Hitler. Part 22

While Laval was in the next room having a smoke, Hitler gave the order to occupy the remainder of France next day 11 November, and the anniversary of the Armistice of 1918. Laval was to be informed next morning. In a letter to Marshal Petain and a proclamation to the French people, Hitler justified the occupation through the necessity to defend the coast of southern France and Corsica against Allied invasion from the new base in North Africa. That morning, German troops occupied southern France without military resistance, in accordance with the plans for 'Operation Anton' which had been laid down in May.

At the Berghof for a few days, Hitler's mask of ebullience slipped a little. Below found him deeply worried about the Anglo-American actions. He was also concerned about supplies difficulties in the Mediterranean, which British submarines had intensified. His trust in the Italians had disappeared. He was sure that they were leaking intelligence about the movement of German supply s.h.i.+ps to the British. The deficiencies of the Luftwaffe also preoccupied him. As regards the eastern front, he was hoping for 'no new surprises', but feared a large-scale Soviet offensive was imminent.

VII.

On 19 November, Zeitzler told Hitler that the Soviet offensive had begun. Immediately, the Soviet forces to the north-west and west of Stalingrad broke through the weak part of the front held by the Romanian 3rd Army. General Ferdinand Heim's 48th Panzer Corps was sent in, but failed to heal the breach. Furious, Hitler dismissed Heim. He later ordered him to be sentenced to death a sentence not carried out only through the intervention of Schmundt. The next day the Red Army's 'Stalingrad Front' broke through the divisions of the Romanian 4th Army south of the city and met up on 22 November with the Soviet forces that had penetrated from north and west. With that, the 220,000 men of the 6th Army were completely encircled.

Hitler had decided to return to the Wolf 's Lair that evening. His train journey back from Berchtesgaden to East Prussia took over twenty hours, owing to repeated lengthy stops to telephone Zeitzler. The new Chief of the General Staff insisted on permission being granted to the 6th Army to fight their way out of Stalingrad. Hitler did not give an inch. Already on 21 November he had sent an order to Paulus: '6th Army to hold, despite danger of temporary encirclement.' On the evening of 22 November, he ordered: 'The army is temporarily encircled by Russian forces. I know the 6th Army and its Commander-in-Chief and know that it will conduct itself bravely in this difficult situation. The 6th Army must know that I am doing everything to help it and to relieve it.' He thought the position could be remedied. Relief could be organized to enable a break-out. But this could not be done overnight. A plan was hastily devised to deploy Colonel-General Hermann Hoth's 4th Panzer Army, south-west of Stalingrad, to prepare an attack to relieve the 6th Army. But it would take about ten days before it could be attempted. In the meantime, Paulus had to hold out, while the troops were supplied by air-lift. It was a major, and highly risky operation. But Goring a.s.sured Hitler that it could be done. The Luftwaffe Chief of Staff Hans Jeschonnek did not contradict him. Zeitzler, however, vehemently disagreed. And from within the Luftwaffe itself, Colonel-General Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen, who normally had Hitler's ear, raised the gravest doubts both on grounds of the weather (with temperatures already plummeting, icy mists, and freezing rain icing up the wings of the planes) and of the numbers of available aircraft. Hitler chose to believe Goring.

Hitler's decision to air-lift supplies to the 6th Army until relief arrived was taken on 23 November. By then he had heard from Paulus that stores of food and equipment were perilously low and certainly insufficient for a defence of the position. Paulus sought permission to attempt to break out. Weichs, Commander-in-Chief of Army Group B, and Chief of the General Staff Zeitzler also fully backed this as the only realistic option. Zeitzler, evidently acting on the basis of a remarkable misunderstanding, actually informed Weichs at 2 a.m. on 24 November that he had 'persuaded the Fuhrer that a break-out was the only possibility of saving the army'. Within four hours the General Staff had to transmit exactly the opposite decision by Hitler: the 6th Army had to stand fast and would be supplied from the air until relief could arrive. The fate of almost quarter of a million men was sealed with this order.

Hitler was not totally isolated in military support for his decision. Field-Marshal von Manstein had arrived that morning, 24 November, at Army Group B headquarters to take command, as ordered by Hitler three days earlier, of a new Army Group Don (which included the trapped 6th Army). The main objective was to sh.o.r.e up the weakened front south and west of Stalingrad, to secure the lines to Army Group A in the Caucasus. He also took command of General Hoth's attempt to relieve the 6th Army. But in contrast to Paulus, Weichs, and Zeitzler, Manstein did not approve an attempt to break out before reinforcements arrived, and took an optimistic view of the chances of an air-lift. Manstein was one of Hitler's most trusted generals. His a.s.sessment can only have strengthened Hitler's own judgement.

By mid-December, Manstein had changed his view diametrically. Richthofen had persuaded him that, in the atrocious weather conditions, an adequate air-lift was impossible. Even if the weather relented, air supplies could not be sustained for any length of time. Manstein now pressed on numerous occasions for a decision to allow the 6th Army to break out. But by then the chances of a break-out had grossly diminished; in fact, once Hoth's relief attempt was held up in heavy fighting some fifty kilometres from Stalingrad and some days later finally forced back, they rapidly became non-existent. On 19 December, Hitler once more rejected all pleas to consider a break-out. Military information in any case now indicated that the 6th Army, greatly weakened and surrounded by mighty Soviet forces, would be able to advance a maximum of thirty kilometres to the south-west not far enough to meet up with Hoth's relief panzer army. On 21 December, Manstein asked Zeitzler for a final decision on whether the 6th Army should attempt to break out as long as it could still link with the 57th Panzer Corps, or whether the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe could guarantee air-supplies over a lengthy period of time. Zeitzler cabled back that Goring was confident that the Luftwaffe could supply the 6th Army, though Jeschonnek was by now of a different opinion. Hitler allowed an inquiry of the 6th Army Command about the distance it could expect to advance towards the south if the other fronts could be held. The reply came that there was fuel for twenty kilometres, and that it would be unable to hold position for long. Hoth's army was still fifty-four kilometres away. Still no decision was taken. 'It's as if the Fuhrer is no longer capable [of taking one],' noted the OKW's war-diarist Helmuth Greiner.

6th Army Command itself described the tactic of a ma.s.s break-out without relief from the outside 'Operation Thunderclap' as 'a catastrophe-solution' ('Katastrophenlosung'). That evening, Hitler dismissed the idea: Paulus only had fuel for a short distance; there was no possibility of breaking out. Two days later, on 23 December, Manstein had to remove units from Hoth's 4th Panzer Army to hold the crumbling left flank of his Army Group. With that, Hoth had to pull back his weakened forces. The attempt to break the siege of Stalingrad had failed. The 6th Army was doomed.

