Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Galen’s sermon had linked the three areas — attacks on the Church, ‘euthanasia’, and bombing-raids on German cities — in which alienation of the population from the regime, and the consequent threat to morale, was greatest. The population of the industrial belt of Westphalia were bearing the brunt of the raids. As SD reports pointed out, morale in the area was suffering accordingly. At the same time the attacks on the monasteries and religious orders in the area had reached their high point. And this was at precisely the juncture when the patients from the Westphalian asylums were being deported to the ‘euthanasia’ killing-centres. Any attempt to provide emergency hospitals for the victims of the air-raids, to combat the effect on morale, had to make use of the spare capacity of the asylums. But this could only be attained by removing the patients. And this would immediately give rise to further unrest. It was in the grip of this strait-jacket that Hitler bowed to the pressure created by Galen’s protest. His pragmatic solution, it seems, was to halt the T4 ‘Action’ in order to be able to offer the hospital care for air-raid victims, and the accompanying assurances necessary to calm the unrest in Westphalia and restore morale.¹⁹⁹

By the time of Hitler’s ‘halt order’, the T4 ‘euthanasia action’ had already killed more than the 70,000 victims foreseen at the outset of the ‘programme’.²⁰⁰ Bouhler had in fact boasted to Goebbels as early as January 1941 that 40,000 mentally sick patients had already been liquidated, and that there were another 60,000 still to be dealt with.²⁰¹ By the end of 1941, the number gassed, starved to death, or poisoned with lethal injections was nearer 100,000 than 70,00o.²⁰² The ‘halt order’ ended the ‘euthanasia programme’ neither completely nor permanently. Tens of thousands of concentration-camp prisoners, ill or incapable of work, were, after selection by doctors, to perish in existing, or newly established, ‘euthanasia’-centres by 1945.²⁰³ As for the T4 personnel: new tasks were rapidly found for them. The experts in gassing techniques were, within a few weeks, already being redeployed to start the planning in Poland of a far larger mass- killing ‘programme’: the extermination of Europe’s Jews.

V

In his lengthy talk with Hitler on 23 September, Goebbels took the opportunity to describe the state of morale within Germany. Hitler, remarked the Propaganda Minister, was well aware of the ‘serious psychological test (Belastungsprobe)’ to which the German people had been subjected over the past weeks. After the notable slide in morale, Goebbels pressed Hitler, who had not appeared in public since the start of the Russian campaign and had last spoken to the German people on 4 May, following the victorious Balkan campaign, to come to Berlin to address the nation. Hitler agreed that the time was ripe, and asked Goebbels to prepare a mass meeting to open the Winter Aid campaign at the end of the following week.²⁰⁴ The date of the speech was fixed for 3 October. Even on the day before, Goebbels had a struggle with Fuhrer Headquarters to establish that Hitler would, indeed, be coming to Berlin to speak in the Sportpalast. Only in the evening did Hitler finally confirm his appearance. Goebbels was now at last able to make the preparations. That day, 2 October, ‘Operation Typhoon’, the great offensive against Moscow, had been launched.²⁰⁵ The early news from the front was good. The scene for the speech could not have been better, thought Goebbels. He hoped the Fuhrer would be in good form. ‘The impression of his address in Germany and in the entire world will then, after a six-month period of silence, be an immense one.’²⁰⁶

In his proclamation to the soldiers on the Eastern Front at the start of ‘Operation Typhoon’, Hitler described Bolshevism as essentially similar to the worst kind of capitalism in the poverty it produced, stressing that ‘the bearers of this system are also in both cases the same: Jews and only Jews!’²⁰⁷ Now was the last push before winter to deliver the enemy ‘the deadly thrust’.²⁰⁸ Similar sentiments were to dominate his address to the nation.

