Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

aimed at stiffening his backbone. He drove home the dangers facing Germany and its allies. He did not betray a trace of defeatism. ‘The Fuhrer did not know whether or when an invasion would occur,’ the record of the meeting ran, ‘but the English had adopted measures which could only be maintained for 6-8 weeks and a serious crisis would break out in England if the invasion did not occur. He would then deploy new technical weapons which were effective within a radius of 250–300 kilometres and would transform London into a heap of ruins.’¹¹² The wishful thinking was necessary — and not just to shore up the flagging morale of the Duce.

VI

A familiar face, not seen for some months, had returned to the Berghof in mid-April. Since being admitted to the Red Cross hospital at Hohenlychen, seventy miles north of Berlin, for a knee operation (accompanied by severe nervous strain), Albert Speer had been out of circulation. Hitler had seen him briefly in March, while Speer was convalescing for a short time at Klessheim, but the armaments minister had then left for Meran, in South Tyrol, to recover in the company of his family.¹¹³

An absent minister was an invitation, in the Third Reich, for others thirsting for power to step into the vacuum. Karl Otto Saur, the able head of the technical office in Speer’s ministry, had taken the opportunity to exploit Hitler’s favour in his boss’s absence. When a Fighter Staff had been set up in March — linking Speer’s ministry with the Luftwaffe to speed up and coordinate production of air-defence — Hitler placed it, against Speer’s express wishes, in the hands of Saur.¹¹⁴ And when, stung by the near-unhampered bombing of German cities, Hitler discovered that little progress had been made on the building of huge underground bomb-proof bunkers to protect fighter production against air-raids, Speer’s other right-hand man, Xaver Dorsch, head of the central office of the massive construction apparatus, the Organization Todt (OT), spotted his chance. Goring, pressed by Hitler on the non-production of the bunkers, and keen to emerge from the opprobrium of the continued failure of air-defence, summoned Dorsch in mid-April and told him that the ?? would have to build the bunkers without delay. Dorsch replied that he had no authority within the Reich itself; Speer had designated the ?? only for work outside the Reich borders. But he was alert enough and sufficiently briefed on the purpose and potential of the meeting to produce plans for such a project in France. Goring reported back to Hitler. That evening, Dorsch was commissioned by Hitler with the sole responsibility for the building of the six immense bunkers within the Reich itself — thereby overriding Speer — accompanied by full authority to assure the work had top priority.

Dorsch had promised Hitler the completion of the bunkers by November. Speer knew this to be impossible.¹¹⁵ But this bothered him less than the undermining of his own power-base. Speer had not reached his high position without an ability to take care of his own interests in the ruthless scheming and jockeying for position that went on around Hitler. He was not prepared to accept the undermining of his own authority without a fight. On 19 April, he wrote a long letter to Hitler complaining at the decisions he had taken and demanding the restoration of his own authority over Dorsch. He let it be known that he wished to resign should Hitler not accede to his wishes. Hitler’s initial anger at the letter gave way to the more pragmatic consideration that he still needed Speer’s organizational talents. He passed a message to Speer, via Erhard Milch, Luftwaffe armaments supremo, that he still held him in high esteem. On 24 April, Speer appeared at the Berghof. Hitler, formally attired, gloves in hand, came out to meet him, accompanying him like some foreign dignitary into the imposing hall. Speer, his vanity touched, was immediately impressed. Hitler went on to flatter Speer. He told him that he needed him to oversee all building works. He was in agreement with whatever Speer thought right in this area. Speer was won over. That evening, he was back in the Berghof ‘family’, making small-talk with Eva Braun and the others in the late-night session around the fire. Bormann suggested listening to some music. Records of music by Wagner, naturally, and Johann Strau?’s Die Fledermaus were put on. Speer felt at home again.¹¹⁶