Paulus still sought permission to break out. But by Christmas Eve, Manstein had given up trying to persuade Hitler to give approval to what by this time could only be seen as a move of sheer desperation, without hope of success. The main priority was now to hold the left flank to prevent an even worse catastrophe. This was essential to enable the retreat of Army Group A from the Caucasus. Zeitzler had put the urgency of this retreat to Hitler on the evening of 27 December. Hitler had reluctantly agreed, then later changed his mind. It was too late. Zeitzler had telephoned through Hitler's initial approval. The retreat from the Caucasus was under way. Stalingrad had become a lesser priority.

Preoccupied though he was with the eastern front, and in particular with the now inevitable catastrophe in Stalingrad, Hitler could not afford to neglect what was happening in North Africa. And he was increasingly worried about the resolve of his Italian allies.

Montgomery had forced Rommel's Afrika Corps into headlong retreat, and would drive the German and Italian army out of Libya altogether during January 1943. Encouraged by Goring, Hitler was now convinced that Rommel had lost his nerve. But at least the 50,000 German and 18,000 Italian troops rushed to Tunis in November and December had seriously held up the Allies, preventing their rapid domination of North Africa and ruling out an early a.s.sault on the European continent itself. Even so, Hitler knew the Italians were wobbling. Goring's visit to Rome at the end of November had confirmed that. Their commitment to the war was by now in serious doubt. And when Ciano and Marshal Count Ugo Cavalero, the head of the Italian armed forces, arrived at the Wolf 's Lair on 18 December for three days of talks, it was in the immediate wake of the catastrophic collapse of the Italian 8th Army, overwhelmed during the previous two days by the Soviet offensive on the middle stretches of the Don. When Ciano put Mussolini's case for Germany coming to terms with the Soviet Union in order to put maximum effort into defence against the western powers, Hitler was dismissive. Were he to do that, he replied, he would be forced within a short time to fight a reinvigorated Soviet Union once more. The Italian guests were non-committal towards. .h.i.tler's exhortations to override all civilian considerations in favour of supplies for North Africa.

For the German people, quite especially for the many German families with loved ones in the 6th Army, Christmas 1942 was a depressing festival. The triumphalist propaganda of September and October, suggesting that victory at Stalingrad was just around the corner, had given way in the weeks following the Soviet counter-offensive to little more than ominous silence. Rumours of the encirclement of the 6th Army pa.s.sed on through despairing letters from the soldiers entrapped there swiftly spread. It soon became evident that the rumours were no less than the truth.

A series of letters from senior officers in the 6th Army, describing their plight in graphic detail, were received by Hitler's Luftwaffe Adjutant, Nicolaus von Below. He showed them to Hitler, reading out key pa.s.sages. Hitler listened without comment, except once remarking inscrutably that 'the fate of the 6th Army left for all of us a deep duty in the fight for the freedom of the our people'. What he really thought, no one knew.

After Paulus had rejected a call to surrender, the final Soviet attack to destroy the 6th Army began on 10 January. An emissary to the Wolf 's Lair, seeking permission for Paulus to have freedom of action to bring an end to the carnage, went unheeded by Hitler. On 15 January, he commissioned Field-Marshal Erhard Milch, the Luftwaffe's armaments supremo and mastermind of all its transportation organization, with flying 300 tons of supplies a day to the besieged army. It was pure fantasy though partly based on the inaccurate information that Zeitzler complained about on more than one occasion. Snow and ice on the runways in sub-arctic temperatures often prevented take-offs and landings. In any case, on 22 January the last airstrip in the vicinity of Stalingrad was lost. Supplies could now only be dropped from the air. The remaining frozen, half-starved troops, under constant heavy fire, were often unable to salvage them.

By this time, the German people were already being prepared for the worst. After a long period of silence, the Wehrmacht report on 16 January had spoken in ominous terms of a 'heroically courageous defensive struggle against the enemy attacking from all sides'. The press was instructed to speak of 'the great and stirring heroic sacrifice which the troops encircled at Stalingrad are offering the German nation'.

Hitler had bluntly described the plight of the 6th Army to Goebbels on 22 January. There was scarcely a hope of rescuing the troops. It was a 'heroic drama of German history'. News came in as they talked, outlining the rapidly deteriorating situation. Hitler was said by Goebbels to have been 'deeply shaken'. But he did not consider attaching any blame to himself. He complained bitterly about the Luftwaffe, which had not kept its promises about levels of supplies. Schmundt separately told Goebbels that these had been illusory. Goring's staff had given him the optimistic picture they presumed he wanted, and he had pa.s.sed this on to the Fuhrer. It was a problem that afflicted the entire dictators.h.i.+p up to and including Hitler himself. Only positive messages were acceptable. Pessimism (which usually meant realism) was a sign of failure. Distortions of the truth were built into the communications system of the Third Reich at every level most of all in the top echelons of the regime.

Even more than he felt let down by his own Luftwaffe, Hitler voiced utter contempt for the failure of the German allies to hold the line against the Soviet counter-attack. The Romanians were bad, the Italians worse, and worst of all were the Hungarians. The catastrophe would not have occurred had the entire eastern front been controlled by German units, as he had wanted. The German bakers' and baggage-formations, he fumed, had performed better than the elite Italian, Romanian, and Hungarian divisions. But he did not think the Axis partners were ready to desert. Italy would 'like to dance out of line'; though as long as Mussolini was there, this could be ruled out. The Duce was clever enough to know that it would mean the end of Fascism, and his own end. Romania was essential to Germany for its oil, Hitler said. He had made it plain to the Romanians what would come their way should they attempt anything stupid.

Hitler still hoped at least that is what he told Goebbels that parts of the 6th Army could hold out until they could be relieved. In fact, he knew better than anyone that there was not the slightest chance of it. The 6th Army was on its last legs. On 22 January, the very day that Goebbels had had his talks with Hitler at FHQ, Paulus had requested permission to surrender. Hitler rejected it. He then rejected a similar plea from Manstein to allow the 6th Army's surrender. As a point of honour, he stated, there could be no question of capitulation. In the evening, he telegraphed the 6th Army to say that it had made an historic contribution in the greatest struggle in German history. The army was to stand fast 'to the last soldier and the last bullet'.

Since 23 January the 6th Army had been beginning to break up. It was split in two as Soviet troops cutting through from the south and the west of the city joined forces. By 26 January the division of the 6th Army was complete. One section raised the white flag on the 29th. The same day, Paulus sent Hitler a telegram of congratulations on the tenth anniversary of his take-over of power on the 30th.

