Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

told them, they could be certain: ‘that there could never be even the slightest thought of capitulation, whatever might happen’. The only point of substance in the lengthy address was the briefest of allusions to new weapons which were on the way, especially U-boats, from which he expected a complete reversal of fortunes in the war at sea.²⁹ At the high-point of his peroration, Hitler touched on the central purpose of his address. He spoke of his right to demand of his generals not simply loyalty, but fanatical support. Full of pathos, he declared: ‘In the last instance, if I should ever be deserted as supreme Leader, I must have as the last defence (Letztes) around me the entire officer-corps who must stand with drawn swords rallied round me.’³⁰ A minor sensation then occurred: Hitler was interrupted — something which had never happened since the beerhalls of Munich — as Field-Marshal von Manstein exclaimed: ‘And so it will be, mein Fuhrer.’³¹ Hitler was visibly taken aback, and lost the thread of what he was saying. He stared icily, uttered ‘That’s good. If that’s the case, we can never lose this war, never, come what may. For the nation will then go into the war with the strength that is necessary. I note that very gladly, Field-Marshal von Manstein!’ He quickly recovered, emphasizing the need, even so, for greater advances in the ‘education’ of the officer corps.³² In a literal sense, Manstein’s words could be seen to be not only harmless, but encouraging.³³ But, as Manstein himself indicated after the war, the implied meaning was more critical of Hitler. The interruption, the field-marshal later recalled, arose from a rush of blood as he sensed that Hitler had impugned the honour of himself and his fellow officers by implying that their loyalty might be in question.³⁴

Hitler, for his part, saw in the interruption a reproach for his mistrust of his generals.³⁵ The meeting with Manstein three weeks earlier still rankled with him, as did a frank letter which the field-marshal had subsequently sent.³⁶ Within minutes of the interruption, Hitler had summoned Manstein to his presence. With Keitel in attendance, Hitler forbade Manstein to interrupt in future. ‘You yourself would not tolerate such behaviour from your own subordinates,’ he stated, adding, in a gratuitous insult, that Manstein’s letter to him a few days earlier had presumably been to justify himself to posterity in his war diary. Needled at this, Manstein retorted: ‘You must excuse me if I use an English expression in this connection, but all I can say to your interpretation of my motives is that I am a gentleman.’ On this discordant note, the audience came to a close.³⁷ Manstein’s days were plainly numbered.³⁸

At noon three days later, the eleventh anniversary of the takeover of power, Hitler addressed the German people. As in the previous year, he did not travel to Berlin. In 1943, in the throes of the Stalingrad debacle, Goring had spoken in his place. This time, he spoke himself, but confined himself to a relatively short radio address from his headquarters. As his voice crackled through the ether from the Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia, the wailing sirens in Berlin announced the onset of another massive air-attack on the city. Symbolically — it might seem in retrospect — the Sportpalast, scene of many Nazi triumphs in the ‘time of struggle’ before 1933, and where so often since then tens of thousands of the Party faithful had gathered to hear Hitler’s big speeches, was gutted that night in a hail of incendiaries.³⁹

Hitler’s radio broadcast could offer listeners nothing of what they yearned to hear: when the war would be over, when the devastation from the air would be ended. Instead, what they heard was no more than a rant (along the usual lines, accompanied by the normal savage vocabulary of ‘Jewish bacteria’) about the threat of Bolshevism. In the event of victory, he repeated, Bolshevism would eradicate Germany and overrun the rest of Europe — the aim of international Jewry which could be combated only by the National Socialist state, built up over the previous eleven years.⁴⁰ Not a word was said in consolation to those who had lost loved ones at the front, or about the human misery caused by the bomb-raids. Even Goebbels acknowledged that, in bypassing practically all the issues that preoccupied ordinary people, the speech had failed to make an impact.⁴¹ Indeed, SD reports in the following days — full of references to war-weariness, anxiety over the eastern front and the bombing, and disbelief that the war could still be won — made no mention of reactions to the Fuhrer’s speech. It was a remarkable contrast with earlier years. His propaganda slogans were now falling on deaf ears. And his earlier promises of retaliation for the laying waste of German cities were flatly disbelieved as the mood plummeted following the latest bombing-raid on Berlin. Indirectly, judgement on the speech could be read into reported remarks such as: ‘We don’t want any tranquillizer pills. Tell us instead where Germany really stands’; or the comment of a Berlin worker, that only ‘an idiot can tell me the war will be won’.⁴²

