Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

made. Later speculation that Todt demanded more extensive powers than Hitler was prepared to grant him, threatened resignation, or expounded defeatist views on the war rested on guesswork and some unreliable evidence.²² But the meeting was plainly anything but harmonious. In depressed mood, and after a restless night, Todt left next morning to head for Munich in a twin-engined Heinkel in. His own plane, a Junkers 52, was currently under repair, and he had borrowed the Heinkel — the personal plane of Field-Marshal Sperrle — from the Luftwaffe. It was flown by Todt’s usual pilot, who took it on a brief test-flight shortly before take- off.²³

Shortly after leaving the runway, the plane turned abruptly, headed to land again, burst into flames, and crashed. The bodies of Todt and four others on board were yanked with long poles from the burning wreckage. An official inquiry ruled out sabotage.²⁴ But suspicion was never fully allayed.²⁵ What caused the crash remained a mystery. Hitler, according to witnesses who saw him at close quarters, was deeply moved by the loss of Todt, whom, it was said, he still greatly admired and needed for the war economy.²⁶ Even if, as was later often claimed, the breach between him and Todt had become irreparable on account of the Armaments Minister’s forcefully expressed conviction that the war could not be won, it is not altogether obvious why Hitler would have been so desperate as to resort to having Todt killed in an arranged air-crash at his own headquarters in circumstances guaranteed to prompt suspicion. Had he been insistent upon dispensing with Todt’s services, ‘retirement’ on ill-health grounds would have offered a simpler solution. The only obvious beneficiary from Todt’s demise was the successor Hitler now appointed with remarkable haste: his highly ambitious court architect, Albert Speer. But Speer’s relationship with Todt had been excellent. And the only ‘evidence’ later used to hint at any involvement by Speer was his presence in the Fuhrer Headquarters at the time of the crash and his rejection, a few hours before the planned departure, of an offer of a lift in Todt’s aeroplane.²⁷ Whatever the cause of the crash that killed Todt — and the speed with which Hitler had the investigation hushed up naturally fuelled suspicion — it brought Albert Speer, till then in the second rank of Nazi leaders and known only as Hitler’s court-architect and a personal favourite of the Fuhrer, into the foreground.

Speer’s meteoric rise in the 1930s had rested on shrewd exploitation of the would-be architect Hitler’s building mania, coupled with his own driving ambition and undoubted organizational talent. Hitler liked Speer. ‘He is an artist and has a spirit akin to mine,’ he said. ‘He is a building-person like me, intelligent, modest, and not an obstinate military-head.’²⁸ Speer later remarked that he was the nearest Hitler came to having a friend.²⁹ Now, Speer was in exactly the right place — close to Hitler — when a successor to Todt was needed. Six hours after the Reich Minister’s sudden death, Speer was appointed to replace him in all his offices.³⁰ The appointment came as a surprise to many — including, if we are to take his own version of accounts at face value, Speer himself.³¹ But Speer was certainly anticipating succeeding Todt in construction work — and possibly more.³² At any rate, he lost no time in using Hitler’s authority to establish for himself more extensive powers than Todt had ever enjoyed.³³ Speer would soon enough have to battle his way through the jungle of rivalries and intrigues which constituted the governance of the Third Reich. But once Hitler, the day after returning to Berlin for Todt’s state funeral on 12 February (at which he himself delivered the oration as his eyes welled with, perhaps crocodile, tears),³⁴ had publicly backed Speer’s supremacy in armaments production in a speech to leaders of the armaments industries, the new minister, still not quite thirty-eight years of age, found that ‘I could do within the widest limits practically what I wanted’.³⁵ Building on the changes his predecessor had initiated, adding his own organizational flair and ruthless drive, and drawing on his favoured standing with Hitler, Speer proved an inspired choice. Over the next two years, despite intensified Allied bombing and the fortunes of war ebbing strongly away from Germany, he presided over a doubling of armaments output.³⁶

