat among the pigeons. Hitler was aghast. He or¬ dered Ribbentrop to telephone reassurances to Ciano.The first investigations had meanwhile established that Hess had fallen under die sway of nature healers and astrologers. This facilitated the announcement that while Hess had evidently acted from idealistic motives he was in fact quite mad. ‘The Fiihrer decides to go ahead with the announcement,’ wrote Hewel. ‘He insists on including die passage about it being the action of a madman.’ By late afternoon the tenth redraft of the communique was complete; it was passed by Hitler and broadcast at eight p.m. In it die Party officially announced diat Hess had taken off from Augsburg in an aircraft ‘in a hallu¬ cinated state’ and not been seen since. ‘It is to be feared that Party-member Hess has crashed or met widi an accident somewhere.’ Hitler, noted Hewel, was now ‘somewhat less tense and more lively.’ Hours passed and then the BBC finally stirred: Rudolf Hess had landed by parachute in Scotland two nights before. The tension at the Berghof re¬ laxed; indeed a mood of hilarity took its place. ‘Fiihrer wants to wait until die morrow,’ Hewel ended that day’s momentous entries. 388 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ The Party had already begun an anguished investigation into the Deputy Fiihrer’s defection. On May 13 the Party circulated a second communique: papers left behind by Hess — who was more familiar with the Fuhrer’s genu¬ ine peace proposals than any other person — suggested that he suffered from the delusion that if he took some personal step, widi Englishmen known to him from earlier times, he might yet manage to bring about an entente between Germany and Britain. In fact Hitler’s anger was immense. Hans Frank — summoned post-haste to the Berghof along with all the other Party leaders and gauleiters, and who had been through many crises with Hitler as his personal lawyer — found him more upset than he had ever seen him ‘since the death of his niece Geli Raubal.’ In time, Hitler’s anger softened. Schaub later wrote: ‘In later years Hitler seldom mentioned Hess, but when he did it was always to emphasise how highly he had esteemed him — he had always been an upright and honest man until he was led astray.’ the gestapo arrested the rest of Hess’s private staff and questioned them. The dossier of interrogation reports, missing for over fifty years, surfaced in California in 1998. In January 1941, testified Gunther Sorof, Hess had once casually asked him to find out whether the British ‘ General Hamilton’ was still alive. He had already made one serious attempt to fly to Britain on January 10, taking off from Augsburg at three p.m. in the specially adapted Me-11 o. Before leaving the administration building for his solo adventure, Hess had asked for paper to write something, and after his departure the valet had handed to adjutant Pintsch a bulky envelope. As he read the con¬ tents Pintsch purpled, and announced that their chief had flown to England; but at that moment the control tower announced that the Me -11 o was back and circling overhead. Hess had then had to use up ninety minutes’ fuel before he could safely land. He explained that the rudder was faulty. Pintsch swore die odiers to secrecy. His conscience troubled, his detective Lutz had asked Pintsch if the Fiihrer knew what was going on, as he would have to make some kind of report to Himmler. Two or three days later Pintsch replied that Hess had assured him that he was calling off the flights for the time being. There were no more visits to Augsburg until March. Hess’s staff had remained uneasy; his valet blurted out what he knew of their boss’s plan to the startled adjutant Alfred Leitgen in mid-January and suggested they mention it to Martin Bormann; but nobody wanted to vol¬ unteer for diis duty, as nobody was certain whether die Fiihrer had ordered the secret mission or not. Lutz pressed Pintsch several times about diis. Hess and Bormann 389 ‘Pintsch then told me,’ Lutz told the Gestapo interrogators on May 18, ‘that Comrade Hess had apparently talked with the Fiihrer about such a plan while in Berlin [on May 3 - 4].There was accordingly no need for me to report to the Reichsfuhrer SS.’ Lutz comfortably decided t hat Hess ‘must have’ informed die Fiihrer of his plan. It all hinged on that furtive meeting between Hitler and Hess on May 3, 1941 — just before the Reichstag speech, which Hitler had amended in one crucial passage on die strength of the message the younger Haushofer had brought from Portugal. Afterward Hess had directed Pintsch to have die Hitler speech printed in English, and he packed several copies of die trans¬ lation, freshly printed in a very small typeface, into his luggage. Driver Lippert testified diat a few hours after the Reichstag session on May 4 Hess ordered his surprised staff to get ready for an immediate rail trip down to Augsburg. A special sleeping-car was attached to die overnight Munich ex¬ press and at five past ten p.m. Hess left Berlin. Over lunch in Munich die next day, on May 34 Hess had met the younger Haushofer at the Hotel Drei Mohren, obviously to weigh with him the latest message from Portugal. They spoke privately, and Hess had decided to fly to Scotland that same night. The Me-11 o was tanked up, and at four p.m. Hess drove over to die Messerschmitt held at Augsburg. For die first time, he was wearing the new Luftwaffe uniform under his leather flying suit; he allowed Detective Lutz to take a roll of Leica snapshots of him in this unusual garb, in a room of die Messerschmitt building. When his driver asked about the uniform, Hess had told him not to breath a word about it. ‘I’m planning a little surprise,’ he explained to his staff. Taking a handful of the Hitler speeches, a picture of his baby boy, but no hand luggage in order to save weight, he climbed into die plane and took off at 3:13 p.m. , heading north. The flight was again a fiasco. An hour later his Me-11 o reappeared over die airfield, circling to lose fuel; a radio fault had forced his return. On die drive back to Munich, his valet noticed that Hess was in a sour mood. On die morning of May 10, Hess directed Pintsch to phone a meteor¬ ologist to get the cloud-base levels over Scotland; the adjutant then phoned die Reich air ministry and asked them to switch on a certain radio beacon, Elektra. Hess had meanwhile instructed his staff to keep their eyes open for a letter from his aunt in Zurich. Later that morning, May 10 , a letter did arrive from her for Hess; she reminded him that he had phoned her to look out for a certain letter from die International Red Cross, but reported diat none had yet come; by then however he had already left on his adventure. 390 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ This time, Hess forbade Lutz to take photos, saying it was a flying super¬ stition not to be photographed before a long flight; he slung his own Leica camera around his neck. Pintsch handed him maps and the envelope con¬ taining the Hitler speeches, and at 3:42 p.m. the Me-i 10 took off, again heading north. This time it did not reappear. At 9:43 p.m. Pintsch revealed to his col¬ leagues: ‘No phone calls have come, so Comrade Hess’s flight must have succeeded.’ He pulled out of his attache case a package containing a route map yi'it ended somewhere in Scotland, where Hess intended to parachute into die Hamilton estate — and several letters, addressed either in Hess’s handwriting or in typescript to the Fiihrer, Himmler, a Messerschmitt di¬ rector, and family members. Deciding that it was too late to disturb die Fiihrer widi all this now, Pintsch waited overnight, then took die 7:3^ A.m. slow train from Munich to Berchtesgaden. Upon leaving diem, he told his colleagues that he hoped the Fiihrer was not going to be too upset. This was the first alarming inti¬ mation diat diey had diat Hitler might have been in die dark after all. All of that was now history. There were many who believed that Martin Bormann was morally to blame for Hess’s flight — that he had undermined Hess’s position so much diat die minister had felt compelled to undertake this drastic act to restore his faded status with Hitler. When Goring asked Hitler whedier he proposed to appoint Bormann as Hess’s successor, the Fiihrer shook his head and said that he had earmarked Bormann to succeed the Party treasurer Franz Xaver Schwarz; the Reichsmarschall replied succinctly that Hitler was wrong ‘by a long shot’ if he diought diat diat would slake Bormann’s ambition. ‘I care nothing about his ambition,’ retorted Hitler. Bormann would continue as head of the Party chancellery; Goring was to look for a suitably youdiful candidate to be ‘ Party minister.’ on may 13, 1941, the Berghof was packed with the Party leaders and gauleiters. From four until six-thirty, Bormann and Hitler spoke to them about the Hess affair: it was now known, he said, diat Hess had been ‘ma¬ nipulated’ by various astrologers, mind-readers, and nature healers. Hewel later described die scene in his diary: ‘Bormann reads out die letters left by Hess. A dramatic assembly, heavy widi emotion.The Fiihrer conies, speaks very humanly, analyses Hess’s act for what it is, and proves he was deranged from his lack of logic: the idea of landing near a castle he has never seen and Hess and Bormann 39 1 whose owner, Hamilton, is not even there, etc.; and Hoare is in Madrid.* Then from foreign affairs standpoint, and finally the domestic repercus¬ sions. A deeply moving demonstration. Sympathy [from die gauleiters]: “Nothing is spared our Fiihrer.”Afterward, lengthy discussions.’ Hewel con¬ cluded that the Frihrer was relieved that he no longer had a formal Deputy. After he had finished speaking, Hitler leaned back on die big marble table, while the sixty or seventy gauleiters and others pressed around him in a silent semicircle. He caught sight of Gauleiter Ernst Bohle, die Brad- ford-born gauleiter of all Germans abroad, and asked him pointedly, ‘Tell me what you knew of die affair.’ Bohle guiltily replied drat in October Rudolf Hess had sworn him to secrecy, and asked him to translate into English a letter he was writing to the Duke of Hamilton; on no account was he to tell Ribbentrop about it. At this point Hitler took Bohle aside, showed him die letters Hess had left, and asked him to point out paragraph by paragraph which passages had been in die letter Hess carried to die Duke of Hamil¬ ton. Shown die same letters, widi dieir occultist claptrap, Goebbels swooned widi rage: ‘That’s the kind of men we have ruling Germany,’ he wrote. ‘The whole business is explicable only in die light of his nature healing and herb- munching foibles.’Viktor Lutze agreed, warning Goebbels as they drove to die local airfield afterward that the public were bound to start asking how sick men could have held sway at die highest level of government. Albrecht Haushofer, Hess’s young fellow conspirator, joined Hess’s two adjutants Pintsch and Leitgen in a concentration camp. Hitler intervened on behalf of Frau Ilse Hess, but Bormann, now all-powerful, had his own children Rudolf and Ilse rechristened, and ordered his former superior’s name to be expunged from the history books. Woe betide diose who fell foul of Hess’s dynamic successor. Precisely one year later, on May 13, 1942, Party headquarters in Munich telephoned Bormann that the obstreperous Gauleiter Carl Rover of Oldenburg was going die way Hess had gone. Fol¬ lowing visits by faith healers, and hallucinations, Rover had that day announced his intention of flying to see Churchill — after first calling at die * Sir Samuel Hoare was ambassador in Madrid. Hess succeeded in navigating in the gath¬ ering darkness to within twelve miles of his target, had parachuted safely to earth (no mean feat for a man of forty-seven on his first attempt), and was actually in conversation with the Duke of Hamilton before daybreak. Hess stated that he had come as a parlementaire , unarmed and of his own free will. The letter that he carried has vanished — perhaps into Royal archives. Churchill ordered his incarceration for the rest of the war. 392 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ Fiihrer’s headquarters — ‘as the whole world is mad.’ By that afternoon Bormann’s agents were already on their way to him, armed with ‘top level’ instructions. Two days later Rover had died a timely death, Hitler could order a state funeral, and Goebbels could sigh in his diary: ‘There goes one more member of die Old Guard.’ Euthanasia had its uses. on may i 2, 1941 , Hitler formally replaced Hess’s old‘Office of die Deputy Fiihrer’ widi a Party chancellery headed by Bormann. Bormann now gadi- ered powers the like of which Hess had never had, but Hitler begrudged this hard-working, unobtrusive, ruthless manager none of them. Secretary Christa Schroeder overheard him command Bormann: ‘Just keep the gauleiters off my back!’ And the forty-year-old Bormann — who in 1930 had founded die Party’s financial fortunes by an insurance scheme under which millions of SA street-fighters had paid thirty pfennigs monthly and stuck stamps onto a yellow card — did just that. In alliance widi the crafty constitutional expert Dr. Hans Lammers, Bormann established a civilian bottleneck dirough which all state affairs now had to pass on their way up to Hitler; Hitler’s whim, no sooner spoken, was noted down by Bormann, elaborated by die lawyers on his staff, and circulated by Party channels and teleprinters almost instantly as a Fiihrer Command. From now on Bormann increasingly ran the Reich while Hitler directed his war. Bormann achieved diat most dangerous of attributes — indispensability. Hitler ignored die man’s boorishness: Bormann’s one and only public speech, at a gauleiter conference, was a fiasco. Privately Hitler could never forgive him for what he and the Party had done to his Obersalzberg; die Berghof was ringed by more and more buildings and construction sites and bun¬ kers. He even mentioned to Schaub that he was thinking of moving his permanent residence to Linz or Bayreudi because of diis. Hitler also disa¬ greed with Bormann’s brutal approach to dealing with die Church and Jews. Yet Bormann survived until the end, dreaming of die day when he might step into die Fiihrer’s shoes. ‘Bormann clung to him like ivy around the oak,’ Robert Ley was to say, ‘using him to get to die light, and to die very summit.’ for hitler the Hess case was already closed; his eyes reverted to the east. The Second Air Force had already begun uprooting its ground organisation in die west; by the end of May only a large radio-deception organisation would remain to deceive the enemy. ‘Barbarossa’ was to be disguised as a Hess and Bormann 393 master deception plan: ‘The closer the date of the attack approaches,’ di¬ rected the OKW, ‘the cruder will be the means of deception we can employ (in the Intelligence channels as well).’The airborne invasion of Crete was to be referred to openly as ‘a dress rehearsal for the invasion of Britain,’ and several ministries were instructed to start planning for the occupation of Britain immediately. It was also time to start putting out cautious feelers to Russia’s other bruised western neighbours.There were military reasons why Finland must be approached now. In view of Finland’s casualties in her recent war with die Soviet Union no heavy burden would be foisted onto her; it would be left to her to decide how to meet the German requests. ‘The course of this putative war will definitely be as follows,’ Finland was to be told: ‘After Russia has lost a certain area on account of the participation of many small nations (a crusade against Bolshevism) and in particular on account of the German Wehrmacht’s superiority, she will be unable to fight on.’ Hewel’s diary of May i ^ notes: After lunch die Chief [Ribbentrop] comes with [Dr. Julius] Schnurre up die mountain. Schnurre is given instructions on discussing Russian prob¬ lem in Finland, and negotiating with [Risto] Ryti [the Finnish president]. He wants to return via Stockholm, but the Fiihrer is very hostile toward Sweden. Says dieir ruling class is basically pro-British. If they did show any interest [in ‘Barbarossa’] dien it would only be so they could imme¬ diately report what they heard to Britain. . . Even die Reichsmarschall [Goring] has been cured of his infatuation for Sweden. Sweden would willingly sacrifice Finland if Germany lost the war. She is afraid of losing her dominant position in Scandinavia. On May 19 Hitler was more relaxed, and even found words of approval for Italy. ‘It is quite clear that the Duce is one of the greatest men in modern history,’ he told Hewel. ‘What he has extracted from the Italian people is quite marvellous. If he did not get any further, it was simply because he had reached the extreme limit of dieir capabilities. After him diere will not be anodier widi his energy and talents for a long time.’ On the following morning, May 20, as Goring’s paratroops began their costly assault on die isle of Crete, Hitler drove down to Munich for two days in die quiet seclusion of his apartment there. Anxieties gnawed widiin him as he pored over the charts of Europe. Earlier in May he had feared die 394 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ British might invade Portugal or Spain: he briefly received die Spanish am¬ bassador and warned him of the British activities in Morocco and told him ofAbwehr reports on British plans to invade the Iberian peninsula. Later in May, his anxieties concerned ‘Barbarossa’: was the eastern front not suspiciously quiet now? The OKW circulated to die operations staffs a succinct warning: ‘The Fiihrer again reminds you that over die coming weeks Russian preventive measures are possible.’ grand admiral Raeder came to see him on May 2 2. He casually men¬ tioned diat Bismarck and Prinz Eugen had just sailed for their flrst sweep into the Nordi Atlantic. Hitler remembered all the premonitions that he had only half voiced in his private tadc with Admiral Liitjens aboard the battle¬ ship at Gotenhafen. According to Hitler’s naval adjutant, another factor in his anxiety was the wish to deprive Roosevelt of any justidcation for war — at any rate, as yet. He mentioned to Raeder Liitjens’s own reservations about enemy torpedo-aircraft and asked Raeder outright, ‘Herr Grossadmiral, can’t we fetch die ships back?’ Raeder advised him that enor¬ mous preparations had been made for diis sortie; to recall the warships now would have a catastrophic effect on naval morale. His policy of non-aggravation toward the United States did meantime bear fruit. The German admiralty grudgingly conceded that his policy dius far seemed justifled, but the restrictions that he continued to impose on the hard-pressed U-boat crews in the Nordi and Soudi Atlantic irked nonethe¬ less. They were not permitted to attack American warships or merchant ships, nor to board those suspected of carrying war goods to the enemy, nor to use dieir armament even if the Americans were flagrantly violating their neutrality — unless the Americans flred the flrst shot. Hewel’s diary of May 22 illustrates Hitler’s dilemma over die United States: The Fiihrer still vacillates in his attitude toward America, as ‘you cannot peer into Roosevelt’s mind.’ If he wants a war, he will always find the means, even if legally we are in the right. Japan holds die key. Even diough he has still not made his mind up it is better to keep the U.S. A. out of the war than perhaps to sink a few hundred thousand more tons of shipping. Widiout die U.S.A. die war will be over diis year; with the U.S.A. it will go on for long years to come. A ‘warning’ is agreed on. . . Tea. Got a date for Cudahy. Hess and Bormann 395 John Cudahy, Roosevelt’s former ambassador in Brussels, was brought up to the Berghof next afternoon to interview Hitler for the American press. Hitler’s responses were short-tempered and impatient. Right at the start he tried to put out of his visitor’s mind the ‘ludicrous’ notion that die Nazis might ever invade the Americas. This was just a wicked lie invented to convert American public opinion, said Hitler; indeed, he laughed out loud, dismissed it as a childish suggestion, and exclaimed, ‘That is on a level witli claiming diat America plans to conquer the Moon!’ Mindful of the propaganda designed to distract attention from ‘Barbarossa,’ Hitler added that his OKW was not planning expeditions to die Moon but was busy widi projects of radier shorter range — like Crete, at a range of sixty miles, or Britain at a range of only twenty. Hewel wrote afterward: ‘Questions from another world, childish, like in die years of struggle twenty years ago. But positive. Cudahy deeply impressed.’ after raeder’s visit Hitler had been distracted by a domestic incident from following Bismarck’s steady progress toward the Americas too closely. A drunken remark made by one of Dr. Goebbels’s senior officials, Profes¬ sor Karl Bomer, at a Bulgarian legation reception in mid-May direatened to betray die ‘Barbarossa’ operation. ‘In four weeks die Russians’ll be finished,’ Bomer had said. ‘Rosenberg’s going to be Governor General of Russia.’ From the intercepts diat resulted, Hitler found out about die incident, and ordered an investigation. Hitler wanted Bomer’s blood and ordered him tried by die People’s Court. ‘From now on I will take ruthless action against everybody who can’t hold his tongue!’ Late on May 24, Raeder telephoned from Berlin with brilliant news. Bismarck had stumbled on two British battleships sent to intercept her. She had dispatched Hood — Churchill’s most powerful battlecruiserv-in less dian five minutes. The British battleship Prince of Wales had suffered heavy damage and turned away. There was bad news too: Bismarck herself had been hit twice and she was bleeding oil; her speed was reduced, and Admi¬ ral Liitjens could not shake off die pursuing enemy warships. Liitjens had suggested that Donitz marshal all available submarines in one area dirough which he would try to lure die enemy, but next day he announced that his oil was so low that he must steer directly for Saint-Nazaire. That evening Liitjens reported the first air strikes, so the British aircraft carrier Ark Royal was clearly now widiin range. At Hitler’s Berghof, Hewel noted: ‘Frightening hours on Bismarck’s account.’ 396 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ By noon of the twenty-fifth, Lutjens had at last managed to shake off his pursuers. But for how long? Goring ordered his commanders to push out air cover as far as possible toward the limping battleship. Hitler grimly radioed Lutjens greetings on his birthday. The mood at the Berghof was further soured by the presence of Heydrich and Goebbels, both loudly wrangling over the Bomer affair. When Hitler rose on the twenty-sixth the news awaiting him was that Bismarck had been found again by die enemy; shadowed by an enemy air¬ craft, she still had six hundred miles to go to Brest. Soon after nine p.m. Lutjens radioed that the British aircraft had scored torpedo hits amidships and astern, and at 9: <, o came die dread news diat the battleship’s steering was out of action: die unsinkable Bismarck was afloat and her guns were primed, but at best she could only steer a slow and stately circle while the British battle fleet closed in. Shortly before mid¬ night, Lutjens radioed: ‘Ship unmanoeuverable. We are fighting to the last shell. Long live the Fiihrerl’To Hitler himself, he signalled: ‘We shall fight to die end trusting in you, mein Fiilirer, and widi our faith in Germany’s victory undestroyed.’ Hitler instructed die admiralty to reply, ‘All Ger¬ many is widi you. What can be done shall be done. The way you do your duty will strengthen our nation in its fight for survival. Adolf Hitler.’ During the early hours of May 2 7 die Luftwaffe scoured die area. Ocean¬ going tugs put to sea.The Spanish government was asked to send out rescue ships. Liitjens’s last radio message had come at 6 :23 a.m. ‘Position unchanged. Wind-strength 8 to 9.’ From then onward there was silence. A funereal gloom descended over the Berghof. At noon Hitler learned that the British government had announced the sinking of Bismarck an hour before. Disabled and her last ammunition spent, Bismarck had scuttled herself under the guns of the British navy; she sank with her colours honourably flying and die loss of some twenty-one hundred lives. Hitler instructed diat no battleship or cruiser was ever again to put to sea without his previous consent. Hewel wrote on May 27: Fiilirer melancholy beyond words. Uncontrollable fury at die naval staff: 1. The ship should never have been sent out raiding; 2. After finishing off Hood she should have dealt widi Prince oJWales too, and not run away; Hess and Bormann 397 3. She should have returned straight to Norway and not run straight into the lions’ den. Red tape and obstinacy in the navy. Won’t tolerate any man with a mind of his own. Reich foreign minister comes in the afternoon. Fuhrer speaks his mind to him, swears and curses, and then calms down. A walk to die teahouse. The Fiihrer picks up again, talks about new types of ships and the air¬ borne torpedo as a weapon. Raeder answered Hitler’s criticisms soberly when he next came to die Berghof; he particularly emphasised that for Bismarck to have returned dirough the northern passages to Norway would have been more risky dian continuing into the Atlantic. Hitler asked die admiralty to adopt a policy of conservation of strengdi until die effect of‘Barbarossa’ on Britain was known. ‘Should Britain’s collapse threaten to become imminent, some very impor¬ tant duties might present diemselves to our surface warships.’ Bismarck’s loss had not been in vain. She had drawn off five battleships, two aircraft carriers, diree battle cruisers, eleven cruisers, and twenty-one destroyers, which ensured die successful conclusion of die invasion of Crete; and die capture of Crete in turn reduced Britain’s naval influence in die Mediterranean and paved die way for Rommel’s triumphs in Nordi Africa. hitler meanwhile had issued a belated OKW directive ordering support for the Arab ‘liberation movement’ against Britain. Jodi’s chief assistant, General WalterWarlimont, had been sent to Paris for a week to resume die military talks broken off in December, and a protocol had been signed grant¬ ing die French certain concessions in return for assistance in Syria and Iraq, as well as the future use of the Tunisian port of Bizerta to supply Rommel’s troops in Nordi Africa; more reluctantly, die French agreed on principle to let Hitler operate dieir port at Dakar as a submarine and Luftwaffe base on the west coast of Africa. They also secretly agreed to remove General Weygand from his command, though this was not specifically mentioned in die protocol. It was signed in Paris on die twenty-eighth, and the next day Warlimont flew to die Berghof to report. Events in Iraq were overtaking Hitler, however. The British were already advancing on Baghdad, and the end could not be far off. He said: ‘The Mid¬ dle East by itself would have been no problem if our other plans’ — meaning ‘Barbarossa’ — ‘were not irrevocable. When they succeed, we can open a 39 $ iv: ‘War of Liberation’ door into the Middle East from there.’ Mussolini was opposed to abandon¬ ing die Iraqi rebels and sent word to Hitler dius: ‘I, Mussolini, am in favour of active support, as this is an opportunity to raise die entire population of the Middle East against Britain. But if Iraq collapses, diey will all lose heart again. If the German High Command also decides on active support, then it seems to me necessary to occupy Cyprus as well — after die reduction of Crete and Rhodes — since it lies off die Syrian coastline and holds the key to the entire Middle East.’ Hitler’s first reaction was an outburst: ‘Mussolini diinks Cyprus should be taken now as well! ’ And Hewel recorded: ‘The Fiihrer proposes to agree, and to tell him to do it himself.’ Hitler did nonedieless ask Goring and Jeschonnek whether Cyprus would be possible.The Reichsmarschall winced, reported on die blood the Luftwaffe had lost over Crete — 150 Junkers-^2 transports alone — and advised against invading Cyprus. ‘Since war broke out the Luftwaffe has known no rest,’ said Goring. ‘From Crete we shall now be fighting a pitched battle against die British fleet and Tobruk.’ Hewel made a lengthy record of Hitler’s worried conference with Ribbentrop and the OKW generals on May 29: The point under debate is how far to bring in France or to get her in¬ volved in a war with Britain. . . The Fiihrer curses die Italians. He hates the Spanish. Of Italy he says that you can’t keep making concessions to somebody who is always running around widi his backside black and blue from beatings, nor will the German people stand for it. . . The Fiihrer’s view is that when ‘Barbarossa’ is over, he won’t need to pay any more attention to Italy! We shall then automatically be able to come togedier with the French. They are counting on kicking the Italians out ofTunisia after die war. He wants to have a talk with Mussolini shortly. Later that day the foreign ministry’s Dr. Schnurre briefed him fully on Finland and Sweden.The Finns had sent top generals to Germany to nego¬ tiate with die OKW and die General Staff; diey were asked to prepare two divisions to support Hitler’s operations from nordiern Norway against Nordi Russia. ‘“Barbarossa” is a gamble like everything else,’ said Hitler to Hewel after Schnurre left. ‘If it fails, then it will all be over anyway. If it succeeds, it will have created a situation diat will probably force Britain to make peace. . . When the first shot is fired, the world will hold its breath.’ Pricking the Bubble ^ ^ he dazzling heat of high summer had come to the Berghof. It was now early June 1941: the last echelon of assault troops had — 1 — set out from Germany for the eastern front. In less than three weeks ‘Barbarossa’ would begin. It was time to start dropping hints to his prospective allies. Hitler asked tire Duce to join him at the Brenner Pass on June 2 and talked alone with him for two hours before the two dictators were joined by their foreign ministers. When at four o’clock the train set out again for Berchtesgaden, Hewel sat with the Fuhrer. ‘He is contented; says Mussolini is very confident and sure of victory. Has dropped a hint about Russia “if the shipping losses alone do not suffice”’ — meaning suffice to knock Britain out of the war. He had also mentioned to Mussolini the possibility that David Lloyd George might succeed a defeated Churchill. ‘Then we must see what possibility there is of settling our differences.’ To the Japanese ambassador, General Oshima, whom he urgently sum¬ moned to the Berghof the next day, Hitler put on the appropriate ‘anti-British’ act. After being lectured by Ribbentrop as well, Oshima ca¬ bled Matsuoka in strictest confidence. ‘Both gentlemen gave me to understand that a German-Soviet war probably cannot be avoided.’ Hitler bluntly stated that he would always be die first to draw his sword if he detected any hostility in an opponent, and a 11 hough he did not expressly say so, his remarks to Oshima implied that while the Tripartite Pact was expressis verbis not intended as an instrument against the Soviet Union, such was the obligation on Japan — and he would expect the Japanese to honour it. Ribbentrop assured Oshima that the Russian campaign would be over in two or three months — he could not say when it would begin, but ‘if Japan 399 400 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ should find it necessary to prepare for this eventuality, then he would ad¬ vise her to do so in as short a time as possible.’ On June 4, Hitler received King Boris of Bulgaria for two hours. Hewel took notes on the encounter, but they appear to have been lost. The Finns confirmed to German officers sent to Helsinki that t hey were aware of the ‘historic hour’t hat was dawning. Antonescu came to Munich and again offered to support the attack with all the military resources at Romania’s disposal. The coalition was coming together well. Meanwhile Hitler authorised orders to his Wehrmacht which were so shocking that Keitel later had all copies of them destroyed. All political commissars attached to Red Army units •<— identifiable as such by the red star embroidered with a golden hammer and sickle on their sleeves — were to be executed on capture. Evidently at Hitler’s dictation Jodi drafted an explanation of the decision to liquidate these commissars. They in particu¬ lar, he said, would subject German prisoners to spiteful, cruel, and inhuman treatment, for they were the ‘originators of these barbaric Asiatic fighting methods.’ Hitler ordered: ‘If they are caught fighting or offering resistance, they are to be shot out of hand without exception and immediately.’ The role that the army General Staff, not to mention the German mili¬ tary lawyers, played in drafting these orders was less than glorious. Brauchitsch’s staff had drafted two separate orders in weeks of tedious bu¬ reaucratic paperwork.The first was this ‘commissar order,’ and the second an order restricting the jurisdiction of courts-martial on Russian soil. Hit¬ ler had always been irked by die ponderous procedures of die army courts, believing that only speedy conviction and execution was a true deterrent. It was Haider, however, who proposed die clause reading: ‘Immediate col¬ lective punishments will be enforced against towns and villages from which ambushes or treacherous attacks on the Wehrmacht are made, on die or¬ ders of an officer of not less than battalion commander’s rank, if circumstances do not permit the rapid arrest of the individual perpetra¬ tors.’ In the formal order issued by Keitel on Hitler’s behalf in May, die Wehrmacht was instructed diat offences against Russian civilians would not be punishable; and diat francs-tireurs were to be wiped out in battle or ‘trying to escape.’ To Hitler the Red Army was not an enemy to be handled with kid gloves. In a conference on June i, he again warned his staff of die extensive use the Russians would make of tactics not sanctioned by international convention. Hitler anticipated that the Russians might, for example, contaminate their Pricking the Bubble 401 lines of retreat with poison gases, or use poisonous additives to spike the food stocks and fresh-water supplies in the areas overrun by theWehrmacht. Hitler had recently taken to gathering his friends, his adjutants, and their wives about him in the evenings and rambling on endlessly about Christian¬ ity and the Roman Empire. On June 8, Hewel entered in his Berghof diary: Raining. The British are marching into Syria. A long conversation alone with the Fiihrer about Russia. Says it will be a ‘tough proposition’ but he trusts in theWehrmacht. Air force: numerical superiority in fighters and bombers. He is a bit frightened of air raids on Berlin and Vienna: ‘The area we are to occupy will not be much bigger than from Den¬ mark to Bordeaux in size. Russians have massed their entire strength on their western frontier, the biggest concentration in history. If “Barbarossa” goes wrong now, we are all lost anyway. As soon as that is all over, Iraq and Syria will take care of themselves. Then I will have a free hand, and I will be able to thrust on down through Turkey as well. ‘If the French lose Syria — and I am convinced that Syria is lost — then there is only the one danger left, that they will lose Algeria as well. If that happens, I will thrust straight down through Spain at once and barricade the Mediterranean against the British. It is just this wretched waiting that makes one so nervous!’ A few days later the OKW asked the supreme commanders for their views on a draft directive for the period after ‘Barbarossa.’ Significantly, a contested invasion of Britain was not contemplated in diis document. On die elevendi, Hitler sent Schmundt to check if die headquarters being built for him near Rastenburg in East Prussia was ready. Something akin to hysteria was overtaking Moscow as die realisation of Hitler’s mobilisation dawned. On June 9 the German embassy in Moscow smuggled a naval officer into a Communist party indoctrination session at which a functionary delivered a violently anti-German talk, warning his audience to be on guard over the next few weeks. The speaker said that nobody in Moscow had expected Hitler to conquer die Balkans so rapidly; for Bolshevism, die advantage was that any war of attrition must lead to die annihilation of die middle classes. The Soviet Union’s interests would best be served by staying out — while die rest of Europe bled white in war. 402 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ Hitler arrived back in Berlin early on June 13 obsessed with the coming campaign. On that morning the police raided every newspaper outlet in the capital and seized the latest Volkischer Beobachter; but enough copies es¬ caped seizure and reached foreign correspondents and the embassies for the impression to be conveyed that in Goebbels’s leading article,‘E.g., Crete,’ he had unwittingly betrayed that within two months Britain would be in¬ vaded. Goebbels was said to be in disgrace; but he was glimpsed the next day in Hitler’s residence, cackling out loud over the success of his rumour¬ mongering. Hitler assured him this new campaign would be all over in a month; Goebbels guessed rather less, writing: ‘If ever an operation was a walkover then this is.’ on June 133 the Reich chancellery was packed with the Wehrmacht com¬ manders for a top secret conference. Everybody was assigned different street entrances by which to arrive: Brauchitsch would arrive through the garden gate in Hermann-Goring-Strasse, Goring through Wilhelm Strasse, and the army group commanders through the New chancellery in Voss Strasse. Af¬ ter lunch, Hitler called for silence and spoke of his military reasons for attacking Russia. An unpublished note taken by a Luftwaffe general sur¬ vives: Hitler’s after-luncheon speech. The main enemy is still Britain. Britain will fight on as long as the fight has any purpose; this is typical of the British, as we have seen from their individual soldiers’ conduct in Flanders, and it was demonstrated again by Dunkirk, by Greece, and by Crete. But Britain’s fight only makes sense as long as they can hope that American aid will take effect and that they may find support on the continent. This explains why they have high hopes that die Russians will intervene and tie down the Germans, wearing down our war economy while die bal¬ ance of power is tilted by American aid. At present diis is very meagre; it will not become effective until die summer of 1942, assuming diey have enough shipping tonnage to bring it over here; and the shipping losses are increasing. The proof of [Britain’s] overtures to Russia is the complete uniform¬ ity in their press treatment of Cripps’s journey.* Russia’s attitude is *The British ambassador, Sir Stafford Cripps, had left Moscow a week before to consult with the foreign office in London. Pricking the Bubble 403 perpetually obscure; she exploited every moment of political or mili¬ tary preoccupation elsewhere to raise immediate political demands. We can see this happening in Russia’s intervention in the Polish campaign, and again against the Baltic states and Finland, and now in die Balkans (Bessarabia, and the treaty of friendship with Yugoslavia). Our attempt to ‘clarify the position’ met with the following objec¬ tions from Molotov. First question, What does our guarantee to Romania mean and would we object to a Russian military mission? Second ques¬ tion concerning die Dardanelles, and the third about Finland. In other words continual efforts to muscle in somewhere. Since diese efforts coincided chronologically widi various temporary weaknesses in die German position, we would have to expect diem to seize every chance diey can in the future to act against Germany’s interests. The Russian armed forces are strong enough to prevent us from demobilising sol¬ diers and feeding diem into die arms and consumer-goods industries so long as this latent Russian direat persists. Even if we made peace with Britain this would still be so. We want this conflict to come early, however; indeed it is absolutely vital if we are not to forfeit die favourable conditions that prevail. The bulk of the Russian forces are standing on the frontier, so we have a good chance of defeating them right there. Flitler rounded off his speech widi a warning against underestimating die Red Army. Afterwards he took Goring by die arm and soberly stated: ‘Goring, it will be our toughest struggle yet — by far the toughest!’ Goring asked why, and Flitler replied, ‘Because for die first time we shall be fighting an ideological enemy, and an ideological enemy of fanatical persistence at that.’ the familiar bouts of insomnia began to assail him. By night he lay awake and asked himself what loopholes in his grand design the British might yet exploit. He sent Field Marshal Milch on an extended tour of Germany’s air raid defences; suspecting diat his successful paratroop operation against Crete might stimulate the British to undertake similar ventures against die Channel Islands as soon as his hands were tied in Russia, he had ordered die island garrisons increased and extensively reinforced — die more so as he intended to keep Guernsey and Jersey in German hands after the final peace treaty widi Britain. 