Around 1p.m. next day, Hitler’s train pulled into Berlin. Goebbels was immediately summoned to the Reich Chancellery. He found Hitler looking well and full of optimism. In the privacy of Hitler’s room, he was given an overview of the situation at the front. The advance was proceeding better than expected. Big successes were being attained. ‘The Fuhrer is convinced,’ commented Goebbels, ‘that if the weather stays moderately favourable the Soviet army will be essentially smashed within fourteen days.’²⁰⁹ Through the proclamation, every soldier knew what was at stake: annihilating the Bolshevik army before the onset of winter; or getting stuck half- way and having to put off the decision until the following year. Hitler was of the opinion that the worst of the war would be over if the attack succeeded: ‘for what will we gain in new armaments and economic potential from the industrial areas lying before us! We have already conquered so many sources of oil that the oil which the Soviet Union had promised to us on the basis of earlier economic treaties now flows to us from our own production.’²¹⁰ The USA were in no position to affect the course of the war. Once Germany had the decisive Russian agricultural and industrial areas in its possession, ‘we will be fairly independent and can cut off the English imports through our U-Boats and Luftwaffe’.²¹¹ Hitler was in no mood for compromises. He thought it necessary to come to a clear decision with Britain, since otherwise the ‘bloody showdown would have to be repeated in a few years’. He did not think it likely that Stalin would capitulate, though he could not rule it out.²¹² He also thought the ‘London plutocracy’ would continue to wage tough resistance. But his view was ‘that everything that happens is on the whole the product of fate’. It was good, in retrospect, that none of the peace feelers since 1939 involving Poland, France, and Britain had come to anything. ‘The most cardinal problems would then have still remained unsolved, and would doubtless sooner or later have again led to war. Another military force besides ours must never exist in Europe.’²¹³

Cheering crowds, which the Party never had any trouble in mobilizing, lined the streets as Hitler was driven in the afternoon to the Sportpalast. A rapturous reception awaited him in the cavernous hall.²¹⁴ Goebbels compared it with the mass meetings in the run-up to power.²¹⁵ The first part of Hitler’s speech was spent in blaming the war on Britain’s warmongering clique, backed by international Jewry.²¹⁶ He went on to justify the attack on the Soviet Union as preventive. He said German precautions had been incomplete on only one thing: ‘We had no idea how gigantic the preparations of this enemy were against Germany and Europe, and how immense the danger was, how by a hair’s breadth we have escaped the annihilation not only of Germany, but of the whole of Europe.’ He described the threat as ‘a second Mongol storm of a new Gengis Khan’. But, he claimed, at last coming out with the words that his audience were anxious to hear: ‘I can say today that this enemy is already broken and will not rise up again.’²¹⁷

He went on, to the delight of his audience, to pour scorn on British propaganda and heap praise both on the Wehrmacht and on the efforts of the home front. Almost every sentence towards the end was interrupted by storms of applause. Hitler, despite the lengthy break, had not lost his touch. The audience in the Sportpalast rose as one in an ecstatic ovation at the end.²¹⁸ Hitler was thrilled with his reception. The mood, he said, was just as it had been in the ‘time of struggle’ before 1933. And the cheering of the ordinary Berliners in the streets had ‘not for a long time been so great and genuine’.²¹⁹ But he was in a hurry to get away. He was driven straight back to the station. By 7p.m., a mere six hours after he had arrived, he was on his way back to his headquarters in East Prussia.²²⁰

Goebbels had been with Hitler on the way to the station as the latest news came in from the front. The advance was going even better than expected.²²¹ The Fuhrer had taken all factors into account, commented Goebbels. Realistically assessing all circumstances, he had reached the conclusion ‘that victory can no longer be taken from us’.²²² Only the weather gave rise to concern. ‘If the weather stays as it is at present,’ the Propaganda Minister wrote, ‘then we might hope that our wishes will be fulfilled.’²²³

The Russian weather was, however, predictable. It would, all too soon, turn wet. Within weeks, the rains would give way to arctic conditions. However optimistic Hitler appeared to be, his military leaders knew they were up against time.²²⁴

The early stages of the advance could, nonetheless, scarcely have gone better. Halder purred, soon after its start, that Operation Typhoon was ‘making pleasing progress’ and pursuing ‘an absolutely classical course’.²²⁵ The German army had thrown seventy-eight divisions, comprising almost 2 million men, and nearly 2,000 tanks, supported by a large proportion of the Luftwaffe, against Marshal Timoshenko’s forces.²²⁶ Once more, the Wehrmacht seemed invincible. Once more, vast numbers of prisoners — 673,000 of them — fell into German hands, along with immeasurable amounts of booty, this time in the great