The 'celebrations' in Germany for the anniversary of Hitler's day of triumph in January 1933 were in a low key. All bunting was banned. Hitler did not give his usual speech. He remained in his headquarters and left it to Goebbels to read out his proclamation. A single sentence referred to Stalingrad: 'The heroic struggle of our soldiers on the Volga should be a warning for everybody to do the utmost for the struggle for Germany's freedom and the future of our people, and thus in a wider sense for the maintenance of our entire continent.' In Stalingrad itself, the end was approaching. Feelers were put out by the remnants of the 6th Army to the Soviets that very evening, 30 January 1943, for a surrender. Negotiations took place next day. On that day, the announcement was made that Paulus had been promoted to Field-Marshal. He was expected to end the struggle with a hero's death. In the evening, he surrendered. Two days later, on 2 February, the northern sector of the surrounded troops also gave in. The battle of Stalingrad was over. Around 100,000 men from twenty-one German and two Romanian divisions had fallen in battle. A further 113,000 German and Romanian soldiers were taken prisoner. Only a few thousand would survive their captivity.

VIII.

Hitler made no mention of the human tragedy when he met his military leaders at the midday conference on 1 February. What concerned him was the prestige lost through Paulus's surrender. He found it impossible to comprehend, and impossible to forgive. 'Here a man can look on while 5060,000 of his soldiers die and defend themselves bravely to the last. How can he give himself up to the Bolsheviks?' he asked, nearly speechless with anger at what he saw as a betrayal. He could have no respect for an officer who chose captivity to shooting himself. 'How easy it is to do something like that. The pistol that's simple. What sort of cowardice does it take to pull back from it?' 'No one else is being made field-marshal in this war,' he avowed (though he did not keep to his word). He was certain it proved an accurate presumption that, in Soviet hands, Paulus and the other captured generals would within no time be promoting anti-German propaganda. Drawing on horror-stories of tortures in Russian prisons that had circulated in the volkisch volkisch press since the early 1920s, he said: 'They'll lock them up in the rat-cellar, and two days later they'll have them so softened-up that they'll talk straight away ... They'll now come into the Lubljanka, and there they'll be eaten by rats. How can someone be so cowardly? I don't understand it. So many people have to die. Then such a man goes and besmirches in the last minute the heroism of so many others. He could release himself from all misery and enter eternity, national immortality, and he prefers to go to Moscow. How can there be a choice? That's crazy.' press since the early 1920s, he said: 'They'll lock them up in the rat-cellar, and two days later they'll have them so softened-up that they'll talk straight away ... They'll now come into the Lubljanka, and there they'll be eaten by rats. How can someone be so cowardly? I don't understand it. So many people have to die. Then such a man goes and besmirches in the last minute the heroism of so many others. He could release himself from all misery and enter eternity, national immortality, and he prefers to go to Moscow. How can there be a choice? That's crazy.'

For the German people, Paulus's missed chance to gain immortality was scarcely a central concern. Their thoughts, when they heard the dreaded announcement false to the last on 3 February that the officers and soldiers of the 6th Army had fought to the final shot and 'died so that Germany might live', were of the human tragedy and the scale of the military disaster. The 'heroic sacrifice' was no consolation to bereft relatives and friends.

The SD reported that the whole nation was 'deeply shaken' by the fate of the 6th Army. There was deep depression, and widespread anger that Stalingrad had not been evacuated or relieved while there was still time. People asked how such optimistic reports had been possible only a short time earlier. They were critical of the underestimation as in the previous winter of the Soviet forces. Many now thought the war could not be won, and were anxiously contemplating the consequences of defeat.

Hitler had until Stalingrad been largely exempted from whatever criticisms people had of the regime. That now altered sharply. His responsibility for the debacle was evident. People had expected Hitler to give an explanation in his speech on 30 January. His obvious reluctance to speak to the nation only heightened the criticism. The regime's opponents were encouraged. Graffiti chalked on walls attacking Hitler, 'the Stalingrad Murderer', were a sign that underground resistance was not extinct. Appalled at what had happened, a number of army officers and highly-placed civil servants revived conspiratorial plans largely dormant since 19389.

In Munich, a group of students, together with one of their professors, whose idealism and mounting detestation at the criminal inhumanity of the regime had led them the previous year to form the 'White Rose' opposition-group, now openly displayed their attack on Hitler. The medical students Alexander Schmorell and Hans Scholl had formed the initial driving-force, and had soon been joined by Christoph Probst, Sophie Scholl (Hans's sister), Willi Graf, and Kurt Huber, Professor of Philosophy at Munich University, whose critical att.i.tude to the regime had influenced them in lectures and discussions. All the students came from conservative, middle-cla.s.s backgrounds. All were fired by Christian beliefs and humanistic idealism. The horrors on the eastern front, experienced for a short time at first hand when Graf, Schmorell, and Hans Scholl were called up, converted the lofty idealism into an explicit, political message. 'Fellow Students!' ran their final manifesto (composed by Professor Huber), distributed in Munich University on 18 February. 'The nation is deeply shaken by the destruction of the men of Stalingrad. The genial strategy of the World War [I] corporal has senselessly and irresponsibly driven three hundred and thirty thousand German men to death and ruin. Fuhrer, we thank you!'

It was a highly courageous show of defiance. But it was suicidal. Hans and Sophie Scholl were denounced by a porter at the university (who was subsequently applauded by pro-n.a.z.i students for his action), and quickly arrested by the Gestapo. Christoph Probst was picked up soon afterwards. Their trial before the 'People's Court', presided over by Roland Freisler, took place within four days. The verdict the death-sentence was a foregone conclusion. All three were guillotined the same afternoon. Willi Graf, Kurt Huber, and Alexander Schmorell suffered the same fate some months later. Other students on the fringe of the movement were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment.

The regime had been badly stung. But it was not at the point of collapse. It would lash back without scruple and with utter viciousness at the slightest hint of opposition. The level of brutality towards its own population was about to rise sharply as external adversity mounted.

If Hitler felt any personal remorse for Stalingrad or human sympathy for the dead of the 6th Army and their relatives, he did not let it show. Those in his close proximity could detect the signs of nervous strain. He hinted privately at his worry that his health would not stand up to the pressure. His secretaries had to put up with even longer nocturnal monologues as his insomnia developed chronic proportions. The topics were much the same as ever: his youth in Vienna, the 'time of struggle', the history of mankind, the nature of the cosmos. There was no relief from the boredom for his secretaries, who by now knew his outpourings on all topics more or less off by heart. Even the occasional evenings listening to records to break up the tedium had stopped. Hitler, as he had told Goebbels some weeks earlier, now no longer wanted to listen to music. Talking was like a drug for him. He told one of his doctors two years later that he had to talk about more or less anything other than military issues to divert him from sleepless nights pondering troop dispositions and seeing in his mind where every division was at Stalingrad. As Below guessed, the bad news from the North African as well as from the eastern front must have led to serious doubts, in the privacy of his own room in the bunker of his headquarters, about whether the war could still be won. But outwardly, even among his entourage at the Wolf's Lair, he had to sustain the facade of invincibility. No crack could be allowed to show. Hitler remained true to his creed of will and strength. A hint of weakness, in his thinking, was a gift to enemies and subversives. A crevice of demoralization would then swiftly widen to a chasm. The military, and above all else the party, leaders must, therefore, never be allowed a glimmer of any wavering in his own resolution.

