Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

resurrecting the Ministerial Council and adding to it Speer, Ley, Himmler, and Goebbels. The Propaganda Minister even manipulated Goring into accepting him as his deputy in the running of the intended weekly meetings.⁶⁶ Predictably, nothing came of it. During April, Goring was included by Lammers, with Hitler’s approval, in two meetings of the ‘Committee of Three’, dealing with the application of the Fuhrer Decree on Total War to the occupied territories. His antagonism to the Committee seems thereafter largely to have evaporated.⁶⁷ As so often, Goring’s initial energy soon gave way to lethargy. In any case, his star had sunk so deep in the wake of further heavy air-raids that he must have realized how little realistic hope he had of gaining Hitler’s backing for any new position of authority. A diplomatic illness — whether or not associated with his sizeable daily intake of narcotics is not known — came to his aid.⁶⁸ April ended with him prescribed bed-rest by his doctor.⁶⁹ As Speer was to comment laconically, it was only in Nuremberg, on trial for his life, that Goring came fully to life again.⁷⁰

Goebbels was still talking as late as September of finding enough support to block Lammers’s attempt (as the Propaganda Minister saw it) to arrogate authority to himself on the back of a Fuhrer decree empowering him to review any disputes between ministers and decide whether they should be taken to Hitler.⁷¹ But by that time, there was scant need of intrigue to stymie the ‘Committee of Three’. It had already atrophied into insignificance.

Proposals to cut down on bureaucracy, simplify government administration, and save manpower were largely vitiated by Hitler himself. When faced with a decision on proposals to abolish a number of local government districts (Landkreise) and merge them with their neighbours, Hitler’s anti-bureaucratic instincts gave way to cautious conservatism. The districts would stay as they were. The office of the Landrat (district prefect) was especially important during wartime, wrote Bormann — doubtless echoing Hitler — in a letter to Reich Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick on 15 June 1943. The wartime regulation of the economy (Zwangsbewirtschaftung) had greatly increased the public’s need for access to the Landrat’s office. Any trace of popular unrest had to be avoided. And, in any case, the manpower savings would be small.⁷²

Hitler saw the ‘home front’, as always, mainly in terms of morale and would rule out any measures that might weaken it. He similarly blocked, partly at Lammers’s suggestion, attempts to simplify regional government and Lander administration.⁷³ Even plans to dissolve the Prussian Finance Ministry, where there was extensive and unnecessary duplication with the Reich Finance Ministry, came to nothing. Hitler said he could not decide on the matter without consulting Goring about it. Goring implied he preferred reduction to abolition. By June, Bormann was left isolated in pleading for the abolition of the Ministry. Lammers was able to garner support for its retention, without personnel reductions.⁷⁴

Almost the only achievement of lasting effect by the ‘Committee of Three’ during its nine months or so in action was a moratorium on the creation of new civil service posts.⁷⁵ Its attempts to close down small businesses deemed unnecessary for the war effort came up with negligible results — and attained at a massive cost of alienation of those whose livelihood was threatened.⁷⁶ Reports from the SD reflected the antagonism felt as small traders faced ruin through their shops being shut and the public, denied consumer outlets and already limited leisure pursuits, were alienated through the closure of bars and restaurants.⁷⁷ One local SD report, from Bad Kissingen in Lower Franconia, summed up the mood: ‘The regard for the NSDAP has been gravely damaged by the intervention of the Party in the business closures and labour deployment in the province. According to rumour, national comrades stricken by closures and by loss of relatives have pulled down and smashed pictures of the Fuhrer in their homes.’⁷⁸

The futility of the Committee’s efforts and the hopeless irrationality of government in the Fuhrer state were revealed in all their starkness by the deliberations, lasting six months in all at one of the most critical junctures of the war, about whether to ban horse-racing. Goebbels tried to instigate a ban following complaints (he claimed) from Berlin workers about racing taking place on Sundays while they had to work. He demanded a directive from Hitler. Bormann and Lammers persuaded the dictator that workers should not be denied one of the limited forms of entertainment still available. But after a visit by Goebbels to Fuhrer Headquarters, Hitler changed his mind and favoured a ban. He was now belaboured by various interested parties. Lammers eventually passed on a ruling that specific named racecourses were to be kept open. The Reich Defence Commissars (all of them Gauleiter) in these areas had permission to ban any race-meetings if they thought the needs of morale demanded this. The rest of the racecourses — along with bookies’ offices — were to be closed. Unsurprisingly, protests were immediately voiced by provincial Party bosses who felt their own areas were disadvantaged.