404 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ On June 1 8, with the newspapers of every country but Germany openly asking when Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union would begin, the Soviet ambassador in Berlin asked for an interview. Hewel, at Hitler’s chancellery, wrote an agitated note in his diary: ‘Big problem: [Vladimir] Dekanozov has announced he is to see the state secretary [ Weizsacker]. What is he bringing? Is Stalin going to bring off a major coup even now? A big offer to us, etc. etc.? [Flihrer has] a long discussion with foreign minister; Engel [Hitler’s army adjutant] and myself going over every possible angle. The Flihrer and foreign minister will have to vanish — so they can’t be reached. Much plotting: Sonnenburg, Carinhall, or Berghof; the train; Wildpark.* Then one day lying low in die Reich chancellery.’ Hewel concluded the entry as follows: ‘These last days before an operation are the most nerve- racking.’ The next evening, as Hitler was in die middle of dictating his ‘Barbarossa’ proclamation — ‘To the Troops of die Eastern Front!’ — Ribbentrop tel¬ ephoned to report that Dekanozov had discussed purely routine affairs, and had left after cracking a few jokes. Hitler’s proclamation was a tour d'horizon of Germany’s foreign policy since the war began; but in its four closely printed pages diere were some lines worthy of attention. Here Hitler claimed that the German people had never wished ill to the inhabitants of Russia. ‘But for two decades die Jew- ish-Bolshevik rulers of Moscow have endeavoured to set not only Germany but all Europe alight.’ He said too that he had never tried to export the Nazi ideology to Russia die way diat the Kremlin had tried to subvert die rest of Europe to communism. In a cynical oversimplification, Hitler reminded his troops: ‘You, my soldiers, know for yourselves that until a very few weeks ago there was not one German panzer or mechanised division on our eastern frontier.’The historic proclamation ended: At this moment, soldiers of die eastern front, an assembly of strength the like of which in size and scale the world has never seen is now com¬ plete. In league with Finnish divisions, our comrades are standing with the Victor of Narvik [Dietl] on die shores of die Arctic in the north. German soldiers under the command of the Conqueror of Norway [Falkenhorst], and the Finnish heroes of freedom under their own Mar- * Sonnenburg was Ribbentrop s country home; Carinhall was Goring’s. Wildpark was the site of the Luftwaffe headquarters outside Potsdam — now a secret nato headquarters. Pricking the Bubble 405 shal [Mannerheim] are protecting Finland. On the eastern front stand you. In Romania, on tlie banks of die Prut, and along the Danube right down to the beaches of t he Black Sea are German and Romanian troops united under Antonescu, the head of state. When this, die greatest front line in history, now begins its advance it will do so not just to provide die means of ending this great war for all time, or to defend those countries currently involved, but for the salvation of our entire European civilisa¬ tion and culture. German soldiers! You are thus entering upon a harsh and demanding fight — because die fate of Europe, the future of the German Reich, die existence of our nation now rest on your hands alone. May the Lord God help us all in diis struggle. Hewel wrote: ‘A long conversation with die Fiihrer. . . Wishes he were ten weeks on from now. After all there must always be a big element of risk. We are standing outside a locked door. [Will we run into] secret weapons? The tenacity of die fanatic? He now has to take sleeping pills to fall asleep. He is still dictating. He told me diat this morning [June 20] he again pored over every minute detail, but found no possibility for die enemy to get die better of Germany. He thinks Britain will have to give in — and he hopes it will be before the year is over.’ as recently as September 1940 die propaganda ministry had learned diat Hitler had given die go-ahead for die Madagascar Plan, under which about diree and a half million of die four million Jews currently living within his domain would be shipped to diat island in the Indian Ocean a year or two after die war ended. Since that summer his experts had been studying die possibility of resettling Europe’s ten million Jews on this large island, a French colony. Madagascar was over twice as big as Britain; its pre-war population was four million. He did not want the Jews to remain in dieir present settlement region around Lublin, as historical experience showed diat they would raise die danger of epidemics. On October 2, 1940, he had discussed diis widi Hans Frank and Baldur von Schirach, gauleiter ofVienna. Schirach had pointed out diat his fifty thousand Viennese Jews were due for deportation to Po¬ land; Frank had protested that he could not accommodate any fresh indux. At first Hitler had overridden his objections, but dien die Madagascar Solu¬ tion had come under consideration. On June 2, 1941, Hitler told Mussolini: 406 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ ‘The island could find room for fifteen million people.’ The problem with this plan, he told Bormann, was how to transport die Jews diat far in war¬ time. ‘I should dearly like to devote my entire fleet of Kraft durch Freude (strengdi through joy) ocean liners* to it,’ he said, ‘but I don’t want my German crews being sunk by enemy torpedoes.’ In private — to Keitel, Bormann, and Speer — Hitler described it as his ultimate ambition to elimi¬ nate all Jewish influence throughout die Axis domains.Their presence still caused countless bureaucratic vexations. On June 7, 1941 Dr. Hans Lammers wrote to Bormann: ‘The main reason why die Fiihrer has not approved the ruling proposed by die Ministry of die Interior is diat in his opinion there won’t be any Jews left in Germany after die war anyway.’ The coming occupation of new territories in the east suggested to Hit¬ ler an alternative solution of die ‘Jewish problem.’ As ‘Operation Barbarossa’ approached, it suggested itself to him diat die new eastern empire would enable him to overcome Hans Frank’s loud objections to the dumping of Jews on his Generalgouvernement territory and Himmler’s growing influence diere. Three days before die Wehrmacht attacked Russia, Hitler announced this explicitly to Frank; and the latter accordingly briefed his staff that no fresh ghettos were to be established, ‘since the Fiihrer expressly stated to me on June 19 diat in due course the Jews will be removed from the Generalgouvernement — and diat the Generalgouvernement is to be, so to speak, only a transit camp.’ In the view of Dr. Goebbels, who sat in on these discussions on June 19, this deportation to die east would be a ‘fitting punishment’ for these troublemakers — and one which the Fiihrer himself had actually prophesied to diem. Seven mondis later, die Madagascar plan died a natural death. A foreign ministry official would write: ‘The war against the Soviet Union has mean¬ while made it possible to provide odier territories for the final solution. Accordingly, die Fiihrer has decided that die Jews are not to be deported to Madagascar but to the east.’ two days remained, and Russia was still an enigma behind a sealed door. During a coffee break snatched widi his female secretaries in dieir ‘stair cupboard’ in die chancellery, Hitler noted diat there was somediing sinis¬ ter about die Soviet Union — it reminded him of the ghost ship in The Flying * Pleasure liners built for the mass German labour union, the DAF. Pricking the Bubble 407 Dutchman. ‘We know absolutely nothing about Russia,’ he said. ‘It might be one big soap-bubble, but it might just as well turn out to be very different.’ At nine p.m. on Friday, June 20, Colonel Schmundt,hisWehrmacht adju¬ tant, brought news from the admiralty. A German submarine had proudly reported attacking the U.S. battleship Texas, since it was encountered ten miles within the North Atlantic blockade zone proclaimed by Germany. As recently as June 6, Flitler had reiterated to Admiral Raeder why he wanted to avoid incidents with the United States. Raeder now argued that the U- boat had acted correctly, but proposed forbidding attacks on U.S. ships up to twenty miles inside the blockade zone. Hitler at first agreed, but during die night he had second thoughts and telephoned the admiralty that there must be no incidents whatsoever involving die United States until the out¬ come of‘Barbarossa’ was clear.The same order was issued to the Luftwaffe. Less than twelve hours remained before the attack. He summoned Goebbels, and paced die long chancellery drawing room widi him for three hours, examining from every angle the risks involved in ‘Barbarossa’ and pondering on Britain’s future — why for instance was Mr. Churchill still systematically playing down Hess and his peace mission?The foreign minis¬ try telephoned that the Soviet ambassador was again urgently demanding to see Ribbentrop. Dekanozov was fobbed off with word diat Ribbentrop was away until evening and that an appointment would be made on his return. In fact he was at die chancellery, and paid several visits to Hitler. He cabled orders to Ambassador Schulenburg in Moscow to destroy die em¬ bassy’s code books and to seek an immediate interview widi Molotov; at diis he was to read out a long rigmarole ending with the words ‘The Fiihrer has therefore ordered the German Wehrmacht to confront this menace widi all the means of force at its disposal.’ At nine-thirty, Dekanozov was allowed to see Baron vonWeizsacker.To general relief, he was only delivering a formal Soviet Union complaint about repeated German violations of her air space. The parallel complaint deliv¬ ered simultaneously to Schulenburg in Moscow evoked much hilarity when it arrived in Hitler’s chancellery in the small hours of the morning: ‘A se¬ ries of symptoms gives us die impression that die German government is dissatisfied widi the Soviet government . . ,’ grumbled Molotov. Hitler saw Goebbels off die premises at two-thirty a.m.: it was now June 22, 1941, die anniversary of Napoleon’s attack on Russia. ‘He has been working on diis since July,’ Goebbels observed in his diary. ‘And now die hour has struck.’ One hour later, along a frontier extending from die 408 iv: ‘War of Liberation’ Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea, three million German and coalition troops attacked Stalin’s empire. Surprise was complete. Hitler briefly retired to bed, remarking to his adjutants, ‘Before three months have passed, we shall witness a collapse in Russia the like of which world history has never seen!’ what hewel described as a ‘tranquil, self-possessed mood’ descended on the chancellery during the morning. It was like any other Sunday, except that Hitler and Ribbentrop fell fast asleep after lunch. Hitler’s adjutants, wilting under the Central European sun, went swimming. Italy had hon¬ oured her obligations with notable speed, cabling at three p.m. that she regarded herself as being at war with Russia. Romanian troops had crossed die Prut and were fighting in the provinces invaded by Russia twelve months before. Madrid telephoned that a volunteer legion was being recruited to join die crusade. An ecstatic Admiral Horthy exulted to the German am¬ bassador in Budapest that he had dreamed of diis day for twenty-two years — mankind would thank Hitler for centuries to come. He broke off diplo¬ matic relations with Moscow, but this was as far as he would as yet go. At six p.m. a disappointed General Jodi telephoned his liaison officer in Budapest; but Hordiv had gone off to play polo, his Chief of Army Staff was ‘unavail¬ able,’ and die defence minister had gone fishing. Just as Hitler expected, the Hungarians, canny as ever, wanted to see die first results of‘Barbarossa.’ The bulk of die Russians’ forward air force had been smashed on the ground on this first day — over twelve hundred Soviet aircraft had been destroyed. On June 23 Hewel wrote: ‘11:30A.M. . . the Fiihrer is in a bril¬ liant mood on account of the huge successes in Russia (Luftwaffe).’ As so often before, Hitler and his staff drove through die sun-drenched streets of Berlin to his special train. At half-past noon he left for East Prussia — the twin locomotives hauling him through diose fields and cities so recently ‘liberated’ from die Poles. Over tea he reminisced with Hewel and the odiers. ‘Russia,’ he conceded at one point, ‘is still a big question mark.’ Long after midnight he was in a column of automobiles, being driven past cordons of sentries guarding a wood about ten miles outside Rastenburg, deep inside which was his new headquarters. During the train journey he had decided to call it the Wolf’s Lair (Wolfsschanze). ‘Why Wolf again,’ asked Christa Schroeder, ‘just like die odier HQs?’ Hitler replied, ‘That was my code name in the Years of Struggle.’ It was one-thirty a.m. as he set foot inside the forbidding compound. From here he planned to command the defeat of the Soviet Union. Part v: Crusade into Russia RIENZ1: Herr Kardinal, bedenkt, was Ihr verlangt! Kann stets ich auj die heil’ge Kirche baun ? raimondo : Halt Jest im Aug’ das Ziel, undjedes Mittel, erreichst du jenes sicher, sei geheiligt! RICHARD WAGNER’S OPERA Rienzi Found in a private photo album belonging to the Reichsfiihrer Heinrich Himmler: A snapshot entitled ‘Visit to a Jewish peasant woman, Lublin, August 21 , 1 941 ' In the centre is his adjutant Joachim Peiper and, grinning in the rear, his liaison officer to Hitler, SS Grupperffiihrer KarlWolff (author’s collection) The Country Poacher T ^ hus Adolf Hitler set out, aged fifty-two, to conquer the empire of Joseph Stalin. _ In a terrible, unceasing onslaught his grey legions ofWehrmacht andWaffen SS troops fought forward across die drab and wind-swept plains, over the glowing yellow fields of Ukrainian sunflower crops, the swamps around Lake Ilmen, the barren steppe, and die rocky deserts and inhospita¬ ble tundra, humming with myriads of unseen mosquitoes, until die spent Nazi tide finally lapped the Caucasus Mountains. Widiin a few days Field Marshal Leeb’s armoured spearheads had reached Dvinsk (Daugavpils); Field Marshal Bock’s tanks were encircling a long oval¬ shaped pocket from Bialystok to Minsk in which eventually 5 <, 0,000 Russian prisoners would be taken. Widiin a month Smolensk itself would be in German hands and Rundstedt would be at the gates of Kiev. As the Ger¬ mans advanced, they found Russian trains still laden with grain and raw materials destined for Germany. Yet diere were disturbing auguries. Stalin had proclaimed a ‘patriotic war,’ and this was a slogan of dangerous magnetism. Moreover, his tanks and aircraft were significantly more plentiful dian Hitler had been told. Most ominous of all was die frightening tenacity of the Soviet soldier. He was willing to die; he was brave and dogged. Frederick the Great once said, ‘You’ve got to shoot every Russian dead twice, and still turn him over to make sure.’ Chief of Staff Haider wrote on July 16, 1941: ‘The Russians drive dieir men forward into counterattacks without die least artillery sup¬ port, as many as twelve waves one after anodier; often diey are raw recruits, who just link arms and — dieir muskets on dieir backs — charge our ma¬ chine guns, driven by their terror of die commissars and their superiors. 411 412 V: Crusade into Russia Sheer weight of numbers has always been Russia’s^orte, and now the Rus¬ sian command is forcing us to slay them, because stand aside diey won’t.’ A more fundamental obstacle to die invasion was the nature of the Rus¬ sian terrain. Hitler had been undaunted by die distances involved, since unlike Napoleon he had die internal combustion engine and die airplane. In die months to come however he was to learn that horses did have certain advantages over mechanical transport. As General Guderian would write on die last day of October 1941: ‘You might say diat we’re no longer fighting against the Russians but against die weather and die bottomless and uncul¬ tivated land; and this is a very tough fight indeed, costly in both men and time.’ The whole campaign was a gamble. Hitler was attacking Russia with only ten or fifteen divisions in reserve. Each day brought fresh revelations. When Ribbentrop came on June 27, Hitler exclaimed that he now felt like the horseman who having unwittingly ridden across the frozen Lake Constance died of horror when he learned what he had done: ‘If I had had the slightest inkling of this gigantic Red Army assemblage I would never have taken die decision to attack.’ But the gamble seemed to have come off. On the very next day Joseph Stalin is now known to have dictated a secret memorandum recommending that they contact the departing German ambassador at once, to sue for peace and offer Hitler a new ‘Brest-Litovsk,’ formally recognising Germany’s claim to die Baltic states and the Ukraine. The Ukrainians warmly greeted Hitler’s invading troops, as Guderian wrote in a private letter on June 29: ‘Today diere is a Thanksgiving service in die local Orthodox churches, as we are regarded as liberators. I hope they don’t get let down.’ Two days later he added, ‘The first Russian vil¬ lages — we were in Poland until now — make a pretty dismal impression. The inhabitants, White Rudienians, are friendly enough and don’t care much if the Soviets collapse. But there are some who think differently, especially among the troops, and they’re putting up a stiff and courageous fight.’ hitler’s ‘wolf’s Lair’ was just outside Rastenburg in East Prussia. The cluster of wooden barracks and single-story concrete blockhouses was in¬ visible from die air, concealed by camouflage netting suspended from the treetops. A few hundred yards away, on the other side of die road, Jodi’s operations staff occupied a similar encampment. Hitler predicted diat ‘this whole headquarters will one day become a historic monument, because here is where we founded a New World Order’; Jodi dryly replied that it The Country Poacher 413 would be better suited as a garrison detention centre for Rastenburg. It had in fact been built in one of the marshiest places in Masuria. ‘No doubt some government department found the land was cheapest here,’ sighed Hitler. Jodi’s staff diarist complained in a private letter dated June 27: ‘We are being plagued by the most awful mosquitoes. It would be hard to pick on a more senseless site than this — deciduous forest with marshy pools, sandy ground, and stagnant lakes, ideal for these loathsome creatures.’ Secretary Christa Schroeder wrote a worm’s-eye view: The blockhouses are scattered in the woods, grouped according to the work we do. Our sleeping bunker, as big as a railway compartment, is very comfortable-looking, panelled with a beautiful light-coloured wood; ... As the air-conditioning noise bothered us . . . we have it switched off at night with the result that . . . we walk around with leaden limbs all next day. Despite all tills it is wonderful except for an appalling plague of mos¬ quitoes. The men are better protected by their long leather boots and t hick uniforms; t heir only vulnerable point is the neck. Some of them go around all day with mosquito nets on. Wherever a mosquito turns up, it is hunted down. In the first few days this led to immediate problems of jurisdiction, as the Chief [Hitler] says it should be die Luftwaffe’s job only. They say the small mosquitoes are replaced by a far more unpleas¬ ant sort at die end of June. God help us! It is almost too cool indoors. . .The forest keeps out die heat: you don’t notice how much until you go out into die street, where the heat clamps down on you. Shortly after ten a.m. we two [Gerda Daranowski and I] go to die canteen bunker — a long whitewashed room sunk half-underground, so diat die small gauze-covered windows are very high up. A table for twenty people takes up die entire length of die room; here the Chief takes his lunch and supper widi his generals, his General Staff officers, adjutants, and doctors. At breakfast and afternoon coffee we two girls are also there. The Chief sits facing the maps of Russia hanging on the opposite wall. Now he makes a clean breast of his apprehensions, again and again emphasising the enormous danger Bolshevism is for Europe and saying diat if he had waited just one more year it would probably have been too late. . . 