There was not a trace of demoralization, depression, or uncertainty when he spoke to the Reichs- and Gauleiter for almost two hours at his headquarters on 7 February. He told them at the very beginning of his address that he believed in victory more than ever. Then he described what Goebbels referred to as 'the catastrophe on the eastern front'. Hitler did not look close to home for the failings. While he said he naturally accepted full responsibility for the events of the winter, he left no doubt where in his view the real fault lay. From the beginning of his political career indeed, from what is known of his earliest remarks on politics he had cast around for scapegoats. The trait was too embedded in his psyche for him to stray from it now that, for the first time, an unmitigated national disaster had to be explained. Addressing the party leaders.h.i.+p, as in his private discussion with Goebbels a fortnight or so earlier, he once more placed the blame for the disaster at Stalingrad squarely on the 'complete failure' of Germany's allies the Romanians, Italians, and Hungarians whose fighting powers met with his 'absolute contempt'.

Not just the search for scapegoats, but the feeling of treachery and betrayal was entrenched in Hitler's thinking. Another strand of his explanation for the disaster at Stalingrad was the prospect of imminent French betrayal, forcing him to retain several divisions, especially SS-divisions, in the west when they were desperately needed in the east. But Hitler had the extraordinary capacity, as his Luftwaffe adjutant Below noted, of turning negative into positive, and convincing his audience of this. A landing by the Allies in France would have been far more dangerous, he claimed, than that which had taken place in North Africa and had been checked through the occupation of Tunis. He saw grounds for optimism, too, in the success of the U-boats, and in Speer's armaments programme enabling better flak defence against air-raids together with full-scale production by the summer of the Tiger tank.

Much of the rest of Hitler's address was on the 'psychology' of war. The crisis was more psychological than material, he declared, and must therefore be overcome by 'psychological means'. It was the party's task to achieve this. The Gauleiter should remember the 'time of struggle'. Radical measures were now needed. Austerity, sacrifice, and the end of any privileges for certain sectors of society were the order of the day. The setbacks but eventual triumph of Frederick the Great the implied comparison with Hitler's own leaders.h.i.+p was plain were invoked. The setbacks now being faced, solely the fault of Germany's allies, even had their own psychological advantages. Propaganda and the party's agitation could awaken people to the fact that they had stark alternatives: becoming master of Europe, or undergoing 'total liquidation and extermination'.

Hitler pointed out one advantage which, he claimed, the Allies possessed: that they were sustained by international Jewry. The consequence, Goebbels reported Hitler as saying, was 'that we have to eliminate Jewry not only from Reich territory but from the whole of Europe'.

Hitler categorically ruled out, as he always had done, any possibility of capitulation. He stated that any collapse of the German Reich was out of the question. But his further remarks betrayed the fact that he was contemplating precisely that. The event of such a collapse 'would represent the ending of his life', he declared. It was plain who, in such an eventuality, the scapegoats would be: the German people themselves. 'Such a collapse could only be caused through the weakness of the people,' Goebbels recorded Hitler as saying. 'But if the German people turned out to be weak, they would deserve nothing else than to be extinguished by a stronger people; then one could have no sympathy for them.' The sentiment would stay with him to the end.

To the party leaders.h.i.+p, the backbone of his support, Hitler could speak in this way. The Gauleiter could be rallied by such rhetoric. They were after all fanatics as. .h.i.tler himself was. They were part of his 'sworn community'. The responsibility of the party for the radicalization of the 'home front' was music to their ears. In any case, whatever private doubts (if any) they harboured, they had no choice but to stick with Hitler. They had burnt their boats with him. He was the sole guarantor of their power.

The German people were less easily placated than Hitler's immediate viceroys. When he spoke in Berlin to the nation for the first time since Stalingrad, on the occasion (which this year, of all years, he could not possibly avoid) of Heroes' Memorial Day on 21 March 1943, his speech gave rise to greater criticism than any Hitler speech since he had become Chancellor.

The speech was one of Hitler's shortest. Perhaps anxiety about a possible air-raid made Hitler race through it in such a rapid and dreary monotone. The routine a.s.sault on Bolshevism and on Jewry as the force behind the 'merciless war' could stir little enthusiasm. Disappointment was profound. Rumours revived about Hitler's poor health along with others that it had been a subst.i.tute who had spoken, while the real Fuhrer was under house-arrest on the Obersalzberg suffering from a mental breakdown after Stalingrad. Extraordinary was the fact that Hitler never even directly mentioned Stalingrad in a ceremony meant to be devoted to the memory of the fallen and at a time when the trauma was undiminished. And his pa.s.sing reference, at the end of his speech, to a figure of 542,000 German dead in the war was presumed to be far too low and received with rank incredulity.

Hitler, as more and more ordinary citizens now recognized, had closed off all avenues that might have brought compromise peace. The earlier victories were increasingly seen in a different light. There was no end in sight. But it now seemed clear to increasing numbers of ordinary citizens that Hitler had taken them into a war which could only end in destruction, defeat, and disaster. There was still far to go, but what was revealed after Stalingrad would become ever clearer: for the vast majority of Germans, the love affair with Hitler was at an end. Only the bitter process of divorce remained.

23.

Beleaguered

I.

'The English claim that the German people have lost their trust in the Fuhrer,' Goebbels declared. It was the opening to the fifth of his ten rhetorical questions towards the end of his two-hour speech proclaiming 'total war' on the evening of 18 February 1943. The hand-picked audience in Berlin's Sportpalast rose as one man to denounce such an outrageous allegation. A chorus of voices arose: 'Fuhrer command, we will obey!' The tumult lasted for what seemed an age. Orchestrating the frenzied mood to perfection, the propaganda maestro eventually broke in to ask: 'Is your trust in the Fuhrer greater, more faithful, and more unshakeable than ever? Is your readiness to follow him in all his ways and to do everything necessary to bring the war to a triumphant end absolute and unrestricted?' Fourteen thousand voices hysterically cried out in unison the answer invited by Goebbels in his bid to quell doubters at home and to relay to the outside world the futility of any hope of inner collapse in Germany. Goebbels ended his morale-boosting peroration which had been interrupted more than 200 times by clapping, cheering, shouts of approbation, or thunderous applause with the words of Theodor Korner, the patriotic poet from the time of Prussia's struggle against Napoleon: 'Now people, arise and storm burst forth!' The great hall erupted. Amid the wild cheering the national anthem 'Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles' and the party's 'Horst-Wessel-Lied' rang out. The spectacle ended with cries of 'the great German Leader Adolf Hitler, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil'.

