Hitler. Part 23

He thought that the Allied landing would come in Sardinia. Sicily was in his view secure enough, and could be held. He thought the Italians more likely to give in bit by bit in deals with the enemy than to capitulate outright. His confidence in Mussolini had finally evaporated. It would be different, he thought, were the Duce still young and fit. But he was old and worn out. The royal family could not be trusted an inch. And he added a characteristic last reflection the Jews had not been done away with in Italy, whereas in Germany (as Goebbels summarized) 'we can be very glad that we have followed a radical policy. There are no Jews behind us who could inherit from us.'

As the war had turned remorselessly against Germany, the beleaguered Fuhrer had reverted ever more to his obsession with Jewish responsibility for the conflagration. In his Manichean world-view, the fight to the finish between the forces of good and evil the aryan race and the Jews was reaching its climax. There could be no relenting in the struggle to wipe out Jewry.

Little over a month earlier, Hitler had talked at length, prompted by Goebbels, about the 'Jewish Question'. The Propaganda Minister thought it one of the most interesting discussions he had ever had with the Fuhrer. Goebbels had being re-reading The Protocols of the Elders of Zion The Protocols of the Elders of Zion the crude Russian forgery purporting to outline a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world with an eye on its use in current propaganda. He raised the matter over lunch. Hitler was certain of the 'absolute authenticity' of the the crude Russian forgery purporting to outline a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world with an eye on its use in current propaganda. He raised the matter over lunch. Hitler was certain of the 'absolute authenticity' of the Protocols Protocols. The Jews, he thought, were not working to a fixed programme; they were following, as always, their 'racial instinct'. The Jews were the same all over the world, Goebbels noted him as saying, whether in the ghettos of the east 'or in the bank palaces of the City [of London] or Wall Street', and would instinctively follow the same aims and use the same methods without the need to work them out together. The question could well be posed, he went on (according to Goebbels's summary of his comments), as to why there were Jews at all. It was the same question again the familiar insect a.n.a.logy as why there were Colorado beetles. His most basic belief life as struggle provided, as always, his answer. 'Nature is ruled by the law of struggle. There will always be parasitic forms of existence to accelerate the struggle and intensify the process of selection between the strong and the weak ... In nature, life always works immediately against parasites; in the existence of peoples that is not exclusively the case. From that results the Jewish danger. So there is nothing else open to modern peoples than to exterminate the Jews.'

The Jews would use all means to defend themselves against this 'gradual process of annihilation'. One of its methods was war. It was the same warped vision embodied in Hitler's 'prophecy': Jews unleas.h.i.+ng war, but bringing about their own destruction in the process. World Jewry, in Hitler's view, was on the verge of a historic downfall. This would take time. He was presumably alluding to Jews out of German reach, especially in the USA, when he commented that some decades would be needed 'to cast them out of their power. That is our historic mission, which can not be held up, but only accelerated, by the war. World Jewry thinks it is on the verge of a world victory. This world victory will not come. Instead there will be a world downfall. The peoples who have earliest recognized and fought the Jew will instead accede to world domination.'

Four days after this conversation, on 16 May, SS-Brigadefuhrer Jurgen Stroop telexed the news: 'The Jewish quarter of Warsaw is no more! The grand operation terminated at 20.15 hours when the Warsaw synagogue was blown up ... The total number of Jews apprehended and destroyed, according to record, is 56,065 ...' A force of around 3,000 men, the vast majority from the SS, had used a tank, armoured vehicles, heavy machine-guns, and artillery to blow up and set fire to buildings which the Jews were fiercely defending and to combat the courageous resistance put up by the ghetto's inhabitants, armed with little more than pistols, grenades, and Molotov c.o.c.ktails. Hitler's long-standing readiness to link Jews with subversive or partisan actions made him all the keener to hasten their destruction. After Himmler had discussed the matter with him on 19 June, he noted that 'the Fuhrer declared, after my report, that the evacuation of the Jews, despite the unrest that would thereby still arise in the next 3 to 4 months, was to be radically carried out and had to be seen through'.

Such discussions were always private. Hitler still did not speak of the fate of the Jews, except in the most generalized fas.h.i.+on, even among his inner circle. It was a topic which all in his company knew to avoid. To think of criticizing the treatment of the Jews was, of course, anathema. The only time the issue was raised occurred unexpectedly during the two-day visit to the Berghof in late June of Baldur von Schirach, Gauleiter of Vienna, and his wife, Henriette. The daughter of his photographer Heinrich Hoffmann, Henriette had known Hitler since she was a child. She thought she could speak openly to him. Her husband had, however, fallen from favour somewhat, partly following Hitler's disapproval of the modern paintings on show in an art exhibition which Schirach had staged in Vienna earlier in the year. Henriette told Baldur on the way to Berchtesgaden that she wanted to let Hitler know what she had witnessed recently in Amsterdam, where she had seen a group of Jewish women brutally herded together and deported. An SS man had offered her valuables taken from the Jews at a knock-down price. Her husband told her not to mention it. Hitler's reactions were unpredictable. And a typical response at the time in any case she could not change anything.

Already during the first day of their visit, 23 June, Schirach had managed to prompt an angry riposte from Hitler with a suggestion that a different policy in the Ukraine might have paid dividends. Next afternoon, Hitler was in an irritable mood during the statutory visit to the Tea House. The atmosphere was icy. It remained tense in the evening when they gathered around the fire in the hall of the Berghof. Henriette was sitting next to Hitler, nervously rubbing her hands, speaking quietly. All at once, Hitler jumped up, marched up and down the room, and fumed: 'That's all I need, you coming to me with this sentimental twaddle. What concern are these Jewish women to you?' The other guests did not know where to look. There was a protracted, embarra.s.sed silence. The logs could be heard crackling in the fireplace.

When Goebbels arrived, he turned the scene to his advantage by playing on Hitler's aversion to Vienna. Hitler rounded on the hapless Schirach, praising the achievements of Berlin Goebbels's domain, of course and castigating his Gauleiter's work in Vienna. Beside himself with anger, Hitler said it was a mistake ever to have sent Schirach to Vienna at all, or to have taken the Viennese into the Reich. Schirach offered to resign. 'That's not for you to decide. You are staying where you are,' was. .h.i.tler's response. By then it was four in the morning. Bormann let it be known to the Schirachs that it would be best if they left. They did so without saying their goodbyes, and in high disgrace.