414 V: Crusade into Russia We wait in this No. i Dining Room each morning until the Chief arrives for breakfast from t lie map room, where meantime he has been briefed on the war situation. Breakfast for him, I might add, is just a glass of milk and a mashed apple: somewhat modest and unpretentious. Afterward we go at one p.m. to the general situation conference in the map room. . .The statistics on enemy aircraft and tanks destroyed are announced — the Russians seem to have enormous numbers, as we have already annihilated over 3,400 aircraft and over 1,000 tanks includ¬ ing some heavy ones, forty-tonners. They have been told to fight to the end and to shoot themselves if need be. For example, at Kovno (Kaunas) this happened: our troops sent a Russian prisoner into a Russian bunker to tell the Russians there to surrender, but he seems to have been shot himself by the commissar in there. Then the entire bunker was blown up by its own occupants. In other words, perish rather than surrender. There is a GPU commissar attached to each unit, and the commanding officer has to bow to him. Away from their leadership, the troops are just a rabble; they are abso¬ lutely primitive, but they fight doggedly on — which is of course a danger of its own and will lead to many a hard struggle yet. The French, Bel¬ gians, and so on were intelligent and gave up the fight when they saw it was pointless, but the Russians fight on like lunatics, trembling with fear that something will happen to their families if diey surrender. If there is nothing important to be done, we sleep a few hours after lunch so we are bright and breezy for the rest of the day, which usually drags on till the cows come home. Then, around five p.m. , we are summoned to the Chief and plied with cakes by him.The one who grabs the most cakes gets his commendation! This coffee break most often goes on to seven p.m. , frequently even longer. Then we walk back to No. 2 Dining Room for supper. Finally we lie low in the vicinity until the Chief summons us to his study where there is a small get-together with coffee and cakes again in his more intimate cir¬ cle. . . I often feel so feckless and superfluous here. If I consider what I actually do all day, the shattering answer is: absolutely nothing. We sleep, eat, drink, and let people talk to us, if we are too lazy to talk ourselves. . . This morning the Chief said that if ever the German soldier deserved laurels it was for this campaign. Everything is going far, far better than he hoped. There have been many strokes of good fortune, for example, that the Russians met us on the frontier and did not first lure us far into The Country Poacher 415 their hinterland with all the enormous transport and supply problems that would certainly have involved. And again, that they did not manage to destroy their two bridges at Dvinsk. I believe that once we have occu¬ pied Minsk our advance will surge forward. If t here are any isolated Communists left among our own ranks, they will definitely be converted when they see the ‘blessings’ of life on tlie other side. . . By June 30 the encirclement of Minsk was completed. Army Group Centre had captured 290,000 prisoners, 2,/,oo tanks, and 1,400 guns. Haider reflected the optimism at General Staff headquarters when he boasted on July 3: ‘It’s probably not overstating the case if I maintain that t he campaign in Russia has been won in two weeks. Of course that doesn’t mean it’s over.’ In a private letter on June 29, Jodi’s war diarist showed that the OKW agreed that things were going better than expected. ‘With the capture of Dvinsk and Minsk we have covered in one week one third of the way to Leningrad and Moscow; at this rate we would be in both cities in another fourteen days — but we can assume it’ll be even sooner.’ Hitler shared this view. Looking at t lie wall map in his dining room, he proclaimed to his secretaries, ‘In a few weeks we ll be in Moscow. Then I’ll raze it to the ground and build a reservoir there. The name Moscow must be expunged.’ Hitler had every reason to scent victory throughout July 1941. On July 2 he was shown a decoded Turkish report quoting both Stalin and Marshal Timoshenko as privately conceding to foreign diplomats that they had al¬ ready written off Leningrad, Minsk, Kiev, and even Moscow. A decoded morale report from tire American embassy in Moscow described air raid precautions there and anxiously noted the food situation and rumours that die Russians were already evacuating dieir Gold reserves to safety. Over lunch widi Ribbentrop on July 4, Hitler was already enlarging on his plans for colonising Russia. The next day, with die Russian campaign seemingly drawing to a close, Hitler explained to the same select lunch¬ time audience why he had attacked Russia widiout a formal declaration of war or even die pretext of an ‘incident.’ ‘Nobody is ever asked about his motives at the bar of history. Why did Alexander invade India? Why did die Romans fight dieir Punic wars, or Frederick II his second Silesian cam¬ paign? In history it is success alone diat counts.’ He, Hitler, was answerable only to his people. ‘To sacrifice hundreds of diousands [of troops] just be¬ cause of die dieoretical responsibility-issue [for starting die war] would be criminal. I will go down in history as the destroyer of Bolshevism, regard- 4-16 V: Crusade into Russia less of whether there was a frontier incident or not. Only tire result is judged. If I lose, I shall not be able to talk my way out with questions of protocol.’ hitler calculated that it would take until August to assemble his infantry for an attack on Moscow. Meanwhile, his tank formations could ‘mop up’ in the nordi. He was noticeably uncertain about how high to rank Moscow itself on his list of objectives; to him it was just a place-name, he said, while Leningrad was the very citadel of Bolshevism, the city from which that evil creed had first sprung in 1917. By this time die coalition was complete: Slovakia had declared war on June 23; Hungary and Finland had decorously waited a few more days, until Russian aircraft attacked them, then they too declared war. The Vichy French government broke off diplomatic relations with the USSR, and thousands of Frenchmen responded to die Nazi call for volun¬ teers to fight Bolshevism: 1 5 o airmen also volunteered, among diem 20 of France’s foremost bomber pilots. From Denmark, Norway, Spain, France, Belgium, and Croatia came word of legions being formed to fight in Russia. Hitler directed diat those from ‘Germanic’ countries were to be organ¬ ised by the SS, while the Wehrmacht would attend to die rest. All must swear allegiance to him. Sweden and Switzerland remained die exceptions — ‘Nations on Furlough,’ as Hitler contemptuously called them. As he had prophesied, the battle against Bolshevism was proving a rally¬ ing point for all Europe. On July 10 Hewel observed of Hitler:‘He predicted it. “I was forced into this fight step by step, but Germany will emerge from it as the greatest national Power on earth.” He believes that Churchill will topple all at once, quite suddenly. Then in Britain an immense anti-Ameri¬ canism will arise, and Britain will be the first country to join the ranks of Europe in die fight against America.’ And Hewel added jubilantly: ‘He is infinitely confident of victory. The tasks confronting him today are as nodi- ing, he says, compared with those in the years of struggle: particularly since ours is the biggest and finest army in the world.’ The Vatican also let it be known that diey ‘welcomed die war’ widi Rus¬ sia. That Churchill had broadcast his offer of aid to Russia on the first day of ‘Barbarossa’ did not surprise Hitler. In private he mocked die strange spec¬ tacle of‘Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt as fighters for freedom!’ confident of victory, on July 8, 1941 Hitler instructed Brauchitsch not to send any new tanks to the eastern front; the panzer divisions diere were to The Country Poacher 417 be reduced in number, and idle tank crews were to be sent back to Ger¬ many to train fresh tank divisions. On the thirteenth, he confirmed this in an OKW order: in addition to the twenty existing panzer divisions, the army was to establish by May 1, 1942 twelve more for the east and twenty- four for other tasks.The next day, Hitler ruled that after the Soviet Union’s defeat, the Luftwaffe was to be expanded on a colossal scale. Of his real future aims at this time we are only meagrely informed. Hitler seems to have envisaged a future war — perhaps not in his lifetime — between tlie New World and the Old. Later in July, gossiping one night about the Englishman’s innate sense of authority, he remarked, ‘I’m sure t he end of this war’s going to mark the start of a lasting friendship with Britain. But if we’re to live in peace with her, we shall have to give her a knockout blow first — the British expect that from anybody, if they are to respect him properly.’ On July 14 Jeschonnek’s deputy, touring the conquered territories, wrote in his diary: ‘The Red Army’s equipment staggers us again and again. . . They had laid out enormous fortifications, mostly still incomplete, to guard their Lemberg salient. In this region, sixty-three huge airfields alone, each with two runways and all still incomplete, bear witness to the Russian at¬ tack preparations.’The next day Stalin’s son Jacob, a lieutenant in a Soviet tank division, was captured nearVitebsk. Among ‘other proof t hat the Rus¬ sians were just waiting to get at the Germans’ was, according to the Luftwaffe’s GeneralWolfram von Richthofen, the huge number of artillery and tanks captured at Dobromysl. ‘In part they come from the young Sta¬ lin’s tank division. He has admitted that they were standing by for tlie big offensive.’ Hitler learned that a letter had been found on Jacob Stalin from a friend, mentioning that before tlicit' ‘outing to Berlin’ he was going to see his Anushka one more time. Interrogation of Stalin junior and t he dictator’s former secretary, also captured, revealed that Stalin planned to exploit the German intelligentsia to boost the Russian population’s calibre; Europe and Asia would then become the invincible bastions of Bolshevism. Hitler was particularly awed by the new Soviet armoured fighting vehi¬ cles. They crawled out of the forests like primaeval monsters of whose existence his experts had breathed no word to him: here was one tank of fifty-two tons, its armourplate so thick that only the Luftwaffe’s 88-milli- metre anti-aircraft guns made any impression on it; and here, south of Dubno, were others, weighing a hundred tons. On July 4, OKW war dia¬ rist Helmut Greiner confidently asserted: ‘The Russians have lost so many 418 V: Crusade into Russia aircraft and four thousand six hundred tanks that there can’t be many left.’ By mid-July however Hitler’s gunners had knocked out eight thousand Rus¬ sian tanks and still diey came. At die end of July twelve thousand tanks had been captured or destroyed. Visiting Army Group Centre on August 4, Hit¬ ler admitted to his panzer commander General Guderian: ‘Had I known they had as many tanks as that, I’d have diought twice before invading.’ An Abwehr colonel apprehensively recorded on July 20: ‘C[anaris] has just returned from the Fiihrer’s headquarters and describes the mood there as very jittery, as it is increasingly evident that die Russian campaign is not “going by the book.”The signs are multiplying diat diis war will not bring about the expected internal collapse, so much as die invigoration of Bolshe¬ vism. C. warns in particular that attempts are being made to brand the Abwehr as die culprits, for not properly informing people about the true strength and fighting power of die Russian army. For example the Fiihrer is said to have remarked that had he known of the existence of the super¬ heavy Russian tanks he would not have waged this war.’ OKW war diarist Greiner wrote privately the next day: ‘Nobody discussed this at lunch with the Fiihrer yesterday. At first he was very taciturn, and just brooded. . . Then he came to life and delivered a monologue of an hour or more on our brave and gallant Italian allies and the worries they are causing him. . .You can’t help being astonished at his brilliant judgement and clear insights. He looks in the best of healdi and seems well, although he seldom gets to bed before 4 or six a . m . ’ On July 3, Hitler had been brought the radio monitoring service’s tran¬ script of Stalin’s first public broadcast since ‘Barbarossa’ began. Stalin had by now recovered from his first shock at the Nazi onslaught. In his speech, he referred to Hitler and Ribbentrop as monsters and cannibals, and claimed that Hitler’s ambition was to bring back the czars, and to destroy the inde¬ pendent constituent republics of die Soviet Union. ‘He will Germanise diem and turn diem into die slaves of German princes and barons.’ Stalin ap¬ pealed to patriotic Russians everywhere to destroy everything of value in the path of the advancing Wehrmacht — railway rolling stock, crops, fuel, and raw materials. They were to form partisan units behind German lines, which were to blow up roads and bridges, destroy arms dumps and con¬ voys, and hunt down and wipe out die enemy and his accomplices. ‘This war widi Fascist Germany must not be regarded as an ordinary war.’ The partisan war provided the SS task forces widi a fresh rationale for their extermination drives, in which Russian Jews increasingly came to be The Country Poacher 419 regarded as ‘partisan material.’ On July 10 we find Hitler telephoning Brauchitsch about the pointlessness of committing panzer divisions to the assault on Kiev: 5 5 percent of the city’s population were Jews, he pointed out, so the bridges across the Dnieper would not be found intact. Another factor now also weighed with Hitler: the vast, sprawling con¬ urbations of Leningrad and Moscow would become death-traps if his precious tanks entered them. Thus he eventually decided that both cities were to be destroyed by bomber aircraft and by mass starvation. Two days after Stalin’s radio speech Hitler told his private staff that Moscow would ‘disappear from the earth’s surface.’ On July 8 he told Brauchitsch and Haider that its devastation was necessary to drive out its population, whom they would otherwise have to feed in the coming winter. He ordered the Luftwaffe to disrupt Moscow with a terror raid. Emotionally however Hitler was far more attracted to the destruction of Leningrad. On July 16, Bormann noted: ‘The Leningrad area is being claimed by the Finns. The Fuhrer wants to raze Leningrad to the ground — dien he’ll give it to the Finns.’ On July 21, Hitler visited Leeb’s headquar¬ ters on t lie northern front.The army group’s war diary records: ‘The Fullrer emphasised that he expects a bitter enemy defence south of Leningrad, as Russia’s leaders fully realise that Leningrad has been held up to die nation as a showpiece of the revolution diese last twenty-four years, and diat given die Slav mentality, which has already suffered from the fighting so far, die loss of Leningrad might result in a complete collapse.’ As to the fact diat diis concentration on Leningrad would leave only infantry armies for die assault on Moscow, ‘The Fiihrer is not concerned by diis, since to him Mos¬ cow is only a geographical objective.’ It was a strategic decision hotly contested by the General Staff. Haider wrote an irritable private letter on July 2 8: ‘He’s playing warlord again and bothering us with such absurd ideas diat he’s risking everything our won¬ derful operations so far have won. Unlike die French, die Russians won’t just run away when diey’ve been tactically defeated; they have to be slain one at a time in a terrain diat’s half forest and marsh; all this takes time and his nerves won’t stand it. Every odier day now I have to go over to him. Hours of claptrap and die outcome is diere’s only one man who under¬ stands how to wage wars. . .’ On July 14, Hitler told Ambassador Oshima: ‘We shall not lose our heads as we press onward; we shall not advance beyond what we can really hold on to.’ There seemed however no limit to his territorial ambitions. 420 V: Crusade into Russia Rundstedt wrote in a letter on the twentieth, ‘Today Haider was here with some very far-reaching plans, but one doesn’t like to think too far ahead.’ Hitler was overheard to remark: ‘I entered this war a nationalist, but I shall come out of it an imperialist.’ Once, he had been heard to brag: ‘Mr. Chamberlain likes to take weekends in the country; I shall take countries in the weekend! ’ In the relaxed company of his private secretary, walking in the pitch darkness one ni ght among the blockhouses, he made a bantering remark that again illustrated this. She had left her flashlight on his desk and kept stumbling. An orderly sent to fetch die flashlight reported it missing. In mock-righteous tones Hitler assured her: ‘Look, I poach other people’s countries — I don’t pinch their flashlights!’ He added with a belly-laugh: ‘And that’s just as well, because it is the small fry that get strung up.The big fish get away with it.’ at a FivE-hour conference with his chief minions — Rosenberg, Lammers, Keitel, Goring, and Bormann — on July 16, Hitler hammered home the point that Germany alone was entitled to benefit from defeating t he Soviet Union. As for their secret aims, while they must be concealed from the world at large they themselves must be in no doubt: just as Germany had adopted t lie pose of protector in Norway, Denmark, Holland, and Belgium — where Germany had already staked her territorial claims in secret, what¬ ever she might publicly profess for tactical reasons — so she must act in Russia. ‘But let there be no doubt in our minds that we shall never depart from these territories. Never again must there be any military power west of the Urals, even if we have to fight a hundred years’ war to prevent it. It shall never be permitted that anybody other than a German carries weap¬ ons!’ Since the Ukraine would be Germany’s granary for the next three years, Hitler wanted Gauleiter Erich Koch appointed as Reich Commissar there: Koch, Goring’s protege, was a tough, cruel viceroy who had shown his mettle in the economic management of East Prussia. ‘About six p.m. they had a break for coffee,’ wrote Otto Brautigam, Rosenberg’s army liaison officer, who was waiting outside, in his diary: ‘The Reichsmarschall was in a brilliant mood. The Fiihrer voiced harsh criticism of the Swedes for the very meagre contingent they had provided for the struggle against Bolshe¬ vism, and even the Reichsmarschall described the Swedes as decadent.The Finns on die other hand earned broad praise for their pluck. After the break The Country Poacher 421 the negotiations were resumed. About eight-thirty a final agreement was reached. The Reichsleiter [Rosenberg] . . . told us how die talks had gone. He had reached a compromise widi die Reichsmarschall, who is directing die economy of the occupied eastern territories through die Economics Staff [Wirtschaftsstab] East, and with die Reichsfuhrer SS [Himmler] who equally intends to direct the operations of his SS police units from his desk in Berlin. [Rosenberg] also told us that serious objections had been raised to each and every candidate for die various Reich Commissar posts, but diat all candidates were now in: Gauleiter [Hinrich] Lohse for die Reich commissariat [RK] Ostland [the Baltic countries]; Gesandter [Siegfried] Kasche for die RK Russia, widi his seat in Moscow; Gauleiter [Wilhelm] Kube for die RK Ukraine; and Stabsleiter [Arno] Schickedanz for die RK Caucasus together with Gesandter [Dr. Hermann] Neubacher as economic director. . . An addendum from the coffee-talk is diat the Fiilirer described die Germanising of the Crimea as vital, and expatiated at length on die strengdi of die Soviet armoured forces. He said to Goring, “As you know, widi this campaign I had my first pronounced misgivings because of our uncertainty as to the enemy’s strengdi, and I don’t know whether I would have taken the same decision if I had been fully informed as to die overall strengdi of die Soviet army and in particular its gigantic tank rearmament.” ’ In Russia, he said, he would encourage neidier schooling nor religion, a position on which he met the opposition of the devout Catholic Franz von Papen. Papen had sent him a long study urging diat now was the right mo¬ ment to reintroduce Christianity into Russia; Hitler would not hear of it. In a private aside, he noted diat he might eventually consider letting in all die Christian sects ‘so diey can beat each other’s brains out widi dieir crucifixes.’ In diis new German empire, soldiers widi twelve years of service would automatically inherit a farmstead complete widi cattle and machinery. He asked only that some of this new peasant breed should marry girls from die countryside. They were to retain dieir weapons, so that they could answer any fresh calls to arms against die Asiatic hordes.The NCOs were to man¬ age the gasoline stations along the eastern autobahns. This soldier-peasant would above all make a far better educator dian the university-trained el¬ ementary school teacher, who would always be dissatisfied: not that Hitler planned to educate the Russian masses. ‘It is in our interest that the people know just enough to recognise die signs on die road,’ he said. On July 1 7 he signed die formal decrees putting these plans into effect, setting up an East Ministry under Alfred Rosenberg to handle the occupied 422 V: Crusade into Russia territories. Heinrich Himmler was given sweeping, indeed sinister, powers to police and exploit these new domains. the Nazi ‘final solution of the Jewish problem’ now took an unmistakable turn for die worse. In some regions, particularly the Baltic countries, the ‘Jewish problem’ had solved itself. The natives had already taken primitive revenge for ‘Jew¬ ish excesses’ after die Soviet invasion of Lidiuania in 1940. Hitler was informed diat the Red Army’s ‘Jewish commissars’ had rounded up the local businessmen one morning and shot them. Actively encouraged by Heydrich’s units, die Latvians and Lithuanians had begun to liquidate every Jew diey could lay hands on. Leeb’s army group brought diis to die atten¬ tion of Hitler’s HQ on July /;; Colonel Schmundt replied that the German troops were not to intervene — it was ‘a necessary mopping-up operation.’ Visiting Kovno a few days later Otto Brautigam was sufficiently disturbed to write in his diary on July 1 1: ‘While we turn a blind eye the Lithuanian auxiliary police are carrying out numerous pogroms against the Jews.’ The spirit inspiring Hitler in his war against the European Jews is clear from the entry in Hewel’s diary on July 10: He says, ‘I feel like die Robert Koch of politics. . . It is I who have dis¬ covered the Jews as die bacillus and ferment diat causes all decay in society. What I have proved is this — that nations can survive widiout Jews . . . and in fact better. That is die cruellest blow I have dealt the Jews.’ He reverted to diis surgical imagery a few days later, explaining to the Croatian defence minister: ‘If just one country tolerates one Jewish family in its midst, dien this will become die seat of a fresh bacillus infection. Once diere are no more Jews in Europe die unity of die European nations can no longer be disrupted. It is unimportant where the Jews are sent — whedier to Siberia or to Madagascar.’ He planned, he said, to confront each country with diis demand. in 1939 Hitler had confided to a bemused General Friedrich von Boetticher, the German military attache in Washington, diat he possessed documents proving Roosevelt’s Jewish ancestry. It was to diese unidentified Jewish- Bolshevik influences that Hitler ascribed Roosevelt’s attempts to provoke a The Country Poacher 423 shooting war with Germany. On July 13 the German diplomat Hasso von Etzdorf quoted Hitler as saying, ‘ So long as our eastern operations are still running, we won’t let ourselves be provoked. Later the Americans can have their war, if they absolutely have to.’ He quoted Hitler as telling Raeder he would do his utmost to prevent Roosevelt from entering the war for one or two more months, because die Luftwaffe was still committed to the Rus¬ sian campaign. Besides, as Raeder informed the naval staff: ‘The Liihrer still presumes diat a victorious Russian campaign will affect the posture of die United States.’ Hitler now forbade even die mining of Icelandic harbours. It was reported that die American navy had been ordered to fire widiout warning or provocation on any German warship; American commanders concerned were instructed to deny responsibility and to suggest diat a British unit was involved. Thus Roosevelt hoped to provoke countermeasures. All diese facts Hitler learned from intercepted U.S. naval code signals. On July 20 Canaris reported: ‘A certain disenchantment is to be discerned with die Reich foreign minister von R[ibbentrop]. Thus he himself now accepts America’s entry into die war as imminent, and for the first time he spoke disparagingly of the “journalistic” reporting ofThomsen and Boetticher.’ Ribbentrop’s stock with Hitler was currently at its lowest. Hitler some¬ times even egged on his private staff to make fun of die foreign minister. In July the question arose as to whether Rosenberg or Ribbentrop should con¬ duct propaganda in Russia; Hitler characteristically decided to allow both ministers a free hand. On the twenty-eighth Ribbentrop picked a quarrel widi Hitler about this, and even heaped scorn on his decision to attack die Soviet Union. It was a stiflingly hot summer day. Hitler was so enraged diat he clutched his heart, collapsed into a chair, and gasped at the petrified Ribbentrop that he must never again challenge his decisions. Ribbentrop, pale widi fright, gave his word. Hitler dien charged Lammers to inform die foreign minister diat die diplomatic service had to stand aside until die guns had finished speaking. That summer, despite the heat and Hitler’s growing signs of a mysteri¬ ous malaise, his conversations were monologues, delivered in a rich Austrian dialect to a handful of cronies assembled in his bunker, or over lunch or dinner at die long oblong table widi Jodi at his left, an outside guest like Speer or Goebbels at his right, and his headquarters staff — die liaison officers, die younger adjutants, and secretaries — at dieir allotted places. Sometimes Hitler would talk about die Nazi Party and Christianity. ‘We must not try to combat religion,’ he dictated, ‘but let it widier away!’ 424 V: Crusade into Russia Christa Schroeder, Hitler’s devoted secretary, wrote in mid-July 1941: In our evening discussions with the Chief, the Church plays a big part. . . It is all so convincing, what the Chief says — when for example he ex¬ plains how Christianity by its mendacity and hypocrisy has set back mankind in its development, culturally speaking, by two thousand years. I really must start writing down what die Chief says. It’s just t hat these sessions go on for ages and afterward you are just too limp and lifeless to write anything.The night before last, when we left the Chief’s bunker, it was already light. We did not turn in even then, as ordinary people would have, but made for the kitchen, ate a few cakes, and then strolled for two hours toward die rising sun, past farmyards and pad- docks, past hillocks glowing widi red and white clover in the morning sun, a fairyland on which you just could not feast your eyes enough; and then back to bed. We are incapable of getting up before two or three p.m. A crazy life. . .The like of our strange profession will probably never be seen again: we eat, we drink, we sleep, now and then we type a bit, and meantime keep him company for hours on end. Recently we did make ourselves a bit useful — we picked some flowers, so diat his bunker does not look too bare. On August 4, Hitler visited Field Marshal von Bock at the headquarters of Army Group Centre. The Battle of Smolensk was drawing to its end. Another three hundred thousand Russian captives were already being marched westward, but it was clear that the Fiihrer had not yet made up his mind on what next. He was intoxicated by Bock’s ‘historic triumphs.’ ‘Now,’ he had exclaimed on leaving his headquarters early that morning, ‘we shall put tilings in order here for a thousand years.’ He was however falling ill. And for another thing, what precisely was Russia’s ‘military strength,’ which he had to destroy? Haider himself now wanly admitted t hat: everybody had underestimated the Soviet colossus. ‘When we attacked, we assumed there were 200 enemy divisions.To date, we have already counted 360. . .’ To Hitler, the key to victory lay in Russia’s raw material centres and particularly die Donets region beyond Kharkov: ‘That is tire entire base of the Soviet economy.’To a diplomat he explained, ‘Soon we shall occupy the richest Russian economic regions, which yield 6 1 percent of their iron and 34 percent of their molybdenum; and when we cut off their oil supplies from the south, die fate of Bolshevism will be sealed.’ Kiev ^ ^ hat summer of 1941 Hitler fell ill for the first time in five years. The stress of the Russian campaign, coupled with the hot, ^ malarial climate in which the Wolf’s Lair had been sited, told se¬ verely on the dictator. Worse, the brackish waters of Masuria had infected him with dysentery, and as the crucial strategic controversy developed be¬ tween Hitler and his generals, his ability to overrule them was impaired by his own physical weakness; his own grand strategy, which was to set up a vast encircling movement by Army Groups North and South, enveloping Moscow from die rear, was opposed and circumvented by Brauchitsch and his staff, who favoured a direct assault on Moscow by Field Marshal von Bock’s Army Group Centre. Brauchitsch stayed in Berlin and ignored Hit¬ ler’s orders; Hitler was confined by circumstances to his field headquarters. When the army Commander in Chief did pay a rare visit to die Wolf’s Lair, Hitler vainly warned that the way diings were going the fronts would inevi¬ tably become static, as they had in World War I. At die Wolf’s Lair Hitler began holding war conferences; diey were die- atrical performances dominated by his monologues. They lasted for hours on end, sapping the energy of his generals, who had more urgent business elsewhere. Individual generals hesitated to speak their minds in front of such a large audience. But a few found diat in private Hitler could be frankly spoken to; among diem were Rundstedt, Reichenau, Guderian, Manstein, and later Milch, Zeitzler, and Ferdinand Schorner. On August 6, visiting Rundstedt and General Antonescu at Army Group Soudi headquarters in die dreary Ukrainian town of Berdichev, Hitler’s mind had seemed all but made up: Moscow would be left for last; Leningrad and the soudiern front would be dealt with first — the meteorologists had assured him that die current dry spell would last longer in die centre than die south anyway. 42 5 426 V: Crusade into Russia Before he could issue the necessary directive, however, Hitler was struck down. On August 7 Hewel would write cryptically in his diary, ‘Fiihrer sakit [ill].’ (The diplomat Hewel had been a rubber planter in Java.)That morn¬ ing, as Dr. Morell’s diary reveals, Hitler had been sitting down when he suddenly felt dizzy and began to throw up. Morell noted, ‘This bunker at¬ mosphere has been getting him down for five or six weeks now.Then [Hans] Junge [an SS orderly] suddenly telephoned for me to come immediately to the Fiihrer.’The doctor found Hitler deathly white. ‘I feel very bad now,’ gasped the Fiihrer. ‘Much worse than earlier. . . Up here,’ he added, point¬ ing to his left temple, ‘I feel so strange. A short while ago I had a terrific row [with Ribbentrop]; I got immensely worked up and since that time I’ve been feeling rotten.’ Morell was baffled. He found that Hitler’s eyebrows were tender, his hands trembled now when extended; panicking, the doc¬ tor bent the hypodermic needle as he frantically injected some multivitamins and carefully wrote down every word Hitler spoke to him; to be on the safe side he gave him aYatren pill — a medication useful in fact only against amoebic dysentery, which is confined almost entirely to the tropics. Hit¬ ler’s blood pressure was alarmingly high — 170 mm — and there was a loud buzzing in his ears. Morell diagnosed vaguely: ‘Vascular spasms with rush of blood to temples for various reasons.’ He allowed Hitler a supper of one soft boiled egg, mashed potato, and strawberries. It seemed a typical attack of bacillic dysentery. On the morning of the eighdi Hitler sent his valet over to Dr. Morell to declare that he had ‘never had a day in bed since being gassed in die World War.’ Proud of this record, he staggered out of bed at eleven a.m. ‘I went over,’ recorded Morell in his pencil notes, ‘widiout being sent for. Fiihrer was very irritable, is feeling a lot worse than yesterday, hasn’t slept a wink, but has no intention of lying in that confined space, he’s got to get up and about.’ Hitler refused to allow any more injections for the time being; the places where Morell had spiked him die day before hurt so badly, he groaned, diat they put all else in the shade. His ears still buzzing, he dressed and went over to the map room. Morell sent word diat he should have only tea and a biscuit for lunch. ‘He ordered spaghetti and strawberries,’ he recorded. The generals were delighted diat die Fiihrer had been laid low, aldiough General Haider did record diis day: ‘Despite his medical indisposition the Fiihrer has given the Commander in Chief [von Brauchitsch] the closest instructions on how he wants die air force squadrons used.’ The generals began to go dieir own way, disregarding Hitler’s strategic intentions. Kiev 427 ‘I think it’s okay again, doctor,’ Hitler said to Morell on August 9. ‘Let’s keep die check-up short, shall we? Because I want to go over to the map room.’ During the war conference die buzzing suddenly returned in his ears. He sent for Morell to inquire about using leeches to lower his blood pressure. Morell was planning to use his multivitamins,Tonophosphan, elec¬ tric heating pads, and other panaceas — he saw no reason not to try leeches too. Heinz Linge, die valet, later described: ‘Hitler sat in front of a mirror and watched fascinated as the leeches quenched dieir diirst on his blood.’ First [wrote Morell in his diary on August 1 1 ], I had made a small prick under the ear, but die skin was like leather. I had to push very hard to draw even the tiniest drops of blood. . . Fiihrer himself shook the leeches out of the jar. I had to apply diem with my fingers, as they slithered out of the forceps. The first one sucked much faster, the rear one only slowly. The front one dropped off first, letting go at die bottom and dangling. The rear one continued sucking for anodier half hour dien it too let go at the bottom; I had to rip it off at the top. Afterward Hitler’s head bled for two hours; Morell applied bandages. Hitler decided not to show himself at supper on account of diem, but he turned up for the usual war conference and tea session afterward: ‘His ears had stopped buzzing!’ noted Morell. Over the next days the Fiihrer’s blood pressure dropped to more nor¬ mal levels. ‘Some throbbing in left head,’ wrote Morell on die twelfth. ‘Has had a lot of arguments and tension.’ On the fourteenth, he persuaded Hit¬ ler to permit a white and red blood-corpuscle count and a cardiogram. The blood serology results came back on die sixteenth: as was to be expected in a man getting so little fresh air and sunshine the red corpuscle count was low. ‘Moreover,’ recorded Morell on die eighteenth, ‘die bunker is damp and unhealthy, the temperature just right for growing fungi; once, my boots were mouldy after being left two days, and my clothes got clammy in the bedroom. New bunker walls always sweat quantities of water at first. . . Then there are the colds caused by die draught of the extractor fans. I pointed out all that after just four days here in die bunker. . . People got chest constrictions, anaemia, and general bunker psychosis. Reminded him diat I had initially recommended more frequent motor journeys or five days in his special train, a change of scenery to somewhere at a greater altitude. At that time die Fiihrer declared diat this wasn’t on because of die 428 V: Crusade into Russia centralisation of his signals equipment, etc. I also suggested he spend four¬ teen days at the Berghof.’ Hitler told him that he had taken a mild sedative, but did not want to make a habit of it. He felt well, but Goebbels, visiting him that day, August 18, wrote afterward that he looked somewhat strained and sickly. ‘This is probably a result of his dysentery, and perhaps also of the drain on his strength of these last few weeks.’ The cardiogram had immediately revealed a depression of the T-wave. Alarmed, Morell had sent tire traces to a leading authority on heart condi¬ tions, Professor KarlWeber, director of the heart institute at Bad Nauheim, instructing him only that they were of a ‘very busy diplomat.’ Weber’s report confirmed ‘a considerable flattening of S—’T,and S—T n .’ He added, ‘If these are not the consequence of taking digitalis or an infec¬ tion, we must assume primarily that the cause is coronary sclerosis.’ He recommended performing electrocardiograms at fourteen-day intervals. The ultimate diagnosis, rapid progressive coronary sclerosis, showed that Morell’s illustrious ‘Patient A’ was now suffering a virtually incurable heart disease. In a man of Hitler’s age it was not abnormal, but from now on there would always be the danger of angina pectoris or of an embolism with possibly fatal consequences. For the present Morell kept tire truth from him (apart from a brief reference on August i 8); in the Fiihrer’s pres¬ ence he insisted that his heart and other organs were working well. In private, however, Morell began to study textbooks on the heart, and additional medicines were added to Hitler’s already overflowing cabinet. Hitler passively accepted his portly physician’s explanations. ‘Morell,’ he said to another doctor, ‘told me my energy consumption is as high as in the tropics, because of my uninterrupted intensive work.’ ON august i 8 , 1941 , Field Marshal von Brauchitsch submitted to him an obstinate written argument for tire immediate resumption of the attack on Moscow, as the city’s capture would take at least two months. Hitler re¬ jected it outright. It was most urgent in his view to deprive Stalin of his raw materials and arms industry. Besides, a rapid advance southward would encourage Iran to resist the Anglo-Russian invasion which he already knew was in the cards; in any case, he wanted the Crimea in German hands: it was from Crimean airfields that Russian bombers had recently attacked Ro¬ mania. He was plagued at night by a recurring nightmare — the petroleum fields of Ploesti, ablaze from end to end. His panzer generals Hoth and Guderian were most unenthusiastic about his plans. They lamented that Kiev 429 their tanks were in need of overhaul. Hitler did not believe them. He had heard the same story before Dunkirk. The two generals, he said, were obvi¬ ously just trying to conceal their own arrogant disapproval of his grand strategy. The Army High Command continued stubbornly with its plans to attack Moscow. Only later was it realised that Hitler’s strategy would have offered the better prospects. Bock’s armies would still be stalled outside Moscow when winter set in, and Hitler’s illness bore the blame. ‘Today I still be¬ lieve,’ Goring was to tell his captors, ‘that had Hitler’s original plan of genius not been diluted like that, the eastern campaign would have been decided by early 1942 at the latest.’ life within Security Zone One revolved around Hitler. When he was away it was as though t lie dynamo had been wrenched bodily out of the power¬ house. Favoured indeed were those with special passes to this holy compound. The presence of his women staff was frowned upon: It’s a thorn in some people’s side [wrote Christa Schroeder in one letter] that even in wartime the Chief has his personal staff around him, and particularly of course that we two females are included. We aren’t here on an outing but because the Chief wants us and main¬ tains tliat he can’t work without us. More than once he has stressed in these gentlemen’s presence that without us . . . he would be in a hopeless mess. . . It cannot have been a very pleasant situation when t he Chief asked his Wehrmacht adjutant [Schmundt] whether a tent has been laid on for his ladies at the next headquarters. The reply was in the negative, so the Fiihrer angrily or¬ dered that accommodation was to be provided for us. ‘Oh, they had imagined they were only going to stay there in a tent encampment a few days, so we would not be needed!’ All of these excuses show how much they want to get rid of us. Three weeks later tlae same secretary was complaining of the monotony. ‘We have now been here nine weeks, and the rumour is we shall stay here until t he end of October. . . I am so sick of inactivity that I recently tried to convince the Chief he needs only one secretary. . .’ Her other writings un¬ mistakably reflect Hitler’s inner thoughts. Thus on August 20 we find her recording: 430 V: Crusade into Russia A few days ago we saw here a British newsreel that reached us via America, showing the horrifying devastation of entire streets in London: all the big department stores, Parliament, and so on are in ruins. The camera showed the huge fires raging, as it panned across whole sections of the city, with warehouse after warehouse forming one sea of fire. The commentary says that the British are sticking it out in the knowledge that Berlin looks just the same. Oh, if the poor British could only guess! . . . I long for nothing more fervently than that the British should come forward widi peace proposals once we have dealt widi Russia. This war with Britain can only result in us smashing each other’s cities to smither¬ eens. And Mr. Roosevelt chuckles in gleeful anticipation of the day he will inherit Britain’s legacy. I really cannot understand why the British won’t listen to the voice of reason. Now that we are expanding to the east, we have no need for their colonies. I find it all so much more practical that everything will be right on our doorstep: the Ukraine and Crimea are so fertile we can plant every¬ thing we need there, and the rest (coffee, tea, cocoa, etc.) we can obtain by barter from South America. It is all so simple and obvious. Those in authority in London and Washington were, however, bent on Hitler’s extinction. In the second week of August, Churchill and Roosevelt met off Newfoundland, and proclaimed die eight-point Atlantic Charter, affirming diat diey sought no territorial aggrandisement, diat diey frowned on all territorial changes diat did not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the people concerned, and that all nations should enjoy equal access to the raw materials of die eardi and to its oceans. (Russia, which had lost the European territories it had annexed in 1940, subscribed to die Charter in 1942 along widi some twenty nations diat were then at war widi Ger¬ many. ) On August 24, Britain and Russia invaded Iran; die United States took over the naval watch of die Denmark Straits (nordi-west of Iceland) and undertook escort duties on North Atlantic convoys. Clearly die distinction between neutrality and belligerency was being increasingly blurred. Hitler approved Goebbels’s mischievous idea of immediately following Clement Attlee’s broadcast on die Atlantic talks (as Churchill’s deputy) widi two special communiques, announcing that the Black Sea ports of Odessa Kiev 431 and Nikolaiev were now under siege and that die Soviet iron-ore fields were in German hands. Hitler had asked Goebbels to come and see him on August 18. Appar¬ ently he was prompted by die growing Cadiolic clamour against the Nazi euthanasia programme. This ‘covert liquidation of the mentally ill,’ as Goebbels frankly termed it in his diary, had proceeded widiout friction until now. As its manager Philipp Bouhler had told him on January 30, 1941, they had already quietly got rid of eighty thousand, and had only sixty thou¬ sand more to go. ‘Hard work, but necessary too,’ Goebbels commented in his diary. Early in July however the Bishop of Munster, Count von Galen, had blown the lid off the scandal in a pastoral letter, and on die twenty- seventh he had instituted private criminal proceedings against persons unknown. For the Nazi Party and government alike it was acutely embar¬ rassing: Hitler’s arbitrary 1939 law audiorising euthanasia had never been published.* Bormann submitted to Hitler a memorandum on die desirability of ex¬ ecuting the bishop for sedition. Goebbels supported Bormann, arguing diat Galen had spiced his sermon with wholly unfounded charges. Hitler sagely disregarded Goebbels’s advice, but on August 24 he ordered die entire eu- dianasia operation shut down immediately. The latter continued nonethe¬ less. f Immersed in ‘Barbarossa,’ Hitler remained unaware that Martin Bormann was already waging open war on die Church. On one occasion Hitler said, ‘If my modier were still alive, she’d definitely be a churchgoer and I wouldn’t want to hinder her. On die contrary, you’ve got to respect die simple faith of the people.’ Hitler assured Goebbels and Rosenberg diat he would not easily forgive die German church leaders their behaviour during diis emergency. But until the war was won the Party must proceed slowly against the Church. On July 30, 1941, Bormann personally circular¬ ised all die gauleiters, on Hitler’s orders, instructing diem to refrain from any persecution of the religious communities, since diis would only divide die nation which Hitler had so arduously united. nor was Hitler the mainspring behind the ‘Jewish question.’There is now no doubt that Dr. Goebbels was. ‘In die eastern campaign,’ a Goebbels * See pages 23^—6 where the decree of 1939 is mentioned. I The euthanasia killings proceeded until February 194^, evidently on the local initiative of gauleiters and doctors. 432 V: Crusade into Russia memorandum read, ‘the German soldier has seen die Jew in all his cruelty and repulsiveness. Clearly when the soldier comes home from die wars, he must not find any Jews here waiting for him.’ Ever since die summer of 1940 Goebbels had prepared for die rapid deportation of Berlin’s seventy thousand Jews to Poland; but die war needs for transport overrode his ambitions.They could not begin die big roundup until the war was over. Goebbels brought with him to Hitler’s headquarters on August 18 a series of harsh measures designed to hound and intimidate the Jews. After¬ ward, he noted: ‘One only needs to imagine what the Jews would do if they had us in their power, to know what we must do now that we are on top. . . I manage to get my way completely widi the Fiihrer on the Jewish matter. He agrees we can introduce a large, visible badge for all the Jews in the Reich, to be worn by all Jews in public, so as to obviate die danger that die Jews will act as grumblers and defeatists without being detected. And in future we will allocate to Jews who don’t work smaller food rations dian to Germans. . . Incidentally, die Fiihrer agrees diat as soon as die first trans¬ port possibilities arise, die Berlin Jews will be deported from Berlin to the east.’ Hitler may have reminded Goebbels of his January 1939 Reichstag speech. The Fiihrer is convinced that the prophecy he uttered dien in the Reichs¬ tag — diat if the Jews once more succeeded in provoking a world war, it would end with die destruction of die Jews — is coming true. It is com¬ ing true diese weeks and months widi a dread certainty that is almost uncanny. In die east the Jews will have to square accounts; they have already footed part of the bill in Germany. . . At any rate in the coming world the Jews will have little cause for mirth. August 1 8 was a beautiful summer day at the Fiihrer’s headquarters. Probably in response to Dr. Morell’s prompting, Hitler spent the four hours of his talk widi Goebbels strolling in the woods — the first time he had done so in five weeks. He asked Goebbels about die mood in Berlin, which had recently undergone small-scale Russian air attacks. He had no worries about the morale of his people as a whole. The Wehrmacht’s big push southward would shortly begin. ‘The Fiihrer is not concerned widi occupying particu¬ lar regions or cities,’ wrote Goebbels. ‘He wants to avoid casualties if at all possible. Therefore he does not intend to take Petersburg [Leningrad] or Kiev by force of arms, but to starve them into submission; once Petersburg Kiev 433 has been cut off, his plan is to destroy the city’s lifeline with his Luftwaffe and artillery. . . Our first Luftwaffe attacks will hit the water, power, and gas plants.’ Perhaps, mused Hitler wistfully to Goebbels, Stalin might even now sue for peace. ‘He has of course little in common with the plutocrats in London; . . . die moment he sees diat the Bolshevik system itself is on die verge of collapse and can only be salvaged by surrender, then he will certainly be willing to do so. . . The Fiihrer is convinced diat Moscow and London were in die same line of business long before June,’ wrote Goebbels. Their aim had been identical, die destruction of the Reich. Stalin had been on the brink of attacking Germany: German division commanders found die enemy had better large-scale maps of Germany, Austria, and Si¬ lesia dian diey did themselves. Air reconnaissance revealed that Stalin had established a huge complex of arms factories beyond die Urals. The Rus¬ sians had also built several completely unpublicised highways along which diey advanced, while the Wehrmacht adhered to die only roads diey were aware of. In Red Army barracks were found dummy German soldiers that had been manufactured for target practice long before June 1941. Most of Hitler’s commanders — including Bock, Kluge, Haider, and Richard Ruoff— agreed that he had selected die proper time to strike. As he repeatedly remarked, he was not going to make die mistakes diat ‘a certain odier famous man’ — meaning Napoleon — had made. Aided by diousands of prisoners, his army engineers laboured around the clock to repair the demolished Russian railroad tracks and re-lay diem on die different German gauge. By mid-August a twin track extended as far as Smolensk. Once, on the seventeendi, he educated his private staff on the dangers of over-optimism. ‘Always credit die enemy with doing just what you least want,’ he told Hewel. For example, he tried to envisage what Stalin would do if the Pripyet Marshes did not exist. On August 19 Martin Bormann quoted Hitler as remarking, ‘Through my activities so far the German na¬ tion has already gained over two and a half million people. Even if I ask 1 o percent of diis as a sacrifice, I shall still have given ninety percent.’ on that day Dr. Morell had recorded, ‘Did not give the Fiihrer a check-up today as he felt fine.’ But the next day Hitler was still feeling low. ‘After working a lot yesterday,’ noted Morell, ‘he was a bit jumpy. His hands were shaking and his head swimming.’ He was planning to invite Mussolini to die eastern front, but there was still a slight buzzing in his ears. On the twenty- first he burst out at Morell: ‘The meal repertoire [here] is very limited.’ 434 V: Crusade into Russia (‘Trouble is,’ recorded the doctor, ‘he turns down so many things we sug¬ gest, and it’s very difficult to make suggestions, what with his being a vegetarian.’) Hitler wanted ‘that pleasant treatment’ widi the leeches again, but all but one of those used on him before had died, die Fiihrer’s blood evidently having been to their distaste. ‘I was hoping,’ wrote Morell on August 22, ‘to apply leeches once more before Mussolini gets here so his [Hitler’s] head will be completely clear.’ ‘But I can’t find the time yet,’ said Hitler. ‘Right now I’m up to my eyes in work. Of course I want it too.’ Set three leeches [recorded Morell in his diary of August 23], two be¬ hind the ear, one in front.The latter sucked well and strong. Head clearer and lighter. Says he found their sucking not at all unpleasant. Restored to health, Hitler began to fight back against the General Staff. On August 21 he dictated a brusque letter to Brauchitsch beginning with the words, ‘The army’s proposal for continuing the operations in the east does not accord with my intentions. I order die following’ — and he re¬ stated die objectives he had been demanding since December 1940: in the nordi, die isolation of Leningrad; and in die south, the capture of the Cri¬ mea, die Donets industrial and coal regions, and the Caucasus oil fields. Field Marshal von Bock’s Army Group Centre, facing Moscow, was to re¬ main on die defensive. This rude rebuff caused uproar in the army. Brauchitsch suffered his first mild heart attack. Haider literally wept over Hitler’s ‘pamphleteering.’ ‘Tor¬ tured days lie behind me,’ he wrote to his wife on August 2 3. ‘Again I offered my resignation to stave off an act of folly. The outcome was completely unsatisfactory. . . The objective I set myself — namely to finish off die Rus¬ sians once for all before the year is out — will not be achieved. . . History will level at us die gravest accusation that can be made of a High Command, namely that for fear of undue risk we did not exploit the attacking impetus of our troops. It was the same in the western campaign. But diere the en¬ emy’s internal collapse cast a merciful veil over our errors.’ Bock’s diary bespoke an equally anguished heart. ‘I don’t want to “cap¬ ture Moscow”! I want to destroy the enemy’s army, and the bulk of diat army is in front of me!’ He telephoned Colonel Schmundt asking that the Fiihrer at least give a hearing to Guderian. Guderian was granted a mid¬ night conference with Hitler on August 23. After hearing Hitler’s case for the main thrust to continue now toward the soudi, Guderian decided that Kiev 435 the Fiihrer was right. ‘I returned,’ he wrote afterward, ‘on the twenty- fourth, well satisfied and with high hopes.’ Bock’s wrath and Haider’s indignation at Guderian’s ‘sell-out’ were im¬ mense. Haider confiscated his most powerful corps, the Forty-Sixth panzer, and assigned it to the Fourth Army on tlie Moscow front. With only two corps, Guderian’s offensive limped and stumbled. ‘Since the twenty-sev¬ enth I’ve been fighting for reinforcements, but they are granted me only in driblets and too late,’ he wrote in one letter. His Chief of Staff observed in his diary that Guderian ‘has the impression that [Bock and Haider] are still hanging on to t heir old plan — the advance on Moscow.’ By early September it was clear, as bad weather arrived, that the Red Army north of the Desna River had eluded him. The Duce arrived at the Wolf’s Lair on August 2$. Hewel noted: ‘War conference, then a communal meal in the dining bunker and a talk with my Chief [Ribbentrop]. In the evening a cold buffet in the garden. Vittorio Mussolini is particularly unattractive and dumb. . .’ The next day Hitler showed Mussolini over t lie battlefield at Brest-Litovsk, where the two-ton projectiles of his 620-millimetre mortars had reduced the citadel to ruins. He admitted that his military Intelligence had grossly misinformed him about the Soviet powers of resistance, but he predicted that final victory would he his by tlie spring of 1942. That evening both dictators left for the Fiihrer’s southern headquarters site in Galicia. Mussolini joined Hitler for a confidential talk — pouring his heart out for t lie first time about the very real difficulties his Fascist revolu¬ tion was in.* In 1943 Hitler would recall him as lamenting: ‘Tell me, what can you do if you have got officers with reservations about the regime and about its ideologies . . . who say — the moment you talk of your ideology or of raison d’etat —“We are monarchists: we owe our allegiance to the King!”’ This admission of impotence in face of the Italian monarchy was a shock to Hitler, and he never forgot Mussolini’s words. The next day, August 2 8, both dictators flew across the fertile Ukrainian countryside for hours until they reached Rundstedt’s command post at * On August 30, 1941, Canaris returned to Berlin from talks with his Italian counterpart, Colonel Cesare Ame, and told his Abwehr staff: ‘A. describes the situation in Italy as very grave. The surprise caused by the eastern campaign has had an extremely unpleas¬ ant effect on the Italian people.’ 436 V: Crusade into Russia Uman. ‘His face was sunburnt to a brilliant red,’ wrote Morell guiltily, ‘and his forehead was very painful with large burnt patches, so he was very grumpy.’ Keitel had eyes only for the countryside. ‘One could sense the virginity of the soil,’ he recalled. Three months later Hitler described his own vivid impressions. ‘I must have seen thousands of women there, but not one of them was wearing even the cheapest ornaments. In their wretched hovels there was neither cutlery nor other household goods. And this misery prevailed in a region whose soil was capable of the biggest harvest imaginable. . . Only when this terrified, scared mass of people saw with their own eyes the commis¬ sars being shot did they gradually turn back into human beings again.’ The summer would soon be over and still Russia had not been defeated. At the end of August, Christa Schroeder wrote: Our stay here at the headquarters gets longer and longer. First we thought we would be back in Berlin by the end of July, t lien they talked of mid- October; and now they are already saying we will not get away before the end of October, if even then. It is already quite cool here, like autumn, and if it occurs to the Chief to spend the winter here we shall all be frozen. This protracted bunker existence can’t be doing us any good. The Chief does not look too well either, he gets too little fresh air and now he is oversensitive to sun and wind the moment he goes out in his car for a few hours. I would have loved to stay in Galicia — we were all in favour of it — but security there is not good enough. . . The whole countryside there is freer. Here in the forest it all crowds in on you after a while. Besides, there you didn’t have the feeling that you were locked in: you saw the peasants working in the fields and it made you feel free, while here we keep stumbling on sentries and are forever showing our identity cards. Well, I suppose that wherever we are we’re always cut off from the world — in Berlin, at the Berghof, or on our travels. It is always the same sharply defined circle, always the same circuit inside the fence. Just what Hitler’s New Order would be in Europe was a secret that he closely kept. That Slavs and Bolsheviks — particularly if they were Jewish — would not prosper under it was obvious; but the positions of countries like Kiev 437 Italy, France, Hungary, and even Russia were still undefined. Hitler’s naval adjutant, Puttkamer, wrote revealingly on August i i: At lunch yesterday die Full re r spoke about our relationship with France. This elicited for die first time die reason why he doesn’t take up any of die proposals made about it. He said he thought that a man like Darlan is being perfectly honest and that it was quite possible to achieve a bear¬ able relationship with France by progressing from armistice to a preliminary peace. This was absolutely possible, in his view, even if we made stiff demands: France expected them, would uphold diem, and would join the war at our side. So — if we were alone ^everything could be attained. The decisive obstacle is however Italy’s claims — Tunis and Corsica. No French government could uphold these. But he couldn’t persuade die Italians to drop them; he had to associate himself with these claims too. He couldn’t barter our ally Italy against France, he said. So that’s die real reason, which was news to both me and Jodi, with whom I discussed it. On September 8, referring to Hungary, Hitler told Hewel: ‘These are all just alliances of expediency. For example, the German people know that our alliance with Italy is only an alliance between Mussolini and myself. We Germans have sympadiies only widi Finland; we could find some sympathy for Sweden, and of course with Britain.’ Here he must have sighed, for he added: ‘A German-British alliance would be an alliance from people to people! The British would only have to keep their hands off die Continent. They could keep their empire — and die world if they wanted!’ Hitler’s conquest of the Ukraine would mean that he no longer needed die raw-material regions of France. As he explained to his ambassador in France, Otto Abetz, on September 16, the Soviet iron-ore fields at Krivoi Rog alone would yield a million tons of ore a month. Hitler would insist on retaining only Alsace and Lorraine, and the Channel coast facing England. Given what he saw as such modest claims, Hitler assured Abetz that France would certainly have a share of die pickings from the New Order. In his diary of September 15, 1941, Weizsacker described Hitler’s for¬ eign policy in these words: ‘The quasi-depression of four weeks ago has been cured, probably the physical malaise too. An autobahn is being planned to die Crimean peninsula. There is speculation as to die probable manner 438 V: Crusade into Russia of Stalin’s departure. If he withdraws into Asia, he might even be granted a peace treaty.’ The next day, Papen also raised Stalin’s future with Hitler, and the Fiihrer repeated what he had told Goebbels a month before — that once the Wehrmacht had occupied a certain forward line in Russia, it might be pos¬ sible to find common ground with the Red dictator, who was after all a man of enormous achievements. As another diplomat — Hasso von Etzdorf — commented: ‘As to Stalin’s fate, [Hitler] sees two possibilities; either he gets bumped off by his own people, or he tries to make peace with us. Because, he says, Stalin as the greatest living statesman must realise that at sixty-six you can’t begin your life’s work all over again if it will take a lifetime to complete it; so he’ll try to salvage what he can, with our acquiescence. And in this we should meet him halfway. If Stalin could only decide to seek expansion for Russia to¬ ward the south, the Persian Gulf, as he [Hitler] recommended to him once [November 1940], then peaceful co-existence between Russia and Ger¬ many would be conceivable.’ Papen for his part impressed on Hitler the need to promote a ‘construc¬ tive peace plan’ after Russia’s overthrow, a plan capable of inspiring all Europeans. ‘The Fiihrer dien turned to his plans for the east,’ relates the only exist¬ ing record of Hitler’s conversation with Abetz on September 1 6: Petersburg [Leningrad], the ‘poisonous nest’ from which for so long Asi¬ atic venom has ‘spewed fort If into the Baltic, must vanish from die earth’s surface. The city is already cut off. . . The Asiatics and die Bolsheviks must be hounded out of Europe, this ‘episode of two hundred fifty years of Asiatic pestilence’ is at an end. The Urals will be the frontier beyond which Stalin and his like can do as they please. But he [Hitler], by launch¬ ing occasional expeditions across the Urals, will also ensure that Stalin gets no respite diere eidier. After die expulsion of the Asiatics, Europe will never again be de¬ pendent on an outside power, nor need we ‘care two hoots’ about America. Europe will meet its own raw material needs, and it will have its own export market in die Russian territories so we shall no longer need the rest of the world’s trade. The new Russia this side of die Urals will be ‘our India,’ but far more handily located than diat of Britain. The new Kiev 439 Greater German Empire will embrace 15 5 million people, and it will rule 11,o million more. The backbone of the new empire would be the Wehrmacht and above all die SS. In public Elitler talked with Elimmler only of innocuous matters — architecture, the salon of Frau Bruckmann, or the relative nutritive values of the potato and die soya bean. In private they elaborated ways of fighting the multiplying and Hydra-headed partisan movements springing up diroughout the Nazi-occupied territories. Hitler linked these movements widi Stalin’s July broadcast, and he condemned as far too mild the treat¬ ment so far meted out to captured offenders. On September 7 — as Himmler was at die Wolf’s Lair — he ordered that if the murderer of a German NCO in Paris was not found immediately, fifty hostages were to be shot; and in future the ratio was to be a hundred ‘Communists’ for each German life taken. (The German military commander admittedly protested, and Hitler left the final scale of reprisals to his discretion.) The siege of Leningrad symbolised the brutalisation of this war. Over die horizon, Leeb’s tank crews could see the glittering gold spires of die admiralty building — so near and yet so far. In a formal directive, Number 5 y, issued on September 6, Hitler ordered Leningrad to be so thoroughly isolated by his ground forces that by mid-September at die latest he could recover his tanks and Richthofen’s air squadrons for the main assault on Moscow after all. On September 9 the Luftwaffe began around-die-clock bombing operations. Jeschonnek’s deputy wrote in his diary: ‘Food already appears to be short there.’ On the tenth, Rosenberg’s liaison officer reported to him from Hitler’s headquarters: The entire population has remained and actually been swollen by die evacuation of the surrounding suburbs. Already it’s almost impossible to get bread, sugar, and meat in Leningrad. The Fiihrer wants to avoid house-to-house fighting, which would cost our troops heavy casualties. The city is to be just shut in, shot to pieces by artillery and starved out. A few days or weeks here or diere make no difference, as die besieging army won’t have to be very big. The Finns have suggested diverting Lake Ladoga into the Gulf of Fin¬ land — which lies several metres lower — to wash away the city of Leningrad. 440 V: Crusade into Russia On September 12, General Haider emphasised to Leeb’s army group that his tanks would shortly be pulled back from Leningrad for the attack on Moscow. General Hans Reinhardt protested at the effect this order to halt was having on his men. ‘The city is spread out before them, and nobody is stopping them going right on in! ’ Hitler agreed however that the tanks should not be committed; Lenin¬ grad should be destroyed by bombardment instead. Admiral Raeder asked him to spare at least the dockyards; this too Hitler refused, but as regards the tanks Keitel telephoned Leeb to postpone their withdrawal by forty- eight hours. On the twelfth the Luftwaffe commander, Richthofen, entered in his diary: ‘Colonel Schmundt. . . talked about the problem of Finland and Leningrad. Over L. the “plough shall pass!’” On September 16 the Nazi tanks were finally halted, and their withdrawal from Leningrad to the Moscow front began. Kiev at least was in German hands.The news broke at Hitler’s headquar¬ ters late on September 19. For days afterward he spoke of his plans for Europe. Dr. Werner Koeppen, Rosenberg’s liaison officer, recorded these historic conversations: Lunchtime, September 19. Dr.Todt related his impressions of his latest jour¬ ney to Oslo andTrondheim, and of the first ground broken for the major traffic link between Germany and Denmark.The Fulirer talked about his plan to rebuild Trondheim afresh in terrace-form, so that every house will be in the sun all day long. . . The Fiihrer then spoke of the need to build one autobahn up to Trondheim, and another down to the Crimea. After the war the German citizen shall have the chance of taking his Volkswagen and looking over the captured territories in person, so that if need should arise he will also be willing to fight for them. We must never repeat the pre-war error of having the colonial idea the property of only a few capitalists or corpo¬ rations. . .The railway traverses distances, but the road opens them up. Earlier, as he told Seyss-Inquart on the twenty-sixth, it was downright absurd that though a vast, only sparsely populated, empire lay in the east with almost inexhaustible resources and raw materials, western Europe struggled to meet its needs by imports from colonies far overseas. ‘Once we have securely occupied the vitally important European regions of the Soviet Union, the war east of the Urals can go on a hundred years, for all Kiev 441 we care.’ Hitler learned that rubber was being grown near Kharkov — he had himself already seen excellent samples of it. ‘The giant farms Stalin has introduced will probably be the best way to use the land in the future too, as they are probably the only way of cultivating the land intensively . . .’ He felt that most Russians had become quite accustomed to being treated like animals. If the occupying authorities controlled the alcohol and tobacco supplies, he had said at lunch a few days earlier, diey would have the population eating out of their hands. ‘The frontier between Europe and Asia,’ reflected Hitler over dinner on die twenty-third, ‘is not die Ural Mountains but there where die settle¬ ments of Germanically inclined people end and unadulterated Slav settlements begin. It is our task to push diis frontier as far east as possible, and if need be far beyond the Urals. It is die eternal law of nature diat gives Germany as the stronger power the right before history to subjugate diese peoples of inferior race, to dominate diem and to coerce them into per¬ forming useful labours.’This project of die ethnic cleansing of Berlin, Vienna, and Prague would also encompass the Jews, but not until the end of Barbarossa. ‘They are all to be transported ultimately to [regions?] adjacent to the Bolshevik [rump territory?]’ dictated Goebbels on the twenty-third (the microfiche is only partly decipherable). in the ‘Protectorate’ of Bohemia-Moravia a wave of opposition had ap¬ peared since ‘Barbarossa.’There were slowdowns and stoppages and terror incidents. Rumour reached Hitler that a full-scale uprising was being plot¬ ted. ‘Only now do they realise that diere is no escape,’ he said. ‘As long as die great Russia, modier of all Slavs, was diere diey could still hope.’ Koeppen reported Hitler’s remarks at lunch a few days later: ‘He keeps repeating that he knows the Czechs of old. To them [Reich Protector] Neurath was just a friendly old duffer whose blandness and good humour diey rapidly mistook for weakness and stupidity. . . The Czechs are a na¬ tion of “cyclists” — they bow from die waist upward, but the legs still kick! ’ One evening at die end of September Otto Brautigam recorded this remark by Hitler in his diary: ‘We found out diat the Czech government had issued orders for a boycott on arms production. Output efficiency had generally declined by about 2 o or 3 o percent, ammunition was being turned out widi bad fuses and even die armourplate processed by Skoda was show¬ ing flaws diat could only be explained by deliberate sabotage.’ 442 V: Crusade into Russia On Bormann’s advice Hitler appointed Heydrich Acting Protector. On September 24, Hitler told him his job would be ‘a combat mission’ of lim¬ ited duration and gave him carte blanche. Heydrich flew to Prague on September 2 7 and arrested the rebel ringleaders — among them General Alois Elias, the prime minister.The next day he phoned Himmler: Elias had confessed to being in contact with the Benes government in London. Elias was condemned to death, but Hitler decided he was of more value as a hostage for the Czechs’ good behaviour, and he survived until May 1942. Hitler had briefed Heydrich fully on the future of his Protectorate. Heyd¬ rich reported this to his local governors in Prague on October 2. One day, he said, the Protectorate would be settled by Germans. ‘This does not mean,’ said Heydrich, ‘that we now have to try to Germanise all Czech rabble. . . For those of good race and good intentions the matter is simple; they will be Germanised. For the rest, those of inferior racial origin or with hostile intentions, I shall get rid of them — there is plenty of room in the east for them.’ Inferior but well-meaning Czechs would probably be sent to work in the Reich. The more difficult category — those of good racial charac¬ teristics but hostile intentions — would have to be liquidated.* Hitler advised Heydrich to introduce the Czech workers to both the carrot and the stick. In any factory where sabotage occurred, ten hostages were to be shot; but in factories with a good output the workers were to get extra rations. Heydrich went much further, introducing the Czechs for the first time to the full Bismarckian social security programme. ‘The Czech workers have accepted the liquidation of the conspirators quite calmly,’ Koeppen noted when Heydrich first reported back from Prague, over din¬ ner on October 2. ‘The most important thing to diem is to have enough food and work. . . One worker has even written to Heydrich, giving his full name, saying diat Czech history has always been like this: each genera¬ tion has to learn its lesson and dien there is peace for a time. He added that nobody would object if anodier two thousand of them were shot, either.’ The Nazis would rise to the occasion. * Hitler had used the same language to Neurath, State Secretary Karl-Hermann Frank, and the minister of justice in September 1940: ‘Czechs turned down on racial grounds or anti-Reich in attitude were not to be assimilated. This category was to be eliminated (sei auszumerzen). ’ In conversation over lunch on October 6, 1941 Hitler announced that the Jews in the Protectorate were all to be deported eastward. ‘After this war the Fiihrer proposes to transplant all the racially valueless elements from Bohemia to the east.’ Cold Harvest F or hitler the last act of‘Barbarossa,’ as he thought, had now be¬ gun. At five-thirty on the morning of October 2, 1941, Field Mar¬ shal von Bock’s army group — nearly two thousand tanks commanded by Guderian, Erich Floepner, and I loth — opened t he first phase of‘Opera- tionTyphoon,’ die attack on Moscow. Lunch diat day at Flitler’s headquarters started late as he listened to the early reports on diis last battle, designed to destroy Marshal Timoshenko’s armies. When die meal began, he was unu¬ sually quiet. He broke the silence only to ask about the weadier prospects, and then again to reminisce about die Berghof — where even now Bormann’s construction crews were carrying out still furdier architectural ‘improve¬ ments’ to die mountainside. Russia’s weadier was in no way unpredictable. Indeed, as early as August 14 Jeschonnek’s deputy, Hoffmann von Waldau, had privately written at Luftwaffe headquarters: ‘It is all getting very late. At die end of October die war will die out in the snow.’ And on September 9, three days after Hitler issued die directive for ‘Typhoon,’Waldau had gloomily predicted: ‘We are heading for a winter campaign. The real trial of this war has begun. My belief in final victory remains.’ At 1:30 p.m. on October 3, 1941, Hitler’s train arrived in Berlin. He drove to the Sportpalast, where he delivered one of the most stirring speeches of his life — wholly ex tempore and hence ‘enormously devout,’ as Hewel afterward reported. Hitler was exhilarated by die welcome die capital gave him. ‘It was the same atmosphere as at die most wonderful of our meetings during the years of struggle. The reason was that no special tick¬ ets had been distributed — the audience really was a cross section of die people. The ordinary people really do make die most appreciative audi¬ ence, diey are die people who deep down inside know they support me. 443 444 V: Crusade into Russia They are marked by that kind of stability that can stand the heaviest bur¬ dens — while our intellectuals just flutter hither and tliidier.’ In his speech he outlined his unifying role in Europe — how Italy, Hun¬ gary, die Nordic countries, and dien Japan had come closer to Germany. ‘Unhappily, however, not the nation I have courted all my life: the British. Not that the British people as a whole alone bear the responsibility for diis, no, but there are some people who in their pigheaded hatred and lunacy have sabotaged every such attempt at an understanding between us, with the support of that international enemy known to us all, international Jewry. . . As in all die years I strove to achieve understanding whatever the cost, there was Mr. Churchill who kept on shouting, “I want a war!” Now he has it.’ Within an hour Hitler’s train was bearing him back to headquarters. Victory in Russia seemed certain. Guderian was approaching Orel. Like two fishermen’s nets flung out over the sea, Bock’s armies were hauling in their catches atVyazma and Bryansk. Anodier 673,000 prisoners would be found inside. On die Sea of Azov, Rundstedt destroyed die Soviet Eight- eendi Army and took anodier 100,000 prisoners. A grim jocularity overcame Hitler — he began talking freely at mealtimes again, gossiping about the different kinds of caviar and oysters and die mysterious bacteria diat had massacred die crabs some decades before. Russia? ‘We are planning big things for our share of the territory, “our India” — canals and railroads, the latter with a new gauge of ten feet. The population . . . must vegetate. For Stalin’s rump-empire [beyond the Urals] Bolshevism will be a good diing — our guarantee of their permanent ignorance.’ Thus wrote Weizsacker of Hitler’s ambitions. At dinner on October 6 Hitler was again in an expansive mood. Major Engel, his ebullient army adjutant, had been bitten by a dog, so Hitler un¬ corked a stream of witticisms about the fearful consequences if rabies should take hold at his headquarters. Dinner was short, so diat the latest newsreel dims could be shown. Hitler saw for himself his troops battling forward under General von Manstein, now commanding die Eleventh Army in the assault on die Crimea; he also saw die nordiern armies frustrating the fran¬ tic Russian attempts to relieve Leningrad. By October 7, the Bryansk pocket was completely sealed, and the ar¬ moured divisions were about to close die other huge ring around Vyazma. Gripped by diis military drama, Hitler did not eat that day — although Himmler was guest of honour, it being his forty-first birdiday. Hewel mar- Cold Harvest 445 veiled in his diary: ‘Jodi says, “The most crucial day of die whole Russian war,” and compares it with Koniggratz.’ Intercepted code-messages from diplomats in Moscow suggested that the end t lie re was not far off. The Turkish ambassador told of tens of thou¬ sands of casualties. For a time, Hitler considered throwing his SS Life Guards a hundred miles forward to Rostov on the Don, die gateway to the Cauca¬ sus oil-fields. (‘The fact that in die not too distant future we’ll have used up every last drop of gasoline makes this a matter of the utmost urgency,’ Keitel told Canaris later in October.) General Eduard Wagner, the army’s quartermaster general, wrote pri¬ vately: ‘Now the operation is rolling toward Moscow. Our impression is that the final great collapse is immediately ahead, and that tonight the Kremlin is packing its bags. What matters now is that the panzer armies reach their objectives. Strategic objectives are being defined that would have stood our hair on end at one time. East of Moscow!! . . . I keep having to marvel at the Fuhrer’s military judgement. This time he is intervening — and one can say, decisively — in the operations, and so far he has been right every time.The major victory in the south is his work alone.’ On October 8, Jodi repeated his triumphant verdict: ‘We have finally and without any exaggeration won this war!’ Hitler signed an OKW order forbidding Bock to accept Moscow’s surrender, if offered; no German troops were to set foot there — t lie city was to be encircled and wiped out by fire and bombardment. Small gaps might be left on the far side of t lie Moscow ring, to allow the citizenry to flee eastward into the Soviet lines and in¬ crease die chaos diere. On die eastern front it had now begun to rain. the coming victory over Russia promised to relieve Hitler of immense strategic burdens. Japan would be free to wade into die United States, which would then hardly be in a position to come to Britain’s aid in her final fight widi Germany. Recognising diis, Roosevelt sent Averell Harriman to assist Britain’s Lord Beaverbrook at a Moscow conference on ways of rushing military support to Stalin. On October 6, Hitler had been handed the de¬ coded text of Roosevelt’s letter introducing Harriman to Stalin: Harry Hopkins has told me in great detail of his encouraging and satis¬ factory visits with you. I can’t tell you how thrilled all of us are because of die gallant defence of die Soviet armies. I am confident that ways will be found to provide the material and supplies necessary to fight Hitler 446 V: Crusade into Russia on all fronts, including your own. I want particularly to take this occa¬ sion to express my great confidence that your armies will ultimately prevail over Hitler and to assure you of our great determination to be of every possible material assistance. Hitler had the text of this letter released throughout the Americas; he also, to the intense irritation of Roosevelt, amended the president’s saluta¬ tion to ‘My Dear Friend Stalin’; and where Roosevelt had prudently concluded with ‘Yours very sincerely,’ the German propaganda text ended widi an oily ‘In cordial friendship.’ Roosevelt had long gone beyond strict neutrality. On September 11 he had ordered the navy to ‘shoot on sight’ any warships of the Axis powers encountered in seas ‘the protection of which is necessary for American de¬ fence.’ Admiral Raeder implored the Fiihrer to permit German warships to meet force with force; but Hitler remained unconvinced that die military advantages would outweigh the political risks involved in firing back on any U.S. naval attackers. ON October 7 die first snow drifted out of the sky onto Hitler’s headquar¬ ters. ‘The weadier gods,’ wrote General Guderian privately four days later, ‘have made monkeys out of us: first rain, dien blizzards yesterday morning, frost in the afternoon and at night, and thawing again today. The roads are bottomless and our progress is obviously suffering.’ On the sixteendi a fighter pilot arriving at the Fiihrer’s headquarters to receive the Knight’s Cross announced that six inches of snow was covering die whole countryside. On die seventeenth die temperature at Leningrad fell to freezing, in the far nordi it was 27T below.The next day for the first time die weather was so bad as to prevent any noticeable change in die front lines. Bock’s army group was paralysed by die snow, slush, and slime. Nodiing could move except on foot or in the lightest of handcarts, for the roads were few and far between and it was on diese that die Russians now concentrated dieir de¬ fence. Each night the temperatures fell and froze the snow and mud; each morning die thaw set in, and die roads were again impassable. As die German troops struggled to advance dirough this fildi and slush they encountered mournful columns of Russians trudging westward into captivity. ‘The columns of Russian prisoners moving on die roads looked like half-witted herds of animals,’ one of Canaris’s aides noted. Barely guarded and kept in order by the fist and whip, these wretched prisoners Cold Harvest 447 marched until they were exhausted by hunger or disease; they were then carried by their comrades or left at the roadside. ‘The Sixth Army [Reichenau’s] has ordered that all prisoners that break down are to be shot. Regrettably this is done at the roadside, even in the villages, so that the local population are eye-witnesses of these incidents. . . The population,’ die report continued, ‘greet die German soldiers as liberators from die yoke of Bolshevism. But there is a danger that this extremely useful mood, which is displayed by dieir great hospitality and many gifts, will turn into die opposite if dealt with wrongly.’ The first big SS action against the Jews at Kiev had occurred at the end of September.The report to Canaris by the previously mentioned aide noted: ‘Orders are that die Jews are to be “resettled.”This takes place as follows: die Jews are ordered at short notice to report to specific collecting points widi their best clothes and dieir jewellery on the following night. No dis¬ tinctions are made as to class, sex, or age.They are dien taken to a preselected and prepared site outside the town concerned, where diey have to deposit dieir jewellery and clothes under the pretext of having to complete certain formalities. They are led away from the road and liquidated.The effects on die German squads are inevitable — the executions can usually only be car¬ ried out under the influence of alcohol. The native population react to diis liquidation programme, of which they are fully aware, calmly and some¬ times widi satisfaction, and the Ukrainian militia actually take part.’There were even protests diat some Jews were escaping die net cast by the SS task forces. The origins of the Kiev pogrom are obscure. Whatever the origin, on the last two days of September, 33,771 Russian Jews were executed here. One month later die figure had risen to 73,000. Why was it happening? There are documents which strongly suggest diat Hitler’s responsibility — as distinct from Himmler’s — was limited to die decision to deport all European Jews to the east, and that responsibility for what happened to Russian Jews and to European Jews after their arrival in ‘the east’ rested with Himmler, Heydrich, and the local authorities there. On September 18, 1941, Himmler wrote to Arthur Greiser, the brutal gauleiter of die Wartheland — that is, the Polish territories annexed in die German invasion two years earlier: The Fiihrer wishes the old Reich territory and the Protectorate [of Bo- hemia-Moravia] to be cleansed and rid of Jews, from west to east, as 44 8 V: Crusade into Russia soon as possible. As a first step I am t lie re fore endeavouring to trans¬ port — this year as far as possible — all the Jews of the old Reich and Protectorate into the eastern territories annexed by the Reich in 1939 first of all; next spring they will then be deported still further eastward. The first sixty thousand, Himmler advised, would be sent to the Lodz ghetto soon to spend die winter there. Heydrich would be in charge of this ‘migration of the Jews.’ Evidently the second phase, dumping them into Russia itself, could not be begun until the Russian campaign was finished and the military pressure on the railroads was relaxed. Hitler’s own attitude is illuminated by an incident at diis time. Learning diat the Soviets were deporting about 400,000Volga Germans, and even liquidating thousands of diem, Reichsleiter Rosenberg proposed ‘transporting all the Jews from Central Europe’ into the newly occupied eastern territories as a reprisal, and on September 14 he directed his liaison officer Otto Brautigam to get Hitler’s consent. General Bodenschatz, according to Brautigam’s diary, believed that trans¬ port difficulties would prevent such an operation: ‘Finally,’ wrote Brautigam, however, ‘I ran into Colonel Schmundt and to my great surprise he [said] that it was a very important and urgent matter that die Fiilirer would cer¬ tainly take a great interest in.’ Hitler directed that Ribbentrap’s opinion be sought. On die twentieth Baron Adolf von Steengracht, Ribbentrop’s rep¬ resentative, submitted the foreign ministry’s opinion on the Soviet deportation of the Volga Germans and ‘countermeasures against Jews in the occupied eastern territories.’ He had to record afterward, ‘The Fiihrer has not yet decided,’ and die next day Koeppen recorded diat Hitler had decided to reserve reprisals against die Jews ‘for the eventuality of an Ameri¬ can declaration of war.’ Seeing him two days later Dr. Goebbels wrote in his diary only: ‘The Fiihrer’s opinion is diat bit by bit die Jews must be got out of Germany altogether.’ Hitler’s bald decision was documented in many memoranda over the next months: dius on February 10, 1942, Section D III of the foreign ministry would state: ‘The war against die Soviet Union has mean¬ while made it possible to make other territories available for die Final Solution [i.e., the deportation of all Jews from Europe], Accordingly die Fiihrer has decided that die Jews are to be dumped [abgeschoben] not in Madagascar but in the East.’ Himmler himself would dictate these words to SS-Gruppenfiihrer Gottlob Berger on July 28, 1942: ‘The occupied east- Cold Harvest 449 ern territories* are being rid of the Jews [judenfrei], The Fiihrer has rested die execution of diis very grave order upon my shoulders. Accordingly no¬ body can deprive me of die responsibility for this.’ Whatever Hitler himself had understood by judenjrei, die endemic Rus¬ sian Jews had few champions among his subordinates.There was almost no German army opposition to their summary liquidation — even Manstein regarded it as a salutary preventive measure, wiping out the reservoirs of possible partisans before they became active. Reichenau justified it as part of die German mission to rid Europe permanently of die ‘Asiatic Jewish danger.’ In a message to his troops he proclaimed: In the east each soldier is not only a warrior abiding by die usual rules of war, but also the uncompromising bearer of a pure German ideal and die avenger of the bestialities committed against Germans and related races. This is why the soldier must understand why we have to exact a harsh but just retribution from die Jewish sub-humans. This serves die added purpose of stifling at birth uprisings in the rear of the Wehrmacht, since experience shows that these are always conceived by Jews. . . Hitler considered die proclamation ‘excellent,’ and Quartermaster Gen¬ eral Eduard Wagner circulated it to odier commands as an example. No direct report by Himmler or Heydrich to Hitler on die barbarous massacres of Russian Jews diat they themselves had witnessed has ever come to light. At supper on October for example, Himmler, who had just returned from an extended tour of die Ukraine during which he had vis¬ ited Kiev, Nikolaiev, and Cherson, related to Hitler his impressions of Kiev. Werner Koeppen, who was a guest at Hitler’s table that evening, recorded Himmler’s comments: ‘In Kiev . . . the number of inhabitants is still very great. The people look poor and proletarian, so diat we could “easily dis¬ pense with 80 or 90 percent of them!”’ ‘All die Jews are to be removed,’ Hitler stated over lunch on the fifth, referring to diose still within the Reich. ‘And not just to the Generalgouvernement [Poland] but right on to die east. It is only our pressing need for war transport that stops us doing so right now.’ (Koeppen took the note.) * What Himmler understood by the phrase ‘eastern territories’ is apparent from the letter to Greiser dated September 18, 1941, quoted earlier, page 447. 450 V: Crusade into Russia Himmler drew freely on this higher authority for his operations. To Friedrich Uebelhor, the unhappy governor of the city of Lodz where the sixty thousand Jews from the Reich were being dumped, Himmler wrote brusquely on the tenth that this was ‘die Fiihrer’s will.’ Hitler’s surviving adjutants, secretaries, and staff stenographers have all testified, both under penetrating post-war interrogation and in interviews with this author, diat never once was any extermination of eidier the Russian or European Jews mentioned — even confidentially — at his headquarters. Colonel Rudolf Schmundt appears to have suspected what was going on; for when Hitler’s movie cameraman Walter Frentz accompanied Himmler to Minsk on an outing with stage designer Benno von Arent, he found himself the horrified witness of a mass open-air execution on August 17; Schmundt counselled him to destroy the one colour photograph he took, and ‘not to poke his nose into matters that did not concern him.’ by MiD-October 1941, despite the foul weather, Hitler was still bred with optimism. On die thirteenth he began laying die foundations for a Nazi version of a united Europe. Hewel wrote, ‘Reich foreign minister visits the Fiihrer; first dioughts on a European manifesto. Probably in die economic sph ere first of all, and probably at the beginning of the winter. Fiihrer is in very best and relaxed mood.’ Over dinner he revealed diat he had been thinking of calling togedier the economic experts of Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Sweden, and Finland. ‘All those who have a feeling for Europe can join in this work,’ he said, meaning the colonisation of the east. WhenTodt and Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel dined widi Hitler on October 17, they were brimming with everydiing they had just seen in die east. Again Hitler dreamed aloud of the vast construction projects whereby he would open up the east. ‘Above all we must lay roads,’ Koeppen wrote that night, describing die dinner conversation: He told Dr. Todt he must expand his original projects considerably. For this purpose he will be able to make use of the diree million prisoners for die next twenty years.The major roads — die Fiihrer spoke today not only of the highway to the Crimea but also of one to die Caucasus and of two or diree through the more nordiern territories — must be laid across the areas of greatest scenic beauty. Where die big rivers are crossed, German cities must arise, as centres of the Wehrmacht, police, adminis¬ tration, and Party authorities. Along diese roads will lie the German Cold Harvest 451 farmsteads, and soon the monotonous steppe, with its Asiatic appear¬ ance, will look very different indeed. In ten years four million Germans will have settled t lie re, and in twenty years at least ten million.They will come not only from die Reich but above all from America, and from Scandinavia, Holland, and Flanders too. And die rest of Europe shall play its part in diis opening up of die Russian wastes as well. . . The Fiihrer then reverted to the dieme diat ‘contrary to what some people diink’ no education or welfare is to be laid on for the native population. Knowledge of die road signs will suffice, there will be no call for German schoolmasters there. By ‘freedom’ the Ukrainians un¬ derstood that instead of twice diey now had to wash only once a month — die Germans with dieir scrubbing brushes would soon make themselves unpopular diere. He as Fiihrer would set up his new administration there after ice- cool calculations: what die Slavs might think about it would not put him out one bit. Nobody who ate German bread today got worked up about die fact diat in die twelfth century die granaries east of the Elbe were regained by die sword. Here in die east we were repeating a process for a second time not unlike die conquest of America. For climatic reasons alone we could not venture further soudi than the Crimea — he did not mention die Cauca¬ sus at diis point — even now hundreds of our mountain troops on Crete had malaria! The Fiihrer kept repeating that he wished he was ten or fifteen years younger so he could live through the rest of diis process. At the same time, die next phase of die deportation of Europe’s Jews began. The evidence is that Hitler’s intention was twofold — to establish a Jewish labour force for his grandiose plans in die east, and to hold diem hostage. (The ‘Jewish hostage’ motif appears again late in 1943.*) There was still no word of massacring them. Hidierto Adolf Eichmann, one of Himmler’s leading experts on Jewish affairs, had held regular conferences on die various problems associated widi the ‘Madagascar plan’ — for example, the re-education of professional Jews into the labourers, farmers, and artisans that would be needed in die new island-state. On October 18 however Himmler scribbled on his tele- * In October 1943 Hitler forbade the liquidation of Romes Jews. 452 V: Crusade into Russia phone pad the message he had just dictated to Heydrich: ‘No emigration by Jews to overseas.’ On the fifteenth the big exodus from central Europe to the territories farther east had begun. ‘In daily transports of a thousand people, 20,000 Jews and 34000 gypsies are being sent to the Lodz ghetto between October i 3 and November 8,’ Heydrich confirmed to him on the nineteenth. Five trainloads of Jews were herded out of Berlin, initially into the Lodz ghetto. Albert Speer was pleased, as he wanted their empty apart¬ ments to house the city’s slum clearance families. For the time being Himmler kept the Jews alive for the work they could perform; but farther east the gauleiters had no intention of preserving the unemployable Jews: a letter dated October 23 in SS hies states that Eichmann had now approved Gauleiter Lohse’s proposal that those arriving at Riga should be killed by mobile gas trucks. This initially ad hoc operation gadi- ered momentum. Soon the Jews from the Lodz ghetto and Greiser’s territories were being deported farther east — to the camp at Chelmno. There were 132,000 Jews involved in all, and Chelmno began liquidating them on December 8. It is possible to be specific about the instigators, because on May i, 1942 Greiser himself would mention in a letter to Himmler that the current ‘special treatment’ programme of the hundred thousand Jews in his own gau had been authorised by Himmler ‘with the agreement of’ Heydrich. Hitler was not mentioned. Meanwhile, from mid-November 1941 onward, die Reichsbahn sent trainloads of Jews — rounded up in Viemia, Brunn (Brno), Bremen, and Berlin — direct to Minsk, while others went to Warsaw, Kovno, and Riga. At Kovno and Riga the Jews were shot soon after. At Minsk die German Jews survived at first, but not for long: the Nazis liquidated 35,000 of the native Russian Jews at Minsk to make space for the newcomers, who were housed in a separate ghetto, the ‘Hamburg Ghetto’ — indicating the city that the first consignment had come from. A degree of misplaced smugness pre¬ vailed among the newcomers, according to Hersh Smolar, the Jewish-Communist resistance leader. Oberscharfuhrer Scheidel, the ghet¬ to’s SS overseer, boasted to them: ‘I made room for you by getting rid of 35,000 Russian Jews.’ The original intention was diat unlike the Ostjuden, the German Jews were to start new lives here in die East. Intercepted po¬ lice messages confirm that each train was well provisioned with food, money, and ‘appliances’ (Gerdt) bodi for the journey and for die first weeks after their arrival. Wilhelm Kube, Rosenberg’s general commissioner ofWhite Ruthenia, would record on July 31, 1942, that ten thousand had been liqui- Cold Harvest 453 dated since the twenty-eighth, ‘of which 6,^00 were Russian Jews, old folk, women and children, with die rest unemployable Jews largely sent to Minsk from Vienna, Briinn, Bremen, and Berlin in November last year on the Fuhrer’s order.’ Himmler’s handwritten telephone notes mention one talk with Heydrich on November 17, 1941, about ‘getting rid of the Jews’; twelve days later Heydrich circulated invitations to an inter-ministerial con¬ ference on the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem — delayed until January 1942, it became notorious as the Wannsee Conference. no documentary evidence exists that Hitler was aware of what was be¬ falling the deported Jews. His remarks, noted by Bormann’s adjutant Heinrich Heim late on October 2^, 1941, indicate that he did not: ‘From die rostrum of the Reichstag I prophesied to Jewry that if war could not be avoided, the Jews would disappear from Europe. That race of criminals already had on its conscience the two million dead of the Great War, and now it has hundreds of thousands more. Let nobody tell me that despite diat we cannot park diem in the marshy parts of Russia! Our troops are diere as well, and who worries about diem! By the way — it’s not a bad diing that the panic precedes us that we’re planning to exterminate Jews.’ Hitler added however diat, just as he was postponing the final reckoning widi die turbulent Bishop von Galen until later, ‘widi die Jews too I have found myself remaining inactive.There’s no point adding to one’s difficulties at a time like this.’ Hans Lammers testified later diat diis was undoubtedly Hitler’s policy; Hitler had confirmed diis to him, saying: ‘I don’t want to be bothered widi die Jewish problem again until die war is over.’ In most circumstances Hitler was a pragmatist. It would have been un¬ like him to sanction the use of scarce transport space to move millions of Jews east for no other purpose dian liquidating them diere; nor would he willingly destroy manpower, for which his industry was crying out. Heinrich Heim recalls one exasperated comment by Hitler, told that Allied radio had broadcast an announcement that the Jews were being exterminated: ‘Re¬ ally, die Jews should be grateful to me for wanting nothing more than a bit of hard work from them.’ Be that as it may, after Dr. Goebbels published a singularly heartless leading article in Das Reich in mid-November entitled ‘The Jews are to Blame,’ Hitler, in Berlin for die funeral of Luftwaffe gen¬ eral Ernst Udet, again urged Dr. Goebbels to modify his policy toward die Jews into one diat, as Goebbels noted his words, ‘does not cause us endless difficulties,’ and he instructed the propaganda minister to show greater 454 V: Crusade into Russia humanity toward mixed marriages. Goebbels characteristically began this entry, dated November 22, with the words, ‘On the Jewish problem too the Fiihrer is totally in agreement with my opinions,’ but clearly he was not. It was Heydrich and the fanatical gauleiters in the east who were inter¬ preting with murderous thoroughness Hitler’s brutal decree that the Jews must ‘finally disappear’ from Europe. Himmler’s personal role is ambiva¬ lent. On November 30, 1941 he took his train over to the Wolf’s Lair for a secret ‘bunker’ conference with Hitler, at which the fate of a trainload of 1,03 j Berlin Jews was evidently on the agenda. A page from the Himmler file in the Moscow archives lists the Reichsfiihrer’s appointments for that day. He received SS Sturmbannfuhrer Gunther d’Alquen, a Goebbels jour¬ nalist, from midday to one p.m. (to ‘report on trip to SS Police Division and Death’s-Head Division’); he worked for an hour (‘ gearbeitet ’), received General Dietl for a half-hour conference about an SS brigade on the Murmansk front, and lunched until four p.m. with Hitler (‘Mittagessen b. Fiihrer’). Himmler’s all-important telephone notes, recorded on a different sheet, show that at 1:30 p.m. he spoke by telephone from ‘the bunker’ — that is, Hitler’s bunker — to Heydrich and dictated the explicit order that the Berlin trainload of Jews was not to be liquidated.* The extermination programme had however gained a momentum of its own.The Goebbels article had been taken as a sign from die highest level. In fact, nobody needed any orders or written authority. There could be no clearer proof diat die former Fiihrer-State had become a state widiout a Fiihrer. Five diousand Jews, including die trainload which had left Berlin three days before, die seventh to leave the capital city, had already been plundered of their valuables and shot to deadi in pits at Skirotawa, a few miles outside Riga, by nine a.m. diat same morning, November 30. The different roles of the SS, the army, and Hitler’s headquarters in this massacre are now well documented. The 1,031; German Jews, expelled from Berlin by train, had arrived outside Riga that morning in sub-zero temperatures, and they were shot out of hand even before the trucks loaded widi four diousand Jews from Riga arrived and met die same fate. When * Himmler’s original note on his telephone conversations of November 30, 1941, is printed as a facsimile (with revlevant British code intercepts) opposite. Before this author these notes in the late 1960s, no other historian had troubled to do so. Himmler’s agenda for the same day, November 30, 1941, came into the author’s hands in May 1998. HWLFffM SSSSQJk UfWKi . JfWJL fli IMhAfrlM 3U. SfsT:irJ. tux' n MS 17l£ Pm L £i ■ tzcxsi lur EiYjH ''^T.jn, . i-.'i^Iii rr r' JTiiiil-’ la.,13 #i 1 ■:. (U£H l-TIC lii.Jili'Jf. LilLUl *1 lin^fiM. IWnHiP h>. uni Pol.rsu-fii J&4, I, .tfKI da □ £ L»+;ui Hr 1 Lk**i ] :ii IcJ HJ ^ UEI^ it: >*| , fckirJ-!«r .Jrr Or^z _r.i E£. p ZUfc, SatrLftfl -.‘jJx ra t-Iojt.- , ■_7ji jk hat ..m il^n ,i_1 in uetAuia aiuc *u -r., '*'r. rrJuur^Ttfttx^T, !fc.S_ihi 11 -Eii sLT. LcLuLuLtbai usd Oat'll ijj l «u|^j4jba^„ l 3 O^fpi yt*? i-AH « Ljf> British code intercepts reveal that well pro¬ visioned trainloads of Jews are being sent to the eastjrom German cities. But something goes awry; Jrom Hitler’s bunker Himmler tells Heydrich — see right — to halt one massacre, and the next day (below) he orders the chief SS murderer at Biga to see him (public RECORD OFFICE) ■ 4 tC 4 t [,/n l-\ 'V-f " F. ^11 it iidt 104 Rr 4 J Tit tJT 7j in-.l J7.J- *1 -■■ W.-Hfci-r OuJU, SI Of.. Ill" :■ *■* OTisl 'aiianl ■ ■*.<*■ Mtalw .:al*» -W4 lur latf. .... « u BIT hr, vr IM#«iiM»r«f