The speech was intended to demonstrate the complete solidarity of people and leader, conveying Germany's utter determination to carry on, and even intensify, the fight until victory was attained. But the solidarity, despite the impression temporarily left by Goebbels's publicity spectacular, was by this time shrinking fast, the belief in Hitler among the ma.s.s of the population seriously undermined. What Goebbels did, in fact, was to solicit from his audience 'a kind of plebiscitary "Ja" to self-destruction' in a war which Germany could by now neither win nor end through a negotiated peace.

Goebbels's hopes that the speech would bring him Hitler's authorization to concentrate the direction of 'total war' in his own hands were swiftly dashed. The Propaganda Minister had long pressed for practical measures to radicalize the war effort. Hitler, sh.o.r.ed up by Goring, had, however, resisted imposing increased hards.h.i.+p and material sacrifice on the civilian population. He was conscious as ever of the collapse of morale on the home front during the First World War, certain that this had undermined the military effort and paved the way for revolution. Nevertheless, during the Stalingrad crisis he had finally conceded the aim of the complete mobilization of all conceivable labour and resources of the home front, and some initial measures had been introduced.

Goebbels had, however, miscalculated. Direction of the 'total war' effort largely bypa.s.sed him. His ambitions to take control of the home front were ignored. Unable to adjudicate in any rational or systematic fas.h.i.+on in the inevitable conflicts arising from overlapping and sometimes contradictory spheres of competence, but careful as always to protect his own power, Hitler never allowed Goebbels the authority the latter craved on the home front. The 'total war' effort juddered on to partial successes in individual areas. But the absence of strong, consistent leaders.h.i.+p from the top on the home front produced what Goebbels lamented as 'a complete lack of direction in German domestic policy'.

The results of Goebbels's big speech, therefore, in terms of his own ambitions to take control of the 'total war' effort, were disappointing. Goebbels was soon to learn anew that he remained only one player in the power-games to try to secure the backing of Hitler's unqualified authority. He would also rapidly realize again that although the Dictator's own authority was undiminished, his physical absence, preoccupation with military matters, and sporadic, semi-detached involvement in the day-to-day governance of the Reich meant that he was more than ever exposed to the influence of those in his presence 'the entire baggage of court-idiots and irresponsible agitators' incapable of reconciling or overriding the competing interests of his feuding barons. Even had he been willing, therefore, he was completely unable to impose clear strands of authority to combat the already advanced signs of disintegration in government and administration.

For Hitler, the months after Stalingrad intensified the familiar, ingrained character-traits. The facade of often absurd optimism remained largely intact, even among his inner circle. The show of indomitable will continued. The flights of fantasy, detached from reality, took on new dimensions. But the mask slipped from time to time in remarks revealing deep depression and fatalism. It was fleeting recognition of what he already inwardly acknowledged: he had lost the initiative for ever. The recognition invariably brought new torrents of rage, las.h.i.+ng any who might bear the brunt of the blame most of all, as ever, his military leaders. They were all liars, disloyal, opposed to National Socialism, reactionaries, and lacking in any cultural appreciation, he ranted. He yearned to have nothing more to do with them. Ultimately, he would blame the German people themselves, whom he would see as too weak to survive and unworthy of him in the great struggle. As setback followed setback, so the beleaguered Fuhrer resorted ever more readily to the search for ruthless revenge and retaliation, both on his external enemies behind whom, as always, he saw the demonic figure of the Jew and on any within who might dare to show defeatism, let alone 'betray' him. There were no personal influences that might have moderated his fundamental inhumanity. The man who had been idolized by millions was friendless apart from (as he himself commented) Eva Braun and his dog, Blondi.

The war, and the hatreds. .h.i.tler had invested in it, consumed him ever more. Outside the war and his buildings mania, he could rouse little interest. He was by now in many respects an empty, burnt-out sh.e.l.l of an individual. But his resilience and strength of will remained extraordinary. And in the strangely shapeless regime over which he presided, his power was still immense, unrestricted, and uncontested.

As the war that Hitler had unleashed 'came home to the Reich', the Dictator now rapidly ageing, becoming increasingly a physical wreck, and showing p.r.o.nounced signs of intense nervous strain distanced himself ever more from his people. It was as if he could not face them now that there were no more triumphs to report, and he had to take the responsibility for the mounting losses and misery. Even before the Stalingrad calamity, in early November 1942, when his train had by chance stopped directly alongside a troop train returning from the east carrying dejected-looking, battle-weary soldiers, his only reaction had been to ask one of his manservants to pull down the blinds. As Germany's war fortunes plummeted between 1943 and 1945, the former corporal from an earlier great war never sought to experience at first hand the feelings of ordinary soldiers.

The number of big public speeches he delivered const.i.tuted a plain indicator of the widening gulf between Fuhrer and people. In 1940 Hitler had given nine big public addresses, in 1941 seven, in 1942 five. In 1943 he gave only two (apart from a radio broadcast on 10 September). The bulk of his time was spent well away from the government ministries in Berlin's Wilhelmstrae and well away from the German people at his field headquarters, or at his mountain eyrie above Berchtesgaden. He spent no more than a few days in Berlin during the whole of 1943. For some three months in all he was at the Berghof. During the rest of the time he was cooped up in his headquarters in East Prussia, leaving aside a number of short visits to the Ukraine.

Goebbels lamented in July 1943 the way Hitler had cut himself off from the ma.s.ses. These, commented the Propaganda Minister, had provided the acclaim on which his unique authority had rested. He had given them the belief and trust that had been the focal point of the regime's support. But now, in Goebbels's eyes, that relations.h.i.+p was seriously endangered and with it the stability of the regime. He pointed to the large number and critical tone of the letters half of them anonymous arriving at the Propaganda Ministry. 'Above all, the question is again and again raised in these letters,' he went on, 'why the Fuhrer never visits the areas which have suffered from air-raids ... but especially why the Fuhrer does not even speak to the German people to explain the current situation. I regard it as most necessary that the Fuhrer does that, despite his burden through the events in the military sector. One can't neglect the people too long. Ultimately, they are the heart of our war effort. If the people were once to lose their strength of resistance and belief in the German leaders.h.i.+p, then the most serious leaders.h.i.+p crisis which ever faced us would have been created.'

II.

The move to 'total war', introduced during the Stalingrad crisis, provided the final demonstration that no semblance of collective government and rational decision-making within the Reich was compatible with Hitler's personal rule.

The drive to mobilize all remaining reserves from the home front what came to be proclaimed as 'total war' had its roots in the need to plug the huge gap in military manpower left by the high losses suffered by the Wehrmacht during the first months of 'Barbarossa'.