The week before the Schirach incident, Hitler had finally decided to press ahead with the 'Citadel' offensive. His misgivings can only have been increased by Guderian's reports that the Panther still had major weaknesses and was not ready for front-line action. And in the middle of the month, he was presented with the OKW's recommendation that 'Citadel' should be cancelled. It was now running so late that there was an increasing chance that it would clash with the expected Allied offensive in the Mediterranean. Jodl, just back from leave, agreed that it was dangerous and foolhardy to commit troops to the east in the interests of, at best, a limited success when the chief danger at that time lay elsewhere. Again, the split between the OKW and army leaders.h.i.+p came into play. Zeitzler objected to what he regarded as interference. Guderian suspected that Zeitzler's influence was decisive in persuading Hitler to go ahead. At any rate, Hitler rejected the advice of the Wehrmacht's Operations Staff. The opening of the offensive was scheduled for 3 July, then postponed one last time for two more days.

At the end of June, Hitler returned to the Wolf's Lair for the beginning of 'Citadel'. On 1 July, he addressed his commanders. The decision to go ahead was determined, he stated, by the need to forestall a Soviet offensive later in the year. A military success would also have a salutary effect on Axis partners, and on morale at home. Four days later, the last German offensive in the east was finally launched. It was the beginning of a disastrous month.

IV.

Bombardment from Soviet heavy artillery just before the offensive began gave a clear indication that the Red Army had been alerted to the timing of 'Citadel'. At least 2,700 Soviet tanks had been brought in to defend Kursk. They faced a similar number of German tanks. The mightiest tank battle in history raged for over a week. At first both Model and Manstein made good inroads, if with heavy losses. The Luftwaffe also had initial successes. But Guderian proved correct in his warnings of the deficiencies of the Panther. Most broke down. Few remained in action after a week. Manstein's drive was hindered rather than helped by the tank in which such high hopes had been placed. The ninety Porsche Tigers deployed by Model also revealed major battlefield weaknesses. They had no machine-guns, so were ill-equipped for close-range fighting. They were unable, therefore, to neutralize the enemy. In the middle of the month, the Soviets launched their own offensive against the German bulge around Orel to the north of the 'Citadel' battlefields, effectively to Model's rear. Though Manstein was still advancing, the northern part of the pincer was now endangered.

On 13 July, Hitler summoned Manstein and Kluge, the two Army Group Commanders, to a.s.sess the situation. Manstein was for continuing. Kluge stated that Model's army could not carry on. Reluctantly, Hitler brought 'Citadel' to a premature end. The Soviet losses were greater. But 'Citadel' had signally failed in its objectives.

Equally dire events were unfolding in the Mediterranean. Overnight from 910 July, reports came in of an armada of s.h.i.+ps carrying large Allied a.s.sault forces from North Africa to Sicily. A landing had been expected though in Sardinia, not Sicily. The precise timing caught Hitler unawares. The German troops in Sicily only two divisions were too few in number to hold the entire coast. Defence relied heavily upon Italian forces. Allied air superiority was soon all too evident. And alarming news came in of Italian soldiers casting away their weapons and fleeing. Though heavy fighting continued throughout July, within two days it was plain that the Allied landing had been successful. On 19 July, Hitler flew to see Mussolini in Feltre, near Belluno, in northern Italy. It was to prove the last time he set foot on Italian soil.

The visit was aimed at bolstering the Duce's faltering morale and preventing Italy agreeing a separate peace. Hitler's generals thought the visit had been a wasted effort. Hitler himself convinced still of the power of his own rhetoric probably thought he had once more succeeded in stirring Mussolini's fighting spirits. He was soon disabused. On the very evening after the Feltre talks, he was shown an intelligence report sent on by Himmler that a coup d'etat coup d'etat was being planned to replace Mussolini by Marshal Pietro Badoglio. was being planned to replace Mussolini by Marshal Pietro Badoglio.

During the course of Sat.u.r.day, 24 July, reports started to come in that the Fascist Grand Council had been summoned for the first time since early in the war. The Council's lengthy deliberations culminated in an astonis.h.i.+ng vote to request the King to seek a policy more capable of saving Italy from destruction. Later that morning, the King told Mussolini that, since the war appeared lost and army morale was collapsing, Marshal Badoglio would take over his offices as prime minister. As a stunned Duce left the royal chambers, he was bundled into a waiting ambulance and driven off at speed to house-arrest on the Mediterranean island of Ponza.

By the time of the evening military briefing in the Fuhrer Headquarters, the sensational news from Italy had broken, though there was still not complete clarity. Almost the entire session was taken up with the implications. Since Italy had not pulled out of the war, plans to occupy the country in such an event code-named 'Alarich' could not be put into operation. But in a highly agitated mood, Hitler demanded immediate action to occupy Rome and depose the new regime. He denounced what had taken place as 'naked treachery', describing Badoglio as 'our grimmest enemy'. He still had belief in Mussolini so long as he was propped up by German arms. Presuming the Duce still at liberty, he wanted him brought straight away to Germany. He was confident that in that event the situation could still be remedied. He fumed that he would send troops to Rome the next day to arrest the 'rabble' the entire government, the King, the Crown Prince, Badoglio, the 'whole bunch'. In two or three days there would then be another coup. He had Goring 'ice-cold in the most serious crises', as he had repeatedly stated at midday, the Reich Marshal's failings as head of the Luftwaffe temporarily forgotten telephoned and told him to come as quickly as he could to the Wolf 's Lair. Rommel was located in Salonika and summoned to present himself without delay. Hitler intended to put him in overall command in Italy. He wanted Himmler contacted. Goebbels, too, was telephoned and told to leave immediately for East Prussia. The situation, Goebbels acknowledged, was 'extraordinarily critical'. Ribbentrop, still not recovered from a chest infection, was ordered up from Fuschl, his residence in the Salzkammergut near Salzburg. Soon after midnight, Hitler met his military leaders for the third time in little over twelve hours, frantically improvising details for the evacuation from Sicily and the planned occupation of Rome, and for the seizure of the members of the new Italian government.

At ten o'clock that morning, 26 July, Hitler met Goebbels and Goring, just arrived in FHQ. Ribbentrop joined them half an hour later. Hitler gave his interpretation of the situation. He presumed that Mussolini had been forced out of power. Whether he was still alive was not known, but he would certainly be unfree. Hitler saw the forces of Italian freemasonry banned by Mussolini but still at work behind the scenes behind the plot. Ultimately, he claimed, the coup was directed at Germany since Badoglio would certainly come to an arrangement with the British and Americans to take Italy out of the war. The British would now look for the best moment for a landing in Italy perhaps in Genoa in order to cut off German troops in the south. Military precautions to antic.i.p.ate such a move had to be taken.

