Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

with Himmler and Bormann. It was still only possible to guess at what had happened. But Goebbels was close to the mark in his own assumptions about how the coup had taken place. How a regime that had been in power for twenty-one years could be overthrown so quickly from within gave him pause for thought.¹⁸⁶ Could something similar take place closer to home? Hitler gave his own interpretation of the situation. He presumed that Mussolini had been forced out of power. Whether he was still alive was not known, but he would certainly be unfree. Hitler saw the forces of Italian freemasonry — banned by Mussolini but still at work behind the scenes — behind the plot. Ultimately, he claimed, the coup was directed at Germany since Badoglio would certainly come to an arrangement with the British and Americans to take Italy out of the war. The British would now look for the best moment for a landing in Italy — perhaps in Genoa in order to cut off German troops in the south. Military precautions to anticipate such a move had to be taken.

Hitler explained, too, his intention of transferring a parachute division, currently based in southern France, to Rome as part of the move to occupy the city. The King, Badoglio, and the members of the new government would be arrested and flown to Germany. Once they were in German hands, things would be different. Possibly Farinacci, who had escaped arrest by fleeing to the German embassy, and was now en route to FHQ, could be made head of a puppet government if Mussolini himself could not be rescued. Hitler saw the Vatican, too, as deeply implicated in the plot to oust Mussolini. In the military briefing just after midnight he had talked wildly of occupying the Vatican and ‘getting out the whole lot of swine’.¹⁸⁷ Goebbels and Ribbentrop dissuaded him from such rash action, certain to have damaging international repercussions. Hitler still pressed for rapid action to capture the new Italian government. Rommel, who by then had also arrived in FHQ and was earmarked for supreme command in Italy, opposed the improvised, high-risk, panicky response. He favoured a carefully prepared action; but that would probably take some eight days to put into place.¹⁸⁸ The meeting ended with the way through the crisis still unclear.

By this time, reports were coming in of anti-fascist demonstrations on the streets of Rome. There were evident signs, too, of marked unease and uncertainty among the German population. Nazi supporters were shocked at Mussolini’s overthrow. Illegal opposition groups saw a ray of hope. The notion that something similar could take place in Germany ‘can be heard constantly’, according to the SD’s soundings of popular opinion: ‘the idea that the form of government thought in the Reich to be unshakable could in Germany, too, suddenly be altered, is very widespread.’¹⁸⁹ Goebbels’s propaganda machine faced problems. As Goebbels recognized, he could not tell the truth that ‘it was a matter of a far-reaching organizational and ideological crisis of Fascism, perhaps even of its liquidation’. Knowledge of what was happening in Italy ‘could in certain circumstances incite some subversive elements in Germany who perhaps believed they could contrive the same with us that Badoglio and company have contrived in Rome’. Hitler did not think there was much danger of that. But he commissioned Himmler just the same to suppress any indications with maximum ruth-lessness.¹⁹⁰

The midday military conference was again taken up with the issue of moving troops to Italy to secure above all the north of the country, and with the hastily devised scheme to capture the Badoglio government.¹⁹¹ Field-Marshal von Kluge, who had flown in from Army Group Centre — desperately trying to hold the Soviet offensive in the Orel bulge, to the north of Kursk — was abruptly told of the implications of the events in Italy for the eastern front. Hitler said he needed the crack Waffen-SS divisions currently assigned to Manstein in the south of the eastern front to be transferred immediately to Italy. That meant Kluge giving up some of his forces to reinforce Manstein’s weakened front. Kluge forcefully pointed out, though to no avail, that this would make defence in the Orel region impossible. But the positions on the Dnieper being prepared for an orderly retreat by his troops to be taken up before winter were far from ready. What he was being asked to do, protested Kluge, was to undertake ‘an absolutely overhasty evacuation’. ‘Even so, Herr Feldmarshall: we are not master here of our own decisions,’ rejoined Hitler.¹⁹² Kluge was left with no choice.