At Christmas 1942, Hitler had given the orders for more radical measures to raise manpower for the front and the armaments industries. Martin Bormann was commissioned to undertake the coordination of the efforts, in collaboration with Head of the Reich Chancellery, Hans-Heinrich Lammers. Goebbels and Fritz Sauckel (Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment) were immediately informed. The aim was to close down all businesses whose trade was in 'luxury' items or was otherwise not necessary for the war effort, and to redeploy the personnel in the army or in arms production. Women were to be subject to conscription for work. Releasing men for front-service was impossible, it was agreed, unless women could replace them in a variety of forms of work. According to the Propaganda Ministry, the number of women working had dropped by some 147,000 since the start of the war. And of 8.6 million women in employment at the end of 1942, only 968,000 worked in armaments.

In the spring of 1942, Hitler had rejected outright the conscription of women to work in war industries. But by early 1943, the labour situation had worsened to the extent that he was compelled to concede that the conscription of women could no longer be avoided. Even the forced labour of, by this time, approaching 6 million foreign workers and prisoners-of-war could not compensate for the 11 million or so men who had been called up to the Wehrmacht. In an unpublished Fuhrer Decree of 13 January 1943, women between seventeen and fifty years old were ordered to report for deployment in the war effort.

Even before Hitler signed the decree, the wrangling over spheres of competence had begun in earnest. In order to retain a firm grip on the 'total war' measures and prevent the dissipation of centralized control, Lammers, backed by the leading civil servants in the Reich Chancellery, Leo Killy and Friedrich Wilhelm Kritzinger, suggested to Hitler that all measures should be taken 'under the authority of the Fuhrer', and that a special body be set up to handle them. The idea was to create a type of small 'war cabinet'. Lammers thought the most appropriate arrangement would be for the heads of the three main executive arms of the Fuhrer's authority the High Command of the Wehrmacht, the Reich Chancellery, and the Party Chancellery to act in close collaboration, meeting frequently, keeping regular contact with Hitler himself, and standing above the particularist interests of individual ministries. Hitler agreed. He evidently saw no possible threat to his position from such an arrangement. On the contrary: the three persons involved Keitel, Lammers, and Bormann could be guaranteed to uphold his own interests at the expense of any possible over-mighty subjects. An indication that this was, indeed, Hitler's thinking was the exclusion of Goring, Goebbels, and Speer from the coordinating body soon known as the 'Committee of Three' (Dreierausschu).

From the very outset, the Committee was only empowered to issue enabling ordinances in accordance with the general guidelines. .h.i.tler had laid down. It was given no autonomy. Hitler reserved, as always, the final decision on anything of significance to himself. The 'Committee of Three' had, in all, eleven formal meetings between January and August 1943, but rapidly ran up against deeply ingrained vested interests both in government ministries and in party regional offices concerned to hold on to their personnel and to their spheres of competence which might have been threatened in any move to centralize and simplify the regime's tangled lines of administration. It had little chance of breaking down the fiefdoms on which n.a.z.i rule rested, and soon revealed that any hopes of bringing order to the Third Reich's endemic administrative chaos were utterly illusory.

Nevertheless, Hitler's mightiest subjects were determined to do everything they could to sabotage a development which they saw as inimical to their own power-positions and from which they had been excluded. The first notions of a challenge to the role of the 'Committee of Three' were intimated during the reception in Goebbels's residence following his 'total war' speech on 18 February. Nine days later, Walther Funk (Reich Minister of Economics), Robert Ley (head of the huge German Labour Front), and Albert Speer, the powerful armaments minister, met again over cognac and tea in Goebbels's stately apartments gloomy now that the light-bulbs had been removed to comply with the new 'total war' demands to see what could be done. Soon afterwards, at the beginning of March, Goebbels travelled from Berlin down to Berchtesgaden to plot with Goring a way of sidelining the Committee. Speer had already sounded him out. In talks lasting five hours at Goring's palatial villa on the Obersalzberg, partly with Speer present, the Reich Marshal, dressed in 'somewhat baroque clothes', was quickly won over.

The Propaganda Minister's plan actually it had initally been suggested by Speer was to revive the Ministerial Council for the Defence of the Reich (established under Goring's chairmans.h.i.+p just before the outbreak of war but long fallen into desuetude), and to give it the members.h.i.+p to turn it into an effective body to rule the Reich, leaving Hitler free to concentrate on the direction of military affairs. He reminded Goring of what threatened if the war were lost: 'Above all as regards the Jewish Question, we are in it so deeply that there is no getting out any longer. And that's good. A Movement and a people that have burnt their boats fight, from experience, with fewer constraints than those that still have a chance of retreat.' The party needed revitalizing. And if Goring could now reactivate the Ministerial Council and put it in the hands of Hitler's most loyal followers, argued Goebbels, the Fuhrer would surely be in agreement. They would choose their moment to put the proposition to Hitler. This would, they knew, not be easy.

The problem, however, especially as Goebbels saw it, went beyond the 'Committee of Three': it was a problem of Hitler himself. To rescue the war effort, stronger leaders.h.i.+p at home was needed. Goebbels remained utterly loyal to the person he had for years regarded as an almost deified father-figure. But he saw in Hitler's leaders.h.i.+p style his absence from Berlin, his detachment from the people, his almost total preoccupation with military matters, and, above all, his increasing reliance on Bormann for everything concerning domestic matters a fundamental weakness in the governance of the Reich.

In his diary, Goebbels complained of a 'leaders.h.i.+p crisis'. He thought the problems among the subordinate leaders were so grave that the Fuhrer ought to sweep through them with an iron broom. The Fuhrer carried, indeed, a crus.h.i.+ng burden through the war. But that was because he would take no decisions to alter the personnel so that he would not need bothering with every trivial matter. Goebbels thought though he expressed it discreetly that Hitler was too weak to do anything. 'When a matter is put to him from the most varied sides,' he wrote, 'the Fuhrer is sometimes somewhat vacillating in his decisions. He also doesn't always react correctly to people. A bit of help is needed there.'

When he had spoken privately in his residence to Speer, Funk, and Ley just over a week after his 'total war' speech, he had gone further. According to Speer's later account, Goebbels had said on that occasion: 'We have not only a "leaders.h.i.+p crisis", but strictly speaking a "Leader crisis"!' The others agreed with him. 'We are sitting here in Berlin. Hitler does not hear what we have to say about the situation. I can't influence him politically,' Goebbels bemoaned. 'I can't even report to him about the most urgent measures in my area. Everything goes through Bormann. Hitler must be persuaded to come more often to Berlin.' Goebbels added that Hitler had lost his grip on domestic politics, which Bormann controlled by conveying the impression to the Fuhrer that he still held the reins tightly in his grasp. With Bormann given the t.i.tle, on 12 April, of 'Secretary of the Fuhrer', the sense, acutely felt by Goebbels, that the Party Chancellery chief was 'managing' Hitler was even further enhanced.