III

Scepticism both about the capabilities of German air-defence to protect cities against the menace from the skies, and about the potential for launching retaliatory attacks on Britain was well justified. Goring’s earlier popularity had long since evaporated totally among the mass of the public as his once much-vaunted Luftwaffe had shown itself utterly incapable of preventing the destruction of German towns and cities. Nor did the latest wave of raids, particularly the severe attack on Berlin, do much to improve the Reich Marshal’s standing at Fuhrer Headquarters. It took little to prompt Hitler to withering tirades against Goring’s competence as Luftwaffe chief. In particular, Goebbels, who both as Gauleiter of Berlin and with new responsibilities for coordinating measures for civil defence in the air-war possibly had more first-hand experience than any other Nazi leader of the impact of the Allied bombing of German cities, lost no opportunity whenever he met Hitler to vent his spleen on Goring.⁴³ But however violently he condemned what Goebbels described as ‘Goring’s total fiasco’ in air-defence,⁴⁴ Hitler would not consider parting company with one of his longest-serving paladins. When Goebbels discussed the failure of the Luftwaffe with him at the beginning of March, Hitler even showed sympathy for the Reich Marshal’s position. ‘The Fuhrer completely understands,’ Goebbels recorded, ‘that Goring is somewhat nervous in his present situation. But he thinks that we therefore have to help him all the more. He can for the moment stand no criticism. You have to tread very carefully to tell him this or that.’⁴⁵ On a subsequent occasion, when blame was attached to the Reich Marshal for the ‘catastrophic inferiority’ in the air, Goebbels reported that Hitler ‘could do nothing about Goring because the authority of the Reich or the Party would thereby suffer the greatest damage.’⁴⁶ It would remain Hitler’s position throughout the year.

A big hope of making a dent in Allied air superiority rested on the production of the jet-fighter, the Me262, which had been commissioned the previous May. Its speed of up to 800 kilometres per hour meant that it was capable of outflying any enemy aircraft. But when the aircraft designer Professor Willi Messerschmitt had told Hitler of its disproportionately heavy fuel consumption, it had led by September 1943 to its production priority being removed. This was restored only a vital quarter of a year later, on 7 January 1944, when Speer and Milch were summoned to Hitler’s headquarters to be told, on the basis of English press reports, that British testing of jet-planes was almost complete. Hitler now demanded production on the Me262 to be stepped up immediately so that as many jets as possible could be put into service without delay. But valuable time had been lost. It was plain that the first machines would take months to produce. Whether Hitler was as clearly informed of this as Speer later claimed is questionable.⁴⁷ When Captain Hanna Reitsch, who had risen to become one of his star pilots, visited Hitler at the end of February to receive her Iron Cross, First Class, she proposed setting up a Kamikaze-squad along Japanese lines. Hitler refused, saying he expected great things in the near future from the early deployment of his jets. Reitsch pointed out that it would be months before this could happen. Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant Nicolaus von Below reinforced the point later that evening. But Hitler was adamant that the Luftwaffe had informed him differently, and that the dates he had laid down would be met. No one had openly contradicted his demands, he stated.⁴⁸ Speer himself, according to Goebbels, was confident that the new jets would bring a radical change of fortunes in the air-war.⁴⁹

Hitler’s instincts, as always, veered towards attack as the best form of defence. He looked, as did — impatiently and more and more disbelievingly — large numbers of ordinary Germans, to the chance to launch devastating weapons of destruction against Great Britain, giving the British a taste of their own medicine and forcing the Allies to rethink their strategy in the air-war. Here, too, his illusions about the speed with which the ‘wonder-weapons’ could be made ready for deployment, and their likely impact on British war strategy, were shored up by the optimistic prognoses of his advisers.

Speer had persuaded Hitler as long ago as October 1942, after witnessing trials at Peenemunde earlier in the year, of the destructive potential of a long-range rocket, the A4 (later better known as the V2) able to enter the stratosphere en route to delivering its bombs — and unstoppable devastation — on