A dispute in Munich between Gauleiter Paul Giesler (brother of court-architect, Hermann) and the corrupt, roughneck city councillor Christian Weber, one of Hitler’s longest-standing cronies, had to go as far as the Fuhrer himself to find its resolution. Weber was a classical product of the Party’s early days in Munich. A former pub- bouncer and beer-hall bruiser, he had been elevated in the Third Reich to a host of honorary offices in the ‘capital city of the Movement’, with an apartment in the Residenz formerly inhabited by the Kings of Bavaria. He was detested locally for the way he flaunted the wealth and power his favour with Hitler had brought him. Some scurrilously thought his advancement was to keep him from spilling unwelcome secrets about the Fuhrer’s lifestyle in the early years. But Hitler would have had other ways of handling such indirect blackmail. Weber had certainly rendered Hitler valuable service in the Munich street-fighting days. His rise to local riches and notoriety was simply a particularly colourful expression of the gross corruption that was an endemic feature of the Third Reich. But at any rate, as an ‘Old Fighter’ — literally — from the earliest times, and owner (among many other things, including a monopoly of the regional bus service) of the racecourse at Riem, Weber had to be placated.⁷⁹ So, however, did Giesler, Hitler’s most important lieutenant in Bavaria, and a fanatical supporter of the ‘total war’ drive. Hitler’s judgement-of-Solomon ‘decision’ was that racing should be banned at Riem (on the grounds that it could only be reached by car and bus, thus causing unnecessary petrol usage), but allowed in the city centre on the Theresienwiese.

Shortly afterwards he noticed a newspaper advertisement for horse-racing in Berlin and remarked to Bormann that Munich should not be disadvantaged against the Reich capital. Racing was again to be permitted in Riem. As the issue rumbled on, various authorities became involved. Lammers and Bormann exchanged letters. His opinion sought yet again, Hitler came up with the intriguing macro-economic reflection that betting absorbed surplus spending power. The Gauleiter continued their complaints. Finally, after six months of wrangling on an issue of such breathtaking triviality, Bormann and Lammers agreed, in accordance with ‘an expression of will of the Fuhrer’, to permit horse-racing and bookmaking in general terms — but to leave the decision in each individual case to the respective Reich Defence Commissar.⁸⁰ Ultimately, therefore, no decision had been taken, other than to leave matters to the whim of the Party bosses.

Little could demonstrate more clearly the absurdity of the dictatorship’s patterns of rule (or lack of them). Hitler’s power was intact. His imprimatur had been sought on several occasions by all parties concerned. No one else could settle the matter. But nor, except by the ultimate retreat from a decision, could Hitler. His wavering, fluctuating interventions — often evidently following the advice of the last person to have spoken to him — dragged out the affair. But it was scarcely rational in the first place that a head of state and commander of the armed forces should be repeatedly bothered in the middle of a world war by various underlings involved in petty disputes over horse-racing. The problem was, here as in other instances: he had delegated no genuine authority to the ‘Committee of Three’; they in turn had to call upon him at every point; and this was frequently necessary, as in the horse-racing case, because there was no central Reich body to reach sensibly agreed decisions and impose them as government policy. The failed experiment of the ‘Committee of Three’ showed conclusively that, however weak their structures, all forms of collective government were doomed by the need to protect the arbitrary ‘will of the Fuhrer’. But it was increasingly impossible for this ‘will’ to be exercised in ways conducive to the functioning of a modern state, let alone one operating under the crisis conditions of a major war. As a system of government, Hitler’s dictatorship had no future.

II

Matters at home were far from Hitler’s primary concern in the spring and summer of 1943. He was, in fact, almost solely preoccupied with the course of the war. The strain of this had left its mark on him. Guderian, back in