Hitler explained, too, his intention of transferring a parachute division, currently based in southern France, to Rome as part of the move to occupy the city. The King, Badoglio, and the members of the new government would be arrested and flown to Germany. Once they were in German hands, things would be different. Possibly Roberto Farinacci, the radical Fascist boss of Cremona and former Party Secretary, who had escaped arrest by fleeing to the German Emba.s.sy and was now en route en route to FHQ, could be made head of a puppet government if Mussolini himself could not be rescued. Hitler saw the Vatican, too, as deeply implicated in the plot to oust Mussolini. In the military briefing just after midnight he had talked wildly of occupying the Vatican and 'getting out the whole lot of swine'. Goebbels and Ribbentrop dissuaded him from such rash action, certain to have damaging international repercussions. Hitler still pressed for rapid action to capture the new Italian government. Rommel, who by then had also arrived in FHQ, opposed the improvised, high-risk, panicky response. He favoured a carefully prepared action; but that would probably take some eight days to put into place. The meeting ended with the way through the crisis still unclear. to FHQ, could be made head of a puppet government if Mussolini himself could not be rescued. Hitler saw the Vatican, too, as deeply implicated in the plot to oust Mussolini. In the military briefing just after midnight he had talked wildly of occupying the Vatican and 'getting out the whole lot of swine'. Goebbels and Ribbentrop dissuaded him from such rash action, certain to have damaging international repercussions. Hitler still pressed for rapid action to capture the new Italian government. Rommel, who by then had also arrived in FHQ, opposed the improvised, high-risk, panicky response. He favoured a carefully prepared action; but that would probably take some eight days to put into place. The meeting ended with the way through the crisis still unclear.

The midday military conference was again taken up with the issue of moving troops to Italy to secure above all the north of the country, and with the hastily devised scheme to capture the Badoglio government. Field-Marshal von Kluge, who had flown in from Army Group Centre desperately trying to hold the Soviet offensive in the Orel bulge, to the north of Kursk was abruptly told of the implications of the events in Italy for the eastern front. Hitler said he needed the crack Waffen-SS divisions currently a.s.signed to Manstein in the south of the eastern front to be transferred immediately to Italy. That meant Kluge giving up some of his forces to reinforce Manstein's weakened front. Kluge forcefully pointed out, though to no avail, that this would make defence in the Orel region impossible. But the positions on the Dnieper being prepared for an orderly retreat by his troops to be taken up before winter were far from ready. What he was being asked to do, protested Kluge, was to undertake 'an absolutely overhasty evacuation'. 'Even so, Herr Feldmarshall: we are not master here of our own decisions,' rejoined Hitler. Kluge was left with no choice.

Meanwhile, Farinacci had arrived. His description of what had happened and his criticism of Mussolini did not endear him to Hitler. Any idea of using him as the figurehead of a German-controlled regime was discarded. Hitler spoke individually to his leading henchmen before, in need of a rest after a hectic twenty-four hours, retiring to his rooms to eat alone. He returned for a lengthy conference that evening, attended by thirty-five persons. But the matter was taken no further. Within a few days, he was forced to concede that any notion of occupying Rome and sending in a raiding party to take the members of the Badoglio government and the Italian royal family captive was both precipitate and wholly impracticable. The plans were called off. Hitler's attention focused now on discovering the whereabouts of the Duce and bringing him into German hands as soon as possible.

With the Italian crisis still at its height, the disastrous month of July drew to a close amid the heaviest air-raids to date. Between 24 and 30 July, the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command, using the release of aluminium strips to blind German radar, unleashed 'Operation Gomorrha' a series of devastating raids on Hamburg, outdoing in death and destruction anything previously experienced in the air-war. Waves of incendiaries whipped up horrific fire-storms, turning the city into a raging inferno, consuming everything and everybody in their path. People suffocated in their thousands in cellars or were burnt to cinders on the streets. An estimated 30,000 people lost their lives; over half a million were left homeless; twenty-four hospitals, fifty-eight churches, and 277 schools lay in ruins; over 50 per cent of the city was completely gutted. As usual, Hitler revealed no sense of remorse at any human losses. He was chiefly concerned about the psychological impact. When he was given news that fifty German planes had mined the Humber estuary, he exploded: 'You can't tell the German people in this situation: that's mined; 50 planes have laid mines! That has no effect at all ... You only break terror through terror! We have to have counter-attacks. Everything else is rubbish.'

Hitler mistook the mood of a people with whom he had lost touch. What they wanted, in their vast majority, was less the retaliation that was. .h.i.tler's only thought than proper defence against the terror from the skies and above all else an end to the war that was costing them their homes and their lives. But Hitler remained, as he had been throughout the agony of Hamburg, more taken up with events in Italy.

Though he had still rejected any evacuation of Sicily, insistent that the enemy should not set foot on the Italian mainland, Kesselring had taken steps to prepare the ground for what proved a brilliantly planned evacuation on the night of 11 12 August, catching the Allies by surprise and allowing 40,000 German and 62,000 Italian troops, with their equipment, to escape to safety. But as August drew on, suspicions mounted that it would not be long before the Italians defected. And at the end of the month, directives for action in the event of an Italian defection, in the drawer for months and now refas.h.i.+oned under the code-name 'Axis', were issued.

Under the pressure of the events in Italy, Hitler had finally made one overdue move at home. For months, egged on by Goebbels, he had expressed his dissatisfaction with the Reich Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, whom he contemptuously regarded as 'old and worn-out'. But he could think of no alternative. He continued to defer any decision until the toppling of Mussolini concentrated his mind, persuading him that the time had come to stiffen the grip on the home front and eliminate any prospect of poor morale turning into subversive action. The man he could depend upon to do this was close at hand.

On 20 August he appointed Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler as the new Reich Minister of the Interior. The appointment amounted to Hitler's tacit recognition that his authority at home now rested on police repression, not the adulation of the ma.s.ses he had once enjoyed.

On 3 September the first British troops crossed the Straits of Messina to Italy, landing at Reggio di Calabria. That same day, the Italians secretly signed their armistice with the Allies which became public knowledge five days later.

On 8 September Hitler had flown for the second time within a fortnight to Army Group South's headquarters at Zaporozhye, on the lower Dnieper north of the Sea of Azov, to confer with Manstein about the increasingly critical situation on the southern flank of the eastern front. It was to be the last time he set foot on territory captured from the Soviet Union. A few days earlier, following Soviet breakthroughs, he had been forced to authorize withdrawal from the Donets Basin so important for its rich coal deposits and from the Kuban bridgehead over the Straits of Kerch, the gateway to the Crimea. Now the Red Army had breached the thin seam which had knitted together Kluge's and Manstein's Army Groups and was pouring through the gap. Retreat was the only possible course of action.

