Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

area. Hitler had refused, insisting that they be retained for the Sukhinichi offensive. Kluge had marched out saying ‘You, my Fuhrer, therefore assume responsibility for this.’²²⁴

And in the north, by the end of August expectations of launching an assault and finally taking the hunger-torn city of Leningrad had been massively dented through the Soviet counter-offensive south of Lake Ladoga. Manstein’s nth Army had been brought up from the southern front to lead the planned final assault on Leningrad in September in the ‘Northern Lights’ offensive. Instead it found itself engaged in fending off the Soviet strike. There was no possibility of capturing Leningrad and razing it to the ground. The last chance of that had gone.²²⁵ Hitler’s outward show of confidence in victory could not altogether conceal his mounting inner anxiety. His temper was on a short fuse. Outbursts of rage became more common.²²⁶ He cast around as always for scapegoats for the rapidly deteriorating military situation in the east. It did not take him long to find them.

Relations with Halder had already reached rock-bottom. On 24 August, the worsening situation at Rzhev had prompted the Chief of the General Staff to urge Hitler to allow a retreat of the 9th Army to a more defensible shorter line. In front of all those assembled at the midday conference, Hitler rounded on Halder. ‘You always come here with the same proposal, that of withdrawal,’ he raged. ‘I demand from the leadership the same toughness as from the front-soldiers.’ Halder, deeply insulted, shouted back: ‘I have the toughness, my Fuhrer. But out there brave musketeers and lieutenants are falling in thousands and thousands as useless sacrifice in a hopeless situation simply because their commanders are not allowed to make the only reasonable decision and have their hands tied behind their backs.’²²⁷ Hitler stared at Halder. ‘What can you, who sat in the same chair (Dreh-schemel) in the First World War, too, tell me about the troops, Herr Halder, you, who don’t even wear the black insignia of the wounded?’²²⁸ Appalled, and embarrassed, the onlookers dispersed. Hitler tried to smooth Halder’s ruffled feathers that evening. But it was plain to all who witnessed the scene that the Chief of Staff’s days were numbered.²²⁹

Even Hitler’s military right hand, the loyal and devoted Jodl, was now made to feel the full impact of his wrath. On 5 September List had asked for Jodl to be been sent to Army Group A headquarters at Stalino, north of the Sea of Azov, to discuss the further deployment of the 39th Mountain Corps.²³⁰ The visit took place two days later. From Hitler’s point of view, the purpose was to urge List to accelerate the advance on the largely stalled Caucasus front. Hitler’s patience at the lack of progress had been extremely thin for some time. But far from bringing back positive news, Jodl returned that evening with a devastating account of conditions. It was no longer possible to force the Soviets back over the mountain passes. The most that could be achieved, with greater mobility and maximum concentration of forces, was a last attempt to reach Grozny and the Caspian Sea. Hitler grew more angry with every sentence. He lashed out at the ‘lack of initiative’ of the army leadership; and now for the first time attacked Jodl, the messenger bearing bad news.²³¹ It was the worst crisis in relations between Hitler and his military leaders since the previous August.²³² Hitler was in a towering rage. But Jodl stood his ground. It turned into a shouting-match.²³³ Jodl fully backed List’s assessment of the position. Hitler exploded. He accused Jodl of betraying his orders, being talked round by List, and taking sides with the Army Group. He had not sent him to the Caucasus, he said, to have him bring back doubts among the troops.²³⁴ Jodl retorted that List was faithfully adhering to the orders Hitler himself had given.²³⁵ Beside himself with rage, Hitler said his words were being twisted. Things would have to be different. He would have to ensure that he could not be deliberately misinterpreted in future.²³⁶ Like a prima donna in a pique, Hitler stormed out, refusing to shake hands (as he invariably had done at the end of their meetings) with Jodl and Keitel.²³⁷ Evidently depressed as well as angry, he said to his Wehrmacht adjutant Schmundt that night, ‘I’ll be glad when I can take off this detestable uniform and trample on it.’²³⁸ He saw no end to the war in Russia since none of the aims of summer 1942 had been realized. The anxiety about the forthcoming winter was dreadful, he said. ‘But on the other hand,’ noted Army Adjutant Engel, ‘he will retreat nowhere.’²³⁹