Goebbels and Speer might lament that Hitler's hold on domestic affairs had weakened. But when they saw him in early March, intending to put their proposition to him that Goring should head a revamped Ministerial Council for the Defence of the Reich to direct the home front, it was they who proved weak. Speer had flown to Hitler's headquarters, temporarily moved back to Vinnitsa in the Ukraine, on 5 March to pave the way for a visit by Goebbels. The Propaganda Minister arrived in Vinnitsa three days later. Straight away, Speer urged caution. The continued, almost unhindered, bombing raids on German towns had left Hitler in a foul mood towards Goring and the inadequacies of the Luftwaffe. It was hardly a propitious moment to broach the subject of reinstating the Reich Marshal to the central role in the direction of domestic affairs. Goebbels thought nonetheless that they had to make the attempt.

At their first meeting, over lunch, Hitler, looking tired but otherwise well, and more lively than of late, launched as usual into a bitter onslaught on the generals who, he claimed, were cheating him wherever they could do so. He carried on in the same vein during a private four-hour discussion alone with Goebbels that afternoon. He was furious at Goring, and at the entire Luftwaffe leaders.h.i.+p with the exception of the Chief of the General Staff Hans Jeschonnek. Characteristically, Hitler thought the best way of preventing German cities being reduced to heaps of rubble was by responding with 'terror from our side'. Despite his insistence to Speer that they had to go ahead with their proposal, Goebbels evidently concluded during his discussion with Hitler that it would be fruitless to do so. 'In view of the general mood,' he noted, 'I regard it as inopportune to put to the Fuhrer the question of Goring's political leaders.h.i.+p; it's at present an unsuitable moment. We must defer the business until somewhat later.' Any hope of raising the matter, even obliquely, when Goebbels and Speer sat with Hitler by the fireside until late in the night was dashed when news came in of a heavy air-raid on Nuremberg. Hitler fell into a towering rage about Goring and the Luftwaffe leaders.h.i.+p. Speer and Goebbels, calming Hitler only with difficulty, postponed their plans. They were never resurrected.

Goebbels and Speer had failed at the first hurdle. Face to face with Hitler, they felt unable to confront him. Hitler's fury over Goring was enough to veto even the prospect of any rational discussion about restructuring Reich government.

Goebbels was still talking as late as September of finding enough support to block Lammers's attempt (as the Propaganda Minister saw it) to arrogate authority to himself on the back of a Fuhrer decree empowering him to review any disputes between ministers and decide whether they should be taken to Hitler. But by that time, there was scant need of intrigue to stymie the 'Committee of Three'. It had already atrophied into insignificance.

The failed experiment of the 'Committee of Three' showed conclusively that, however weak their structures, all forms of collective government were doomed by the need to protect the arbitrary 'will of the Fuhrer'. But it was increasingly impossible for this 'will' to be exercised in ways conducive to the functioning of a modern state, let alone one operating under the crisis conditions of a major war. As a system of government, Hitler's dictators.h.i.+p had no future.

III.

Matters at home were far from Hitler's primary concern in the spring and summer of 1943. He was, in fact, almost solely preoccupied with the course of the war. The strain of this had left its mark on him. Guderian, back in favour after a long absence, was struck at their first meeting, on 20 February 1943, by the change in Hitler's physical appearance since the last time he had seen him, back in mid-December 1941: 'In the intervening fourteen months he had aged greatly. His manner was less a.s.sured than it had been and his speech was hesitant; his left hand trembled.'

When President Roosevelt, at the end of his meeting to discuss war strategy with Churchill and the Combined Chiefs of Staff at Casablanca in French Morocco between 14 and 24 January 1943, had to the British Prime Minister's surprise announced at a concluding press conference that the Allies would impose 'unconditional surrender' on their enemies, it had matched Hitler's Valhalla mentality entirely. For him, the demand altered nothing. It merely added further confirmation that his uncompromising stance was right. As he told his party leaders in early February, he felt liberated as a result from any attempts to persuade him to look for a negotiated peace settlement. It had become, as he had always a.s.serted it would, a clear matter of victory or destruction. Few, even of his closest followers, as Goebbels admitted, could still inwardly believe in the former. But compromises were ruled out. The road to destruction was opening up ever more plainly. For Hitler, closing off escape routes had distinct advantages. Fear of destruction was a strong motivator.

Some of Hitler's leading generals, most notably Manstein, had tried to persuade him immediately after Stalingrad that he should, if not give up the command of the army, at least appoint a supremo on the eastern front who had his trust. Hitler was having none of it. After the bitter conflicts over the previous months, he preferred the compliancy of a Keitel to the sharply couched counter-arguments of a Manstein. It meant a further weakening of Germany's military potential.

Manstein's push to retake Kharkhov and reach the Donets by mid-March had been a much-needed success. Over 50,000 Soviet troops had perished. It had suggested yet again to Hitler that Stalin's reserves must be drying up. Immediately, he wanted to go on the offensive. It was important to strike while the Red Army was still smarting from the reversal at Kharkhov. It was also necessary to send a signal to the German population, deeply embittered by Stalingrad, and to the Reich's allies, that any doubts in final victory were wholly misplaced.

At this point, the split in military planning between the army's General Staff, directly responsible for the eastern front, and the operations branch of Wehrmacht High Command (in charge of all other theatres) surfaced once more. The planners in the High Command of the Wehrmacht favoured a defensive ploy on all fronts to allow the gradual build-up and mobilization of resources throughout Europe for a later grand offensive. The Army High Command thought differently. It wanted a limited but early offensive. Chief of the Army General Staff Kurt Zeitzler had devised an operation involving the envelopment and destruction of a large number of Soviet divisions on a big salient west of Kursk, an important rail junction some 300 miles south of Moscow. Five Soviet armies were located within the westward bulge in the front, around 120 miles wide and 90 miles deep, left from the winter campaign of 19423. If victorious, the operation would gravely weaken the Soviet offensive potential.

There was no question which strategy would appeal to Hitler. He swiftly supported the army's plan for a decisive strike on a greatly shortened front about 150 kilometres compared with 2,000 kilometres in the 'Barbarossa' invasion of 1941. The limited scope of the operation reflected the reduction in German ambitions in the east since June 1941. Even so, a tactical victory would have been of great importance. It would, in all likelihood, have eliminated the prospect of any further Soviet offensive in 1943, thereby freeing German troops for redeployment in the increasingly threatening Mediterranean theatre. The order for what was to become 'Operation Citadel', issued on 13 March, foresaw a pincer attack by part of Manstein's Army Group from the south and Kluge's from the north, enveloping the Soviet troops in the bulge. In his confirmation order of 15 April, Hitler declared: 'This attack is of decisive importance. It must be a quick and conclusive success. It must give us the initiative for this spring and summer ... Every officer, every soldier must be convinced of the decisive importance of this attack. The victory of Kursk must s.h.i.+ne like a beacon to the world.' It was to do so. But hardly as. .h.i.tler had imagined.

