Italians.281
The situation in North Africa was by this time also critical. Montgomery’s 8th Army had begun its big offensive at El Alamein on 23 October. Rommel had quickly been sent back from sick-leave to hold together the defence of the Axis forces and prevent a breakthrough. Hitler’s initial confidence that Rommel would hold his ground had rapidly evaporated. Lacking fuel and munitions, and facing a numerically far superior enemy, Rommel was unable to prevent Montgomery’s tanks penetrating the German front in the renewed massive onslaught that had begun on 2 November. The following day, Hitler sent a telegram in response to Rommel’s depressing account of the position and prospects of his troops. ‘In the situation in which you find yourself,’ ran his message to Rommel, ‘there can be no other thought than to stick it out, not to yield a step, and to throw every weapon and available fighter into the battle.’ Everything would be done to send reinforcements. ‘It would not be the first time in history that the stronger will triumphed over stronger enemy battalions. But you can show your troops no other way than victory or death.’282 Rommel had not waited for Hitler’s reply. Anticipating what it would be, he had ordered a retreat hours before it arrived. Generals had been peremptorily dismissed for such insubordination during the winter crisis at the beginning of the year. Rommel’s standing with the German people — only weeks earlier, he had been feted as a military hero — was all that now saved him from the same ignominy.283
By 7 November, when Hitler travelled to Munich to give his traditional address in the Lowenbraukeller to the marchers in the 1923 Putsch, the news from the Mediterranean had dramatically worsened.
Hitler immediately gave orders for the defence of Tunis. But the landing had caught him and his military advisers off-guard. And Oran was out of reach of German bombers, which gave rise to a new torrent of rage at the incompetence of the Luftwaffe’s lack of planning.287 Further down the track, at Bamberg, Ribbentrop joined the train. He pleaded with Hitler to let him put out peace feelers to Stalin via the Soviet embassy in Stockholm with an offer of far-reaching concessions in the east. Hitler brusquely dismissed the suggestion: a moment of weakness was not the time for negotiations with an enemy.288 In his speech to the Party’s ‘Old Guard’ on the evening of 8 November, Hitler then publicly ruled out any prospect of a negotiated peace. With reference to his earlier ‘peace offers’, he declared: ‘From now on there will no more offer of peace.’289
It was hardly the atmosphere which Hitler would have chosen for a big speech. Not only had he nothing positive to report; the speech had to take place in the midst of a military crisis. Goebbels even had difficulty in pinning down exactly when the speech should start. Hitler needed time after his arrival in Munich to orientate himself on the Allied landing in North Africa and decide what to do.290 He was still uncertain when he arrived in the Brown House at 4p.m. He discussed the position of France and Italy with Goebbels, Himmler, Ribbentrop, and Keitel. Telephone calls were made to Paris, Rome, and Vichy. No decision could be arrived at in the brief time before the speech, which had been put back from its scheduled time to begin, eventually, at 6p.m.291
According to Goebbels, the news on the radio of the Allied landing in Africa had ‘electrified’ the Party gathering. ‘Everyone knows that, if things are pushed down a certain path, we are standing at a turning-point of the war.’292 But if the Party’s ‘Old Fighters’ expected any enlightenment from Hitler on the situation, they were to be disappointed. The usual verbal. assaults on Allied leaders and blustering parallels with the internal situation before the ‘seizure of power’ were all he had to offer. Refusal to compromise, the will to fight, determination to overcome the enemy, the lack of any alternative to complete success, and the certainty of final victory in a war for the very existence of the German people formed the basis of the message. Unlike the Kaiser, who had capitulated in the First World War at ‘quarter to twelve’, he ended, so he stated, ‘in principle always at five past twelve’.293 He again held out the prospect of imminent victory in Stalingrad. ‘I wanted to take it and, you know, we are modest: we have it. There are only a few tiny places there.’ If it was still taking a little time, it was because he wanted to avoid a second Verdun. He did not touch upon the Allied landings in North Africa. And the retreat forced upon Rommel’s Afrika Korps by the British 8th Army was passed over in a single sentence: ‘If they say they advanced somewhere in the desert; they’ve already advanced a few times and have had to pull back again.’294
For the fourth and last time in the year, Hitler invoked his ‘prophecy’ about the Jews. At that point in his big speech, he had just ruled out compromise and any peace-offer with external enemies. He referred to his earlier stance towards the enemy within. It had been impossible to come to any understanding with them (so Hitler now said, though at the time he had made a point of not seeking one). They had wanted force; and got it. ‘And these internal enemies, they have been eliminated
The speech was not one of Hitler’s best. He had been a compelling speaker when he had been able to twist reality in plausible fashion for his audience. But now, he was ignoring unpalatable facts, or turning them on their head. The gap between rhetoric and reality had become too wide. To most Germans, as SD reports were making apparent, Hitler’s speeches could no longer have more than a superficial impact. Even those momentarily roused by his verbal show of defiance were quickly overwhelmed once more by the concerns of everyday existence — food supplies, labour shortages, work conditions, worries about loved ones at the front, air-raids. And the news of the Allied landing in North Africa cast a deep pall of gloom about mighty forces stacked against Germany in a war whose end seemed even farther away than ever. This came on top of growing unease, whatever Hitler had said, about Stalingrad. Criticism of the German leadership for embroiling people in such a war was now more commonplace (if necessarily for the most part carefully couched), and often implicitly included Hitler — no longer detached, as he used to be, from the negative side of the regime. Hitler’s popularity had sagged. Rumours that he was physically or mentally ill, had suffered a nervous breakdown, had to be permanently attended by doctors, and fell into such frenzies of rage that he resorted to biting the carpet, had become widespread since the summer of 1942.296 The implication that the German leader and his regime were out of control was uncomfortably close to the truth.
But Hitler’s key audience had, primarily, been not the millions glued to their radio-sets, but his oldest Party loyalists inside the hall.297 It was essential to reinforce this backbone of Hitler’s personal power, and of the will to hold together the home front. Here, among this audience, Hitler could still tap much of the enthusiasm, commitment, and fanaticism of old.298 He knew the chords to play. The music was a familiar tune. But everyone there must have recognized — and in some measure shared — a sense of self-deception in the lyrics.
He stayed in the company of his Gauleiter, his most trusted paladins, until three in the morning. Every conceivable topic was discussed. Hitler held forth, among other things, on his theory that cancer was caused by smoking. Only the war was not touched upon. That was perhaps for the best in the circumstances, commented Goebbels.299
Hitler’s real concern that evening was the reaction of the French to the events in North Africa; the Ministerial Council was meeting in Vichy at that very time. He initially told Ambassador Abetz to press the Vichy regime to declare war on the British and Americans. But, realizing that the French would play for time, when time was of the essence, he was then forced to soften his demands and not insist upon a formal declaration of war. The telephone wires between Munich, Vichy, and Rome were buzzing all evening, but no conclusive steps were agreed. At that point, Hitler decided upon a meeting in Munich with Laval and Mussolini. By then, news was coming in that the initial resistance was crumbling in French North Africa.300 The landing had been secured.
By the time Ciano arrived in Munich — Mussolini felt unwell and declined to go — Hitler had heard that