Hitler found a tense atmosphere at the Wolf's Lair on his return. What he had long antic.i.p.ated was reality. British and American newspapers had that morning, 8 September, carried reports that the capitulation of the Italian army was imminent. By the afternoon, the news was hardening. At 6 p.m. that evening the stories were confirmed by the BBC in London. Once again, n.a.z.i leaders were summoned to Fuhrer Headquarters for a crisis-meeting next day. The order had meanwhile been given to set 'Operation Axis' in motion. 'The Fuhrer,' wrote Goebbels, 'is determined to make a tabula rasa tabula rasa in Italy.' in Italy.'

The BBC's premature announcement gave the OKW's Operations Staff a head start. Sixteen German divisions had been moved to the Italian mainland by this time. The battle-hardened SS units withdrawn from the eastern front in late July and early August and troops pulled back from Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia were in position to take control in central Italy. By 10 September, Rome was in German hands. Italian troops were disarmed. Small pockets of resistance were ruthlessly put down; one division that held out until 22 September ended with 6,000 dead. Over 650,000 soldiers entered German captivity. Only the bulk of the small navy and ineffective air-force escaped and were given over to the Allies. Within a few days Italy was occupied by its former Axis partner.

Hours after the Italian capitulation, the Allies had landed in the Gulf of Salerno, thirty miles or so south-east of Naples. The dogged German resistance they encountered for a week before reinforcements enabled them to break out of their threatened beachhead linking forces with troops from Montgomery's 8th Army advancing northwards from Reggio di Calabria, and entering Naples on 1 October was an indicator of what was in store for the Allies during the coming months as the Wehrmacht made them fight for every mile of their northward progression.

It was plain to the German leaders.h.i.+p, however, that it would be even more difficult, in the new situation, for the armed forces to cope with the mounting pressures on both the eastern and the southern fronts. Goebbels saw the need looming to seek peace with either the Soviet Union or the western Allies. He suggested the time had come to sound out Stalin. Ribbentrop took the same line. He had tentative feelers put out to see whether the Soviet dictator would bite. But Hitler dismissed the idea. If anything, he said, he preferred to look for an arrangement with Britain conceivably open to one. But, as always, he would not consider negotiating from a position of weakness. In the absence of the decisive military success he needed, which was receding ever more into the far distance, any hope of persuading him to consider an approach other than the remorseless continuation of the struggle was bound to be illusory.

At least Goebbels, backed by Goring, successfully this time pleaded with Hitler to speak to the German people. To the last minute before recording the broadcast, on 10 September, Hitler showed his reluctance. He wanted to delay, to see how things turned out. Goebbels went through the text with him line by line. Eventually, he got the Fuhrer to the microphone. The speech itself largely confined to unstinting praise for Mussolini, condemnation of Badoglio and his supporters, the claim that the 'treachery' had been foreseen and every necessary step taken, and a call to maintain confidence and sustain the fight had nothing of substance to offer, other than a hint at coming retaliation for the bombing of German cities. But Goebbels was satisfied. Reports suggested the speech had gone down well, and helped revive morale.

As far as the situation in Italy itself was concerned, Hitler was at this time resigned to losing any hold over the south of the country. His intention was to withdraw to the Apennines, long foreseen by the OKH Operations Staff as the favoured line of defence. However, he worried about the Allies advancing from Italy through the Balkans. By autumn, this concern was to persuade him to change his mind and defend Italy much farther to the south. A consequence was to tie down forces desperately needed elsewhere.

The Wehrmacht's rapid successes in taking hold of Italy so speedily provided some relief. Hitler's spirits then soared temporarily when the stunning news came through on the evening of 12 September that Mussolini, whose whereabouts had been recently discovered, had been freed from his captors in a ski hotel on the highest mountain in the Abruzzi through an extraordinarily daring raid by parachutists and SS-men carried in by glider and led by the Austrian SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Otto Skorzeny. The euphoria did not last long. Hitler greeted the ex-Duce warmly when Mussolini, no longer the preening dictator but looking haggard and dressed soberly in a dark suit and black overcoat, was brought to Rastenburg on 14 September. But Mussolini, bereft of the trappings of power, was a broken man. The series of private talks they had left Hitler 'extraordinarily disappointed'. Three days later, Mussolini was dispatched to Munich to begin forming his new regime. By the end of September he had set up his reconst.i.tuted Fascist 'Repubblica di Sal' in northern Italy, a repressive, brutish police state run by a combination of cruelty, corruption, and thuggery but operating unmistakably under the auspices of German masters. The one-time bombastic dictator of Italy was now plainly no more than Hitler's tame puppet, and living on borrowed time.

As autumn progressed, the situation on the eastern front predictably worsened. The redeployment of troops to Italy weakened the chances of staving off the Soviet offensive. And the failure to erect the 'eastern wall' of fortifications along the Dnieper during the two years that it had been in German hands now proved costly. The speed of the Soviet advance gave no opportunity to construct any solid defence line. By the end of September the Red Army had been able to cross the Dnieper and establish important bridgeheads on the west banks of the great river. The German bridgehead at Zaporozhye was lost in early October. By then, the Wehrmacht had been pushed back about 150 miles along the southern front. German and Romanian troops were also cut off on the Crimea, which Hitler refused to evacuate, fearing, as of old, the opportunities it would give for air-attacks on Romanian oil-fields, and concerned about the message it would send to Turkey and Bulgaria. By the end of the month, the Red Army had pushed so far over the big bend of the Dnieper in the south that any notion of the Germans holding their intended defensive line was purely fanciful. To the north, the largest Soviet city in German hands, Kiev, was recaptured on 56 November. Manstein wanted to make the attempt to retake it. For Hitler, the lower Dnieper and the Crimea were more important. Control of the lower Dnieper held the key to the protection of the manganese ores of Nikopol, vital for the German steel industry. And should the Red Army again control the Crimea, the Romanian oil-fields would once more be threatened from the air. But, whatever Hitler's thirst for new military successes, the reality was that by the end of 1943, the limitless granaries of the Ukraine and the industrial heartlands of the northern Caucasus, seen by Hitler on so many occasions as vital to the war effort (as well as the source of future German prosperity in the 'New Order'), were irredeemably lost.

V.

Not lost, however, was the war against the Jews. By autumn 1943, 'Aktion Reinhard' was terminated: in the region of 1 million Jews had been killed in the gas-chambers of extermination camps at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka in eastern Poland. The SS leaders.h.i.+p were now pressing hard for the extension of the 'Final Solution' to all remaining corners of the n.a.z.i imperium imperium even those where the deportations were likely to have diplomatic repercussions. Among these were Denmark and Italy. even those where the deportations were likely to have diplomatic repercussions. Among these were Denmark and Italy.