Hitler now shut himself up in his darkened hut during the days. He refused to appear for the communal meals. The military briefings, with as few present as possible, took place in a glacial atmosphere in his own hut, not in the headquarters of the Wehrmacht staff. And he refused to shake hands with anyone. Within forty-eight hours, a group of shorthand typists, practised stenographers from the Reichstag (where the need for active stenographers was by now hardly pressing), arrived at FHQ. Hitler had insisted upon a record of all military briefings being taken so that he could not again be misinterpreted.²⁴⁰

The day after the confrontation with Jodl, Hitler dismissed List. Demonstrating his distrust of his generals, he himself for the time being took over the command of Army Group A. He was now commander of the armed forces, of one branch of those armed forces, and of one group of that branch. At the same time, Keitel was deputed to tell Halder that he would soon be relieved of his post. Keitel himself and Jodl were also rumoured to be slated for dismissal.²⁴¹ Jodl admitted privately that he had been at fault in trying to point out to a dictator where he had gone wrong. This, Jodl said, could only shake his self-confidence — the basis of his personality and actions. Jodl added that whoever his own replacement might be, he could not be more of a staunch National Socialist than he himself was.²⁴²

In the event, the worsening conditions at Stalingrad and in the Mediterranean prevented the intended replacement of Jodl by Paulus and Keitel by Kesselring.²⁴³ But there was no saving Halder. Hitler complained bitterly to Below that Halder had no comprehension of the difficulties at the front and was devoid of ideas for solutions. He coldly viewed the situation only from maps and had ‘completely wrong notions’ about the way things were going.²⁴⁴ Hitler pondered Schmundt’s advice to replace Halder by Major-General Kurt Zeitzler, a very different type of character — a small bald-headed, ambitious, dynamic forty-seven-year-old, firm believer in the Fuhrer, who had been put in by Hitler in April to shake up the army in the west and, as Rundstedt’s chief of staff, to build up coastal defences.²⁴⁵ Goring, too, encouraged Hitler to get rid of Halder.²⁴⁶

That point was reached on 24 September. A surprised Zeitzler had by then been summoned to FHQ and told by Hitler of his promotion to full General of the Infantry and of his new responsibilities.²⁴⁷ After what was to be his last military briefing, Halder was, without ceremony, relieved of his post. His nerves, Hitler told him, were gone, and his own nerves also strained. It was necessary for Halder to go, and for the General Staff to be educated to believe fanatically in ‘the idea’. Hitler, Halder noted in his final diary entry, was determined to enforce his will, also in the army.²⁴⁸

The traditional General Staff, for long such a powerful force, its Chief now discarded like a spent cartridge, had arrived at its symbolic final point of capitulation to the forces to which it had wedded itself in 1933. Zeitzler began the new regime by demanding from the members of the General Staff belief in the Fuhrer.²⁴⁹ He himself would soon realize that this alone would not be enough.

VI

The battle for Stalingrad was by now looming. Both sides were aware how critical it would be. The German leadership remained optimistic.

Hitler’s plans for the massively over-populated city on the Volga were similar to the annihilatory intentions he had held about Leningrad and Moscow. ‘The Fuhrer orders that on entry into the city the entire male population should be done away with (beseitigt),’ the Wehrmacht High Command recorded, ‘since Stalingrad, with its thoroughly Communist population of a million, is especially dangerous.’²⁵⁰ Halder noted simply, without additional comment: ‘Stalingrad: male population to be destroyed (vernichtet), female to be deported’.²⁵¹

When he visited FHQ on 11 September, General von Weichs, Commander of Army Group B, had told Hitler he was confident that the attack on the inner city of Stalingrad could begin almost immediately and be completed within ten days.²⁵² Indeed, the early signs were that the fall of the city would not be long delayed. But by the second half of September, the contest for Stalingrad had already turned into a battle of scarcely imaginable intensity and ferocity. The fighting was taking place often at point-blank range, street by street, house by house. German and Soviet troops were almost literally at each other’s throats. The final taking of what had rapidly become little more than a shell of smoking ruins, it was coming to be realized, could take weeks, even months.²⁵³