Meanwhile, Farinacci had arrived. His description of what had happened and his criticism of Mussolini did not endear him to Hitler. Any idea of using him as the figurehead of a German-controlled regime was discarded.¹⁹³ Hitler spoke individually to his leading henchmen before, in need of a rest after a hectic twenty-four hours, retiring to his rooms to eat alone. He returned for a lengthy conference that evening, attended by thirty-five persons. But the matter was taken no further.¹⁹⁴ Next day, he was still determined to act without delay, ‘whatever it might cost’. He preferred ‘generous improvisation’ to ‘systematic work starting too late and allowing things in Italy to become too consolidated’. But Rommel was sceptical about the planned military operations.¹⁹⁵ So were Jodl and Kesselring.¹⁹⁶ Within a few days, Hitler was forced to concede that any notion of occupying Rome and sending in a raiding party to take the members of the Badoglio government and the Italian royal family captive was both precipitate and wholly impracticable.¹⁹⁷ The plans were called off. Hitler’s attention focused now on discovering the whereabouts of the Duce and bringing him into German hands as soon as possible. In the meantime, he left for him in the possession of Kesselring a copy of the collected works of Nietzsche as a sixtieth birthday present. Evidently, he presumed that the Duce, once located, would have the time and inclination to reflect on the ‘will to power’.¹⁹⁸

With the Italian crisis still at its height, the disastrous month of July drew to a close amid the heaviest air- raids to date. Between 24 and 30 July, the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command, using the release of aluminium strips to blind German radar, unleashed ‘Operation Gomorrha’ — a series of devastating raids on Hamburg, outdoing in death and destruction anything previously experienced in the air-war. Waves of incendiaries whipped up horrific fire-storms, turning the city into a raging inferno, consuming everything and everybody in their path. People suffocated in their thousands in cellars or were burnt to cinders on the streets. An estimated 30,000 people lost their lives; over half a million were left homeless; twenty-four hospitals, fifty-eight churches, and 277 schools lay in ruins; over 50 per cent of the city was completely gutted.¹⁹⁹ As usual, Hitler revealed no sense of remorse at any human losses. He was chiefly concerned about the psychological impact. When he was given news that fifty German planes had mined the Humber estuary, he exploded: ‘You can’t tell the German people in this situation: that’s mined; 50 planes have laid mines! That has no effect at all… You only break terror through terror! We have to have counter-attacks. Everything else is rubbish.’²⁰⁰

Hitler mistook the mood of a people with whom he had lost touch. What they wanted, in their vast majority, was less the retaliation that was Hitler’s only thought than proper defence against the terror from the skies and — above all else — an end to the war that was costing them their homes and their lives. SD reports caught rumours of unrest which the police had had to suppress, and spoke — recalling 1918 — of a ‘November mood’ among the population.²⁰¹ Gauleiter Karl Kaufmann repeatedly requested Hitler to visit the ruins of Germany’s second largest city. But the Fuhrer would not even receive a party of those who had performed outstanding feats in the emergency services.²⁰² Goebbels pleaded for Hitler to speak on the radio, even for only a quarter of an hour. ‘The Fuhrer has not spoken to the public since Heroes’ Memorial Day [21 March],’ Goebbels added. ‘He has disappeared somewhat into the clouds. That’s not good for the practical war effort.’ Hitler agreed to speak — probably later in the week.²⁰³ Naturally, nothing came of it. That Hitler would not speak to the people was incomprehensible to Goebbels. ‘At any rate, the unrest among the broad masses has grown to such an extent that only a word from the Fuhrer himself can again clarify matters,’ he ruminated. But Hitler adjudged the current situation ‘as unsuitable as could be imagined’.²⁰⁴ In any case, he remained, as he had been throughout the agony of Hamburg, more taken up with events in Italy.

Remarkably enough, despite the frenetic urgency of the crisis meetings following Mussolini’s deposition, the major military decisions had, in fact, been postponed or were left unimplemented. The flurry of activity had produced little. The war council to which his acolytes had been summoned post haste from all over the Reich had left matters in the air. The spontaneous ‘decisions’ taken in the lengthy military briefings — amid outbursts of menacing invective towards the Badoglio ‘clique’ — came in the main to nothing, or were toned down in the light of calmer professional judgement. Badoglio’s protestations that Italy’s commitment to the war was unchanged meant that Germany had to move cautiously. Wiser counsels had prevailed over Hitler’s impulsive urge to occupy Rome and depose the government. And though Hitler had still rejected any evacuation of Sicily, insistent that the enemy should not set foot on the Italian mainland, Kesselring had taken steps to prepare the ground for what proved a brilliantly planned evacuation on the night of 11 — 12 August, catching the Allies by surprise and allowing 40,000 German and 62,000 Italian troops, with their equipment, to escape to safety. The last German troops in Sicily were finally given the order to undertake a fighting withdrawal to the mainland on 17 August.²⁰⁵ The split command between Kesselring in the south and Rommel in the north of Italy had been left in place.²⁰⁶ But as August drew on, suspicions mounted that it would not be long before the Italians defected. And at the end of the month, directives for action in the event of an Italian defection, in the drawer for