'Citadel' was scheduled to begin in mid-May. As in the previous two years, however, significant delays set in which were damaging to the operation's success. These were not directly of Hitler's making. But they did again reveal the serious problems in the military command-structure and process of decision-making. They arose from disputes about timing among the leading generals involved. On 4 May, Hitler met them in Munich to discuss 'Citadel'. Manstein and Kluge wanted to press ahead as soon as possible. This was the only chance of imposing serious losses on the enemy. Otherwise, they argued, it was better to call off the operation altogether. They were seriously worried about losing the advantage of surprise and about the build-up of Soviet forces should there be any postponement. The heavy defeat at Stalingrad and weakness of the southern flank deterred other generals from wis.h.i.+ng to undertake a new large-scale offensive so quickly. Colonel-General Walter Model known as an especially tough and capable commander, a reputation which had helped make him one of Hitler's favourites, and detailed to lead the 9th Army's a.s.sault from the north recommended a delay until reinforcements were available. He picked up on the belief of Zeitzler, also high in favour with Hitler, that the heavy Tiger tank, just rolling off the production lines, and the new, lighter, Panther would provide Germany with the decisive breakthrough necessary to regaining the initiative. Hitler had great hopes of both tanks. He gave Model his backing.

On 4 May, he postponed 'Citadel' until mid-June. It was then further postponed, eventually getting under way only in early July. Even by that date, fewer Tigers and Panthers were available than had been envisaged. And the Soviets, tipped off by British intelligence and by a source within the Wehrmacht High Command, had built up their defences and were ready and waiting.

Meanwhile, the situation in North Africa was giving grounds for the gravest concern. Some of Hitler's closest military advisers, Jodl among them, had been quietly resigned to the complete loss of North Africa as early as December 1942. Hitler himself had hinted at one point that he was contemplating the evacuation of German troops. But no action had followed. He was much influenced by the views of the Commander-in-Chief South, Field-Marshal Kesselring, one of nature's optimists and, like most in high places in the Third Reich, compelled in any case to exude optimism whatever his true sentiments and however bleak the situation was in reality. Hitler needed optimists to pander to him yet another form of 'working towards the Fuhrer'. In the military arena, this reinforced the chances of serious strategic blunders.

In March, buoyed by Manstein's success at Kharkhov, Hitler had declared that the holding of Tunis would be decisive for the outcome of the war. It was, therefore, a top priority. With the refusal to contemplate any withdrawal, the next military disaster beckoned. When Below flew south at the end of the month to view the North African front and report back to Hitler, even Kesselring was unable to hide the fact that Tunis could not be held. Colonel-General Hans-Jurgen von Arnim, who had taken over the North African command from the exhausted and dispirited Rommel, was of the same opinion. Kesselring's staff were even more pessimistic: they saw no chance of successfully fending off an Allied crossing from Tunis to Sicily once which they regarded as a certainty North Africa had fallen. When Below reported back, Hitler said little. It seemed to his Luftwaffe adjutant that he had already written off North Africa and was inwardly preparing himself for the eventual defection of his Italian partners to the enemy.

In early April, Hitler had spent the best part of four days at the restored baroque palace of Klessheim, near Salzburg, shoring up Mussolini's battered morale half urging, half browbeating the Duce to keep up the fight, knowing how weakened he would be through the ma.s.sive blow soon to descend in North Africa. Worn down by the strain of war and depression, Mussolini, stepping down from his train with a.s.sistance, looked a 'broken old man' to Hitler. The Duce also made a subdued impression on interpreter Dr Paul Schmidt as he pleaded forlornly for a compromise peace in the east in order to bolster defences in the west, ruling out the possibility of defeating the USSR. Dismissing such a notion out of hand, Hitler reminded Mussolini of the threat that the fall of Tunis would pose for Fascism in Italy. He left him with the impression 'that there can be no other salvation for him than to achieve victory with us or to die'. He exhorted him to do the utmost to use the Italian navy to provide supplies for the forces there. The remainder of the visit consisted largely of monologues by Hitler including long digressions about Prussian history aimed at stiffening Mussolini's resistance. Hitler was subsequently satisfied that this had been achieved.

The talks with Mussolini amounted to one of a series of meetings with his allies that Hitler conducted during April, while staying at the Berghof. King Boris of Bulgaria, Marshal Antonescu of Romania, Admiral Horthy of Hungary, Prime Minister Vidkun Quisling of Norway, President Tiso of Slovakia, 'Poglavnik' (Leader) Ante Pavelic of Croatia, and Prime Minister Pierre Laval from Vichy France all visited the Berghof or Klessheim by the end of the month. In each case, the purpose was to stiffen resolve partly by cajoling, partly by scarcely veiled threats and to keep faint-hearts or waverers tied to the Axis cause.

Hitler let Antonescu know that he was aware of tentative approaches made by Romanian ministers to the Allies. He posed, as usual, a stark choice of outright victory or 'complete destruction' in a fight to the end for 'living s.p.a.ce' in the east. Part of Hitler's implicit argument, increasingly, in attempting to prevent support from seeping away was to play on complicity in the persecution of the Jews. His own paranoia about the responsibility of the Jews for the war and all its evils easily led into the suggestive threat that boats had been burned, there was no way out, and retribution in the event of a lost war would be terrible. The hint of this was implicit in his disapproval of Antonescu's treatment of the Jews as too mild, declaring that the more radical the measures the better it was when tackling the Jews.

In his meetings with Horthy at Klessheim on 1617 April, Hitler was more brusque. Horthy was berated for feelers to the enemy secretly put out by prominent Hungarian sources but tapped by German intelligence. He was told that 'Germany and its allies were in the same boat on a stormy sea. It was obvious that in this situation anyone wanting to get off would drown immediately.' As he had done with Antonescu, though in far harsher terms, Hitler criticized what he saw as an over-mild policy towards the Jews. Horthy had mentioned that, despite tough measures, criminality and the black market were still flouris.h.i.+ng in Hungary. Hitler replied that the Jews were to blame. Horthy asked what he was expected to do with the Jews. He had taken away their economic livelihood; he could scarcely have them all killed. Ribbentrop intervened at this point to say that the Jews must be 'annihilated' or locked up in concentration camps. There was no other way. Hitler regaled Horthy with statistics aimed at showing the strength of former Jewish influence in Germany. He compared the 'German' city of Nuremberg with the neighbouring 'Jewish' t