Hitler was full of confidence when Goebbels had the chance to speak at length with him during his stay in Berlin following Todt’s funeral. After the travails of the winter, the Dictator had reason to feel as if the corner was turned. During the very days that he was in Berlin the British were suffering two mighty blows to their prestige. Two German battleships, Gneisenau and Scharnhorst, and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, had steamed out of Brest and, under the very noses of the British, passed through the English Channel with minimal damage, heading for safer moorings at Wilhelmshaven and Kiel. Hitler could scarcely contain his delight.³⁷ At the same time, the news was coming in from the Far East of the imminent fall of Singapore. Hitler expressed his admiration for the Japanese.³⁸ But it was tinged with a feeling that the British were losing their Empire when they could have accepted his ‘Offer’ and fought alongside instead of against Germany. ‘This is wonderful, though perhaps also sad, news,’ he had said to the Romanian leader Anton-escu a few days earlier.³⁹ He told Ribbentrop not to overdo the pronouncements on the fall of Singapore. ‘We’ve got to think in centuries,’ he apparently said. ‘One day the showdown with the yellow race will come.’⁴⁰ Goebbels noted a degree of resignation that the Japanese advances meant ‘the driving-back of the white man’ in the Far East.⁴¹ But, despite his racial prejudices, Hitler took a pragmatic view. ‘I’m accused of sympathizing with the Japanese,’ his secretary recalled him saying. ‘What does sympathizing mean? The Japanese are yellow-skinned and slit-eyed. But they are fighting against the Americans and English, and so are useful to Germany.’⁴² His enemy’s enemy was his friend, in other words.

Most of all, Hitler was content about the prospects in the East. The problems of winter had been overcome, and important lessons learned. ‘Troops who can cope with such a winter are unbeatable,’ Goebbels noted. Now the great thaw had set in. ‘The Fuhrer is planning a few very hard and crushing offensive thrusts, which are already in good measure prepared and will doubtless lead gradually to the smashing of Bolshevism.’⁴³ Hitler conveyed the same enthusiasm in a morale-boosting speech to almost 10,000 trainee officers in the Sportpalast on 15 February. The world had been opposed to Frederick the Great and Bismarck. ‘Today, I have the honour to be this enemy,’ he declared, ‘because I am attempting to create a world power out of the German Reich.’ He was proud beyond measure that Providence had given him the opportunity to lead the ‘inevitable struggle’. They should be proud to be part of such momentous events.⁴⁴ They gave him a rapturous reception. He left the huge hall with storms of applause and wild cheering ringing in his ears.⁴⁵ He returned to his headquarters assured as ever that, whatever his problems with the High Command, he had the total backing of his young officers and men. For their part, enthused by Hitler’s rhetoric, the newly commissioned officers had little real awareness of what awaited them on active service in the east.

II

On 15 March, Hitler was back again in Berlin. The serious losses over the winter made it essential that he attend the midday ceremony on Heroes’ Memorial Day. Only at the end of his speech did Hitler come to the commemoration of the dead. For the most part he offered no more than his usual regurgitation of the responsibility of the ‘Jewish-capitalist world conspirators’ for the war and heroization of the struggle — aimed, he asserted, at a lasting peace.⁴⁶ He portrayed the previous months as a struggle above all against the elements in a winter the like of which had not been seen for almost a century and a half.⁴⁷ ‘But one thing we know today,’ he declared. ‘The Bolshevik hordes, which were unable to defeat the German soldiers and their allies this winter, will be beaten by us into annihilation this coming summer.’⁴⁸

Many people were too concerned about the rumoured reductions in food rations to pay much attention to the speech.⁴⁹ Goebbels was well aware that food supplies had reached a critical point and that it would need a ‘work of art’ to put across to the people the reasons for the reductions.⁵⁰ He acknowledged that the cuts would lead to a ‘crisis in the internal mood’.⁵¹ Hitler, in full recognition of the sensitivity of the situation, had summoned the Propaganda Minister to his headquarters to discuss the issue before ration-cuts were announced.⁵² Goebbels had so many problems to bring to Hitler’s attention that he scarcely knew where he should begin.⁵³ His view was that the deterioration in morale at home demanded tough measures to counter it. People would understand the hardships of war if they fell equally on all the population. But as it was — Goebbels’s own class resentments came strongly into play — the better-off were able through the black market and ‘connections’ to avoid serious deprivations. Goring had signed a law banning the black market. But its severity had been reduced through the intervention of the Economics Minister. Goebbels was determined to take the matter to the Fuhrer, and hoped for the support of Bormann and the Party in getting Hitler