In September, Hitler complied with the request of Werner Best, the Reich Plenipotentiary in Denmark, to have the Danish Jews deported, dismissing Ribbentrop's anxieties about a possible general strike and other civil disobedience. Though these did not materialize, the round-up of Danish Jews was a resounding failure. Several hundred under ten per cent of the Jewish population were captured and deported to Theresienstadt. Most escaped. Countless Danish citizens helped the overwhelming majority of their Jewish countrymen in all 7,900 persons, including a few hundred non-Jewish marital partners to flee across the Sound to safety in neutral Sweden in the most remarkable rescue action of the war.

In October, Hitler accepted Ribbentrop's recommendation (prompted by the Reich Security Head Office) to have Rome's 8,000 Jews sent 'as hostages' to the Austrian concentration camp at Mauthausen. Again, the 'action' to round up the Jews misfired. Most of the Jewish community were able to avoid capture. Some were hidden by disgusted non-Jewish citizens. Thousands found shelter in Rome's convents and monasteries, or in the Vatican itself. In return, the Papacy was prepared to maintain public silence on the outrage. Despite Hitler's directive, following his Foreign Minister's advice, those Jews captured were not, in fact, sent to Mauthausen. Of the 1,259 Jews who fell into German hands, the majority were taken straight to Auschwitz.

Hitler's compliance with SS demands to speed up and finish off the 'Final Solution' was unquestionably driven by his wish to complete the destruction of those he held responsible for the war. He wanted, now as before, to see the 'prophecy' he had declared in 1939 and repeatedly referred to fulfilled. But, even more so than in the spring when he had encouraged Goebbels to turn up the volume of antisemitic propaganda, there was also the need, with backs to the wall, to hold together his closest followers in a sworn 'community of fate', bonded by their own knowledge of and implication in the extermination of the Jews.

On 4 October, Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler spoke openly and frankly about the killing of the Jews to SS leaders gathered in the town hall in Posen, the capital of the Warthegau. He said he was 'referring to the Jewish evacuation programme, the extermination of the Jewish people'. It was, he went on, 'a glorious page in our history, and one that has never been written and never can be written. For we know how difficult we would have made it for ourselves if, on top of the bombing raids, the burdens and the deprivations of war, we still had Jews today in every town as secret saboteurs, agitators, and troublemakers. We would now probably have reached the 191617 stage when the Jews were still part of the body of the German people.' The mentality was identical with Hitler's. 'We had the moral right, we had the duty to our people,' Himmler concluded, 'to destroy this people which wanted to destroy us ... We do not want in the end, because we have exterminated a bacillus, to become ill through the bacillus and die.' The vocabulary, too, was redolent of Hitler's own. Himmler did not refer to Hitler. There was no need to do so. The key point for the Reichsfuhrer-SS was not to a.s.sign responsibility to a single person. The crucial purpose of his speech was to stress their joint responsibility, that they were all in it together.

Two days later, in the same Golden Hall in Posen, Himmler addressed the Reichs- and Gauleiter of the party. The theme was the same one. He gave, as Goebbels recorded, an 'unvarnished and candid picture' of the treatment of the Jews. Himmler declared: 'We faced the question: what should we do with the women and children? I decided here too to find a completely clear solution. I did not regard myself as justified in exterminating the men that is to say, to kill them or have them killed and to allow the avengers in the shape of the children to grow up for our sons and grandchildren. The difficult decision had to be taken to have this people disappear from the earth.' Himmler seemed to be indicating that the extension of the killing to women and children had been his initiative. He immediately, however, a.s.sociated himself and the SS with a 'commission' 'the most difficult which we have had so far'. The Gauleiter, among them Goebbels who had spoken directly with Hitler on the subject so many times, would have had no difficulty in presuming whose authority lay behind the 'commission'. Again, the purpose of the remarkably frank disclosures on the taboo subject was plain. Himmler marked on a list those who had not attended his speech or noted its contents.

Himmler's speeches, ensuring that his own subordinates and the party leaders.h.i.+p were fully in the picture about the extermination of the Jews, had been there can be no doubt about it carried out with Hitler's approval. The very next day, after listening to Himmler, the Gauleiter were ordered to attend the Wolf 's Lair to hear Hitler himself give an account of the state of the war. That the Fuhrer would speak explicitly on the 'Final Solution' was axiomatically ruled out. But he could now take it for granted that they understood there was no way out. Their knowledge underlined their complicity. 'The entire German people know,' Hitler had told the Reichs- and Gauleiter, 'that it is a matter of whether they exist or do not exist. The bridges have been destroyed behind them. Only the way forward remains.'

When (for the last time, as it turned out) Hitler addressed the party's Old Guard in Munich's Lowenbraukeller on the putsch anniversary, 8 November, he was as defiant as ever. There would be no capitulation, no repeat of 1918, he declared once again the nightmare of that year indelibly imprinted on his psyche and no undermining of the front by subversion at home. Any overheard subversive or defeatist remark, it was clear, would cost the person making it his or her head.

By this time though of course he made no hint of it in his speech Hitler was anxious about a looming new grave military threat, one which, if not repulsed, would result in Germany's destruction: what he took to be the certainty of an invasion in the west during the coming year. 'The danger in the east remains,' ran his preamble to his Directive No. 51 on 3 November, 'but a greater danger is looming in the west: the Anglo-Saxon landing! ... If the enemy succeeds here in breaking through our defence on a broad front, the consequences within a short time are unforeseeable. Everything suggests that the enemy, at the latest in spring but perhaps even earlier, will move to attack the western front of Europe.'

To his military advisers, on 20 December, he said he was certain that the invasion would take place some time after mid-February or early March. The next months would be spent in preparation for the coming great a.s.sault in the west. This, Hitler remarked, would 'decide the war'.

24.

Hoping for Miracles

I.

'The year 1944 will make tough and severe demands of all Germans. The course of the war, in all its enormity, will reach its critical point during this year. We are fully confident that we will successfully surmount it.' This, and the prospect of new cities rising resplendently after the war from the bombed-out ruins, was all Hitler had to offer readers of his New Year proclamation in 1944. Fewer than ever of them were able to share his confidence. For the embattled soldiers at the front, Hitler's message was no different. The military crisis of 1943 had been brought about, he told them, by sabotage and treachery by the French in North Africa and the Italians following the overthrow of Mussolini. But the greatest crisis in German history had been triumphantly mastered. However hard the fighting in the east had been, 'Bolshevism has not achieved its goal.' He glanced at the western Allies, and at the future: 'The plutocratic western world can undertake its threatened attempt at a landing where it wants: it will fail!'