In Speer’s absence, and despite the extensive damage from air-raids, Saur had in fact masterminded a remarkable increase in fighter-production — though with a corresponding decline in output of bombers. Delighted as he was with better prospects of air-defence, Hitler’s instincts lay, as always, in aggression and regaining the initiative through bombing. The new chief of the Luftwaffe operations staff, Karl Koller, was, therefore, pushing at an open door when he presented Hitler with a report, in early May, pointing out the dangerous decline in production of bombers, and what was needed to sustain German dominance. Hitler promptly told Goring that the low targets for bomber-production were unacceptable. Goring passed the message to the Fighter Staff that there was to be a trebling of bomber production — alongside the massive increase in fighters to come off the production lines. Eager to please, as always, Goring had told Hitler of rapid progress in the production of the jet, the Me262, of which the Dictator had such high hopes.¹¹⁷

The previous autumn, having as we noted removed top priority from production of the Me262 because of its heavy fuel-consumption, Hitler had changed his mind. He had been led to believe — possibly it was a misunderstanding — by the designer, Professor Willi Messerschmitt, that the jet, once in service, could be used not as a fighter, but as a bomber to attack Britain and to play a decisive role in repelling the coming invasion, wreaking havoc on the beaches as Allied troops were disembarking. Goring, at least as unrealistic as his Leader in his expectations, promised the jet-bombers would be available by May.¹¹⁸ At his meeting with Speer and Milch in January, when he demanded accelerated production of the jet, Hitler had stated, to the horror of the Luftwaffe’s technical staff, that he wanted to deploy it as a bomber. Arguments to the contrary were of no avail.¹¹⁹

Now, on 23 May, in a meeting at the Berghof with Goring, Saur, and Milch about aircraft production, he heard mention of the Me262 as a fighter. He interrupted. He had presumed, he stated, that it was being built as a bomber. It transpired that his instructions of the previous autumn, unrealistic as they were, had been simply ignored. Hitler exploded in fury, ordering the Me262 — despite all technical objections levelled by the experts present — to be built exclusively as a bomber. Goring lost no time in passing the brickbats down the line to the Luftwaffe construction experts. But he had to tell Hitler that the major redesign needed for the plane would now delay production for five months.¹²⁰ Whether fuel would by that time be available for it was another matter. Heavy American air-raids on fuel plants in central and eastern Germany on 12 May, to be followed by even more destructive raids at the end of the month, along with Allied attacks, carried out from bases in Italy, on the Romanian oil-refineries near Ploesti, halved German fuel production. Nimbly taking advantage of Goring’s latest embarrassment, Speer had no trouble in persuading Hitler to transfer to his ministry full control over aircraft production.¹²¹

Three days after the wrangle about the Me262, another, larger, gathering took place on the Obersalzberg. A sizeable number of generals and other senior officers, who had been participants in ideological training courses and were ready to return to the front, had been summoned to the Berghof to hear a speech by Hitler — one of several such speeches he gave between autumn 1943 and summer 1944.¹²² They assembled on 26 May in the Platterhof, the big hotel adjacent to the Berghof on the site of the far more modest Pension Moritz, where Hitler had stayed in the 1920s. Two days earlier, they had been addressed by Reichsfuhrer-SS Himmler, who had sought to strengthen their National Socialist commitment by emphasizing how the ‘Jewish Question’, a matter ‘decisive for the internal security of the Reich and Europe’, had been ‘solved without compromise, according to command and rational understanding (verstandesma?iger Erkenntnis).’¹²³ The ‘Final Solution’ was being used both to harden fighting morale — and to point out to the military commanders about to head for the front that they and the leaders of the regime were all in the same boat, all complicitous in the killing of the Jews. Hitler spoke to the officers that afternoon. His purpose, like Himmler’s, was to cement their identity as a group with the ideals of National Socialism that he embodied.¹²⁴ And like Himmler, he would refer in unmistakable terms to what was happening to the Jews.

After a lengthy preamble outlining, as usual, how he came to his own political convictions and leadership of party and state, Hitler expounded the virtues of intolerance, based upon his social-Darwinistic principles, emphasizing that ‘the whole of life is a perpetual intolerance’, that there was ‘no tolerance in nature’ which ‘destroys (vernichtet) everything incapable of life’.¹²⁵ He went on to stress the leadership qualities to be found only in the Nordic race, the forging of a new classless society under National Socialism, and the glorious future that would follow final victory. A central passage in the speech touched on the ‘Final Solution’. Hitler spoke of the Jews as a ‘foreign body’ in the German people which, though not all had