Since Germany had been forced on to the defensive, experiencing only setbacks, Hitler had not changed his tune. His stance had become immobilized, fossilized. In his view, the military disasters had been the consequence of betrayal, incompetence, disobedience of orders, and, above all, weakness. He conceded not a single error or misjudgement on his own part. No capitulation; no surrender; no retreat; no repeat of 1918; hold out at all costs, whatever the odds: this was the unchanging message. Alongside this went the belief unshakeable (apart, perhaps, from his innermost thoughts and bouts of depression during sleepless nights) but an item of blind faith, not resting on reason that the strength to hold out would eventually lead to a turning of the tide, and to Germany's final victory. In public, he expressed his unfounded optimism through references to the grace of Providence. As he put it to his soldiers on 1 January 1944, after overcoming the defensive period then returning to the attack to impose devastating blows on the enemy, 'Providence will bestow victory on the people that has done most to earn it.' His instinctive belief in reward for the strongest remained intact. 'If, therefore, Providence grants life as the prize to those who have fought and defended the most courageously, then our people will find mercy from the just arbiter who at all times gave victory to the most meritorious.'

However hollow such sentiments sounded to men at the various fronts, suffering untold hards.h.i.+ps, enduring hourly danger, often realizing they would never see their loved ones again, they were, for Hitler himself, far from mere cynical propaganda. He had to believe these ideas and did, certainly down to the summer of 1944, if not longer. The references, in public and private, to 'Providence' and 'Fate' increased as his own control over the course of the war declined. The views on the course of the war which he expressed to his generals, to other n.a.z.i leaders, and to his immediate entourage gave no inkling that his own resolve was wavering, or that he had become in any way resigned to the prospect of defeat. If it was an act, then it was one brilliantly sustained, and remained substantially unchanged whatever the context or personnel involved. 'It is impressive, with what certainty the Fuhrer believes in his mission,' noted Goebbels in his diary in early June 1944. Others who saw Hitler frequently, in close proximity, and were less impressionable than Goebbels, thought the same. Without the inner conviction, Hitler would have been unable to sway those around him, as he continued so often to do, to find new resolve. Without it, he would not have engaged so fanatically in bitter conflicts with his military leaders. Without it, he would have been incapable, not least, of sustaining in himself the capacity to continue, despite increasingly overwhelming odds.

The astonis.h.i.+ng optimism did not give way, despite the mounting crises and calamities of the first half of 1944. But the self-deception involved was colossal. Hitler lived increasingly in a world of illusion, clutching as the year wore on ever more desperately at whatever straws he could find. The invasion, when it came, would be repulsed without doubt, he thought. He placed enormous hopes, too, in the devastating effect of the 'wonder-weapons'. When they failed to match expectations, he would remain convinced that the alliance against him was fragile and would soon fall apart, as had occurred in the Seven Years War two centuries earlier following the indomitable defence of one of his heroes, Frederick the Great. Even at the very end of a catastrophic year for Germany, he would not give up hope of this happening. He would still be hoping for miracles.

He had, however, no rational ways out of the inevitable catastrophe to offer those who, in better times, had lavished their adulation upon him. Albert Speer, in a pen-picture drawn immediately after the war, saw Hitler's earlier 'genius' at finding 'elegant' ways out of crises eroded by relentless overwork imposed on him by war's demands, undermining the intuition which had required the more s.p.a.cious and leisured life-style suited to an artistic temperament. The change in work-patterns turning himself, against his natural temperament, into an obsessive workaholic, preoccupied by detail, unable to relax, surrounded by an unchanging and uninspiring entourage had brought in its train, thought Speer, enormous mental strain together with increased inflexibility and obstinacy in decisions which had closed off all but the route to disaster.

It was certainly the case that Hitler's entire existence had been consumed by the prosecution of the war. The leisured times of the pre-war years were gone. The impatience with detail, detachment from day-today issues, preoccupation with grandiose architectural schemes, generous allocation of time for relaxation, listening to music, watching films, indulging in the indolence which had been a characteristic since his youth, had indeed given way to a punis.h.i.+ng work-schedule in which Hitler brooded incessantly over the most detailed matters of military tactics, leaving little or no s.p.a.ce for anything unconnected with the conduct of war in a routine essentially unchanged day in and day out. Nights with little sleep; rising late in the mornings; lengthy midday and early evening conferences, often extremely stressful, with his military leaders; a strict, spartan diet, and meals often taken alone in his room; no exercise beyond a brief daily walk with his Alsatian b.i.t.c.h, Blondi; the same surrounds, the same entourage; late-night monologues to try to wind down (at the expense of his bored entourage), reminiscing about his youth, the First World War, and the 'good old times' of the n.a.z.i Party's rise to power; then, finally, another attempt to find sleep: such a routine only marginally more relaxed when he was at the Berghof could not but be in the long run harmful to health and was scarcely conducive to calm and considered, rational reflection.

All who saw him pointed out how Hitler had aged during the war. He had once appeared vigorous, full of energy, to those around him. Now, his hair was greying fast, his eyes were bloodshot, he walked with a stoop, he had difficulty controlling a trembling left arm; for a man in his mid-fifties, he looked old. His health had started to suffer notably from 1941 onwards. The increased numbers of pills and injections provided every day by Dr Morell ninety varieties in all during the war and twenty-eight different pills each day could not prevent the physical deterioration.

By 1944, Hitler was a sick man at times during the year extremely unwell. Cardiograms, the first taken in 1941, had revealed a worsening heart condition. And beyond the chronic stomach and intestinal problems that had increasingly come to plague him, Hitler had since 1942 developed symptoms, becoming more p.r.o.nounced in 1944, which point with some medical certainty to the onset of Parkinson's Syndrome. Most notably, an uncontrollable trembling of the left arm, jerking in his left leg, and a shuffling gait, were unmistakable to those who saw him at close quarters. But although the strains of the last phase of the war took their toll on him, there is no convincing evidence that Hitler's mental capacity was impaired. His rages and violent mood-swings were inbuilt features of his character, their frequency in the final phase of the war a reflection of the stress from the rapidly deteriorating military conditions and his own inability to change them, bringing, as usual, wild las.h.i.+ngs at his generals and any others on whom he could lay the blame that properly began at his own door.

In looking to the loss of 'genius' through pressures of overwork inappropriate to Hitler's alleged natural talent for improvisation, Speer was offering a naive and misleading explanation of Germany's fate, ultimately personalizing it in the 'demonic' figure of Hitler. The adoption of such a harmfully over-burdensome style of working was no chance development. It was the direct outcome of an extreme form of personalized rule which had already by the time war began seriously eroded the more formal and regular structures of government and military command that are essential in modern states. The reins of power were entirely held in Hitler's hands. He was still backed by major power bases. None existed whatever the growing anxieties among the military, some leading industrialists, and a number of senior figures in the state bureaucracy about the road down which he was taking them that could bypa.s.s the Fuhrer. All vital measures, both in military and in domestic affairs, needed his authorization. There were no overriding coordinating bodies no war cabinet, no politburo. But Hitler, forced entirely on to the defensive in running the war, was now often almost paralysed in his thinking, and often in his actions. And in matters relating to the 'home front', while refusing to concede an inch of his authority he was, as Goebbels interminably bemoaned, nevertheless incapable of more than sporadic, unsystematic interventions or prevaricating inaction.

Far more gifted individuals than Hitler would have been overstretched and incapable of coping with the scale and nature of the administrative problems involved in the conduct of a world war. Hitler's triumphs in foreign policy in the 1930s, then as war leader until 1941, had not arisen from his 'artistic genius' (as Speer saw it), but in the main from his unerring skill in exploiting the weaknesses and divisions of his opponents, and through the timing of actions carried out at breakneck speed. Not 'artistic genius', but the gambler's instinct when playing for high stakes with a good hand against weak opponents had served Hitler well in those earlier times. Those aggressive instincts worked as long as the initiative could be retained. But once the gamble had failed, and he was playing a losing hand in a long-drawn-out match with the odds becoming increasingly more hopeless, the instincts lost their effectiveness. Hitler's individual characteristics now fatefully merged, in conditions of mounting disaster, into the structural weaknesses of the dictators.h.i.+p. His ever-increasing distrust of those around him, especially his generals, was one side of the coin. The other was his unbounded egomania, which cholerically expressed itself all the more p.r.o.nounced as disasters started to acc.u.mulate in the belief that no one else was competent or trustworthy, and that he alone could ensure victory. His takeover of the operational command of the army in the winter crisis of 1941 had been the most obvious manifestation of this disastrous syndrome.

Speer's explanation was even more deficient in ignoring the fact that Germany's catastrophic situation in 1944 was the direct consequence of the steps which Hitler overwhelmingly supported by the most powerful forces within the country, and widely acclaimed by the ma.s.ses had taken in the years when his 'genius' (in Speer's perception) had been less constrained. Not changes in his work-style, but the direct result of a war he and much of the military leaders.h.i.+p had wanted meant that Hitler could find no 'elegant' solution to the stranglehold increasingly imposed by the mighty coalition which German aggression had called into being. He was left, therefore, with no choice but to face the reality that the war was lost, or to hold fast to illusions.

Ever fewer Germans shared Hitler's undiminished fatalism about the outcome of the war. The Dictator's rhetoric, so powerful in 'sunnier' periods, had lost its ability to sway the ma.s.ses. Either they believed what he said; or they believed their own eyes and ears gazing out over devastated cities, reading the ever-longer lists of fallen soldiers in the death-columns of the newspapers, hearing the sombre radio announcements (however they were dressed up) of further Soviet advances, seeing no sign that the fortunes of war were turning. Hitler sensed that he had lost the confidence of his people. The great orator no longer had his audience. With no triumphs to proclaim, he did not even want to speak to the German people any longer. The bonds between the Fuhrer and the people had been a vital basis of the regime in earlier times. But now, the gulf between ruler and ruled had widened to a chasm.

During 1944 Hitler would distance himself from the German people still further than he had done in the previous two years. He was physically detached coc.o.o.ned for the most part in his field headquarters in East Prussia or in his mountain idyll in Bavaria and scarcely now visible, even in newsreels, for ordinary Germans.

On not a single occasion during 1944 did he appear in public to deliver a speech. When, on 24 February, the anniversary of the proclamation of the Party Programme of 1920, he spoke in the Hofbrauhaus in Munich to the closed circle of the party's 'Old Guard', he expressly refused Goebbels's exhortations to have the speech broadcast and no mention was made of the speech in the newspapers. Twice, on 30 January 1944 and early on 21 July, he addressed the nation on the radio. Otherwise the German people did not hear directly from their Leader throughout 1944. Even his traditional address to the 'Old Fighters' of the party on 8 November was read out by Himmler. For the ma.s.ses, Hitler had become a largely invisible leader. He was out of sight and for most, probably, increasingly out of mind except as an obstacle to the ending of the war.

The intensified level of repression during the last years of the war, along with the negative unity forged by fear of the victory of Bolshevism, went a long way towards ensuring that the threat of internal revolt, as had happened in 1918, never materialized. But, for all the continuing (and in some ways astonis.h.i.+ng) reserves of strength of the Fuhrer cult among outright n.a.z.i supporters, Hitler had become for the overwhelming majority of Germans the chief hindrance to the ending of the war. Ordinary people might prefer, as they were reported to be saying, 'an end with horror' to 'a horror without end'. But they had no obvious way of altering their fate. Only those who moved in the corridors of power had any possibility of removing Hitler. Some groups of officers, through conspiratorial links with certain highly-placed civil servants, were plotting precisely that. After a number of abortive attempts, their strike would come in July 1944. It would prove the last chance the Germans themselves had to put an end to the n.a.z.i regime. The bitter rivalries of the subordinate leaders, the absence of any centralized forum (equivalent to the Fascist Grand Council in Italy) from which an internal coup could be launched, the shapelessness of the structures of n.a.z.i rule yet the indispensability of Hitler's authority to every facet of that rule, and, not least, the fact that the regime's leaders had burnt their boats with the Dictator in the regime's genocide and other untold acts of inhumanity, ruled out any further possibility of overthrow. With that, the regime had only its own collective suicide in an inexorably lost war to contemplate. But like a mortally wounded wild beast at bay, it fought with the ferocity and ruthlessness that came from desperation. And its Leader, losing touch ever more with reality, hoping for miracles, kept tilting at windmills ready in Wagnerian style in the event of ultimate apocalyptic catastrophe, and in line with his undiluted social-Darwinistic beliefs, to take his people down in flames with him if it proved incapable of producing the victory he had demanded.

II.

Readiness for the invasion in the west, certain to come within the next few months, was the overriding preoccupation of Hitler and his military advisers in early 1944. They were sure that the critical phase directly following the invasion would decide the outcome of the war. Hopes were invested in the fortifications swiftly being erected along the Atlantic coast in France, and in the new, powerful weapons of destruction that were under preparation and would help the Wehrmacht to inflict a resounding defeat on the invaders as soon as they set foot on continental soil. Forced back, with Britain reeling under devastating blows from weapons of untold might, against which there was no defence, the western Allies would realize that Germany could not be defeated; the 'unnatural' alliance with the Soviet Union would split apart; and, freed of the danger in the west, the German Reich could devote all its energies, perhaps now even with British and American backing following a separate peace agreement, to the task of repelling and defeating Bolshevism. So ran the optimistic currents of thought in Hitler's headquarters.

Meanwhile, developments on the eastern front the key theatre of the war were more than worrying enough to hold Hitler's attention. A new Soviet offensive in the south of the eastern front had begun on 24 December 1943, making rapid advances, and dampening an already dismal Christmas mood in the Fuhrer Headquarters. Hitler spent New Year's Eve closeted in his rooms alone with Bormann. He took part in no festivities. At least in the company of Martin Bormann, his loyal right-hand in all party matters, he was 'among his own'. In his daily military conferences, it was different. The tensions with his generals were palpable. Some loyalists around Hitler, such as Jodl, shared in some measure his optimism. Others were already more sceptical. According to Hitler's Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus von Below, even the initially starry-eyed Chief of the Army General Staff Kurt Zeitzler by now did not believe a word Hitler said. What Hitler really felt about the war, whether he harboured private doubts that conflicted with the optimism he voiced at all times, was even for those regularly in his close company impossible to deduce.

Whatever his innermost thoughts, his outward stance was predictable. Retreat, whatever the tactical necessity or even advantage to be gained from it, was ruled out. When the retreat then inevitably did eventually take place, it was invariably under less favourable conditions than at the time that it had been initially proposed. 'Will' to hold out was, as always, the supreme value for Hitler. What was, in fact, required was greater military skill and tactical flexibility than the Commander-in-Chief of the Army himself could muster. In these circ.u.mstances, Hitler's obstinacy and interference in tactical matters posed ever greater difficulties for his field commanders.

Manstein encountered Hitler's inflexibility again when he flew on 4 January 1944 to Fuhrer Headquarters to report on the rapidly deteriorating situation of Army Group South. Soviet forces, centred on the Dnieper bend, had made major advances. These now posed an ominous threat to the survival of the 4th Panzer Army (located in the region between Vinnitsa and Berichev). The breach of this position would open up a ma.s.sive gap between Army Groups South and Centre, putting therefore the entire southern front in mortal peril. It demanded, in Manstein's view, the urgent transfer of forces northwards to counter the threat. This could only be done by evacuating the Dnieper bend, abandoning Nikopol (with its manganese supplies) and the Crimea, and drastically reducing the front to a length which could more easily be defended. Hitler refused point-blank to countenance such a proposal. Losing the Crimea, he argued, would prompt Turkey's abandonment of neutrality and the defection of Bulgaria and Romania. Reinforcements for the threatened northern wing could not be drawn from Army Group North, since that could well lead to the defection of Finland, loss of the Baltic, and lack of availability of vital Swedish ore. Forces could not be drawn from the west before the invasion had been repelled. 'There were so many disagreements on the enemy side,' Manstein recalled Hitler stating, 'that the coalition was bound to fall apart one day. To gain time was therefore a matter of paramount importance.' Manstein would simply have to hold out until reinforcements were available.

When the military conference was over, Manstein asked to see Hitler privately, in the company only of Zeitzler. Reluctantly (as usual when unsure of what was coming), Hitler agreed. Once the room had emptied, Manstein began. Hitler's demeanour, already cold, soon touched freezing-point. His eyes bored like gimlets into the field-marshal as Manstein stated that enemy superiority alone was not responsible for the plight of the army in the east, but that this was 'also due to the way in which we are led'. Manstein, persevering undaunted despite the intimidating atmosphere, renewed the request he had put on two earlier occasions, that he himself should be appointed overall Commander-in-Chief for the eastern front with full independence of action within overall strategic objectives, in the way that Rundstedt in the west and Kesselring in Italy enjoyed similar authority. This would have meant the effective surrender by Hitler of his powers of command in the eastern theatre. He was having none of it. But his argument backfired. 'Even I cannot get the field-marshals to obey me!' he retorted. 'Do you imagine, for example, that they would obey you any more readily?' Manstein replied that his orders were never disobeyed. At this, Hitler, his anger under control though the insubordination plainly registered, closed the discussion. Manstein had had the last word. But he returned to his headquarters empty-handed.

Not only had he no prospect of appointment as Commander-in-Chief in the eastern theatre; Manstein's outspoken views were by now prompting doubts in Hitler's mind about his suitability in command of Army Group South. Meanwhile, Hitler's orders for Manstein's troops were clear: there was to be no pulling back. Tenacious German defiance in the Dnieper bend and at Nikopol did in fact succeed in holding up the Soviet advance for the time being. But the loss of this territory, and of the Crimea itself, was a foregone conclusion, merely temporarily delayed.

Guderian, another of Hitler's one-time favourite commanders, fared no better than Manstein when he attempted, at a private audience in January, to persuade Hitler to simplify and unify military command by appointing a trusted general to a new position of Chief of the Wehrmacht General Staff. This, aimed at removing the damaging weakness at the heart of the Wehrmacht High Command, would have meant the dismissal of Keitel. Hitler rejected this out of hand. It would also have signified, as. .h.i.tler had no difficulty in recognizing, a diminution of his own powers within the military command. Like Manstein, Guderian had met an immovable obstacle. Like Manstein's, his recommendations of tactical retreats fell on stony ground.

The level to which relations between Hitler and his senior generals among them those who had been his most loyal and trusted commanders had sunk was revealed by a flashpoint at the lengthy speech Hitler gave to 100 or so of his military leaders on 27 January. After a simple lunch, during which the atmosphere was noticeably cool, Hitler offered little more (following the usual long-winded resort to the lessons of history, emphasis on 'struggle' as a natural law, and description of his own political awakening and build-up of the party) than an exhortation to hold out. For this, indoctrination in the spirit of National Socialism was vital. Of one thing, he told them, they could be certain: 'that there could never be even the slightest thought of capitulation, whatever might happen'. Hitler spoke of his right to demand of his generals not simply loyalty, but fanatical support. Full of pathos, he declared: 'In the last instance, if I should ever be deserted as supreme Leader, I must have as the last defence around me the entire officer corps who must stand with drawn swords rallied round me.' A minor sensation then occurred: Hitler was interrupted something which had never happened since the beerhalls of Munich as Field-Marshal von Manstein exclaimed: 'And so it will be, my Fuhrer.' Hitler was visibly taken aback, and lost the thread of what he was saying. He stared icily, uttered 'That's good. If that's the case, we can never lose this war, never, come what may. For the nation will then go into the war with the strength that is necessary. I note that very gladly, Field-Marshal von Manstein!' He quickly recovered, emphasizing the need, even so, for greater advances in the 'education' of the officer corps. In a literal sense, Manstein's words could be seen to be not only harmless, but encouraging. But, as Manstein himself indicated after the war, the implied meaning was more critical of Hitler. The interruption, the field-marshal later recalled, arose from a rush of blood as he sensed that Hitler had impugned the honour of himself and his