Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

understood why he had to proceed ‘so brutally and ruthlessly’, it had been essential to expel.¹²⁶

He came to the key point. ‘In removing the Jews,’ he went on, ‘I eliminated in Germany the possibility of creating some sort of revolutionary core or nucleus. You could naturally say: Yes, but could you not have done it more simply — or not more simply, since everything else would have been more complicated — but more humanely? Gentlemen,’ he continued, ‘we are in a life-or-death struggle. If our opponents are victorious in this struggle, the German people would be eradicated (ausgerottet). Bolshevism would slaughter millions and millions and millions of our intellectuals. Anyone not dying through a shot in the neck would be deported. The children of the upper classes would be taken away and eliminated. This entire bestiality has been organized by the Jews.’ He spoke of 40,000 women and children being burnt to death through the incendiaries dropped on Hamburg, adding: ‘Don’t expect anything else from me except the ruthless upholding of the national interest in the way which, in my view, will have the greatest effect and benefit for the German nation.’ At this the officers burst into loud and lasting applause.

He continued: ‘Here just as generally, humanity would amount to the greatest cruelty towards one’s own people. If I already incur the Jews’ hatred, I at least don’t want to miss the advantages of such hatred.’ Shouts of ‘quite right’ were heard from his audience. ‘The advantage,’ he went on, ‘is that we possess a cleanly organized entity with which no one can interfere. Look in contrast at other states. We have gained insight into a state which took the opposite route: Hungary. The entire state undermined and corroded, Jews everywhere, even in the highest places Jews and more Jews, and the entire state covered, I have to say, by a seamless web of agents and spies who have desisted from striking only because they feared that a premature strike would draw us in, though they waited for this strike. I have intervened here too, and this problem will now also be solved.’ He cited once again his ‘prophecy’ of 1939, that in the event of another war not the German nation but Jewry itself would be ‘eradicated’ (ausgerottet). The audience vigorously applauded.¹²⁷ Continuing, he underlined ‘one sole principle, the maintenance of our race’. What served this principle, he said, was right; what detracted from it, wrong.¹²⁸ He concluded, again to storms of applause, by speaking of the ‘mission’ of the German people in Europe. As always, he posed stark alternatives: defeat in the war would mean ‘the end of our people’, victory ‘the beginning of our domination over Europe’.¹²⁹

VII

Whatever nervousness was felt at the Berghof in the early days of June about an invasion which was as good as certain to take place within the near future, there were few, if any, signs of it on the surface. To Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus von Below, it seemed almost like pre-war times on the Obersalzberg. Hitler would take Below’s wife on one side when she was invited to lunch and talk about the children or her parents’ farm. In the afternoon, Hitler would gather up his hat, his walking-stick, and his cape, and lead the statutory walk to the Tea House for coffee and cakes. In the evenings, around the fire he would find some relaxation in the inconsequential chat of his guests or would hold forth, as ever, on usual themes — great personalities of history, the future shape of Europe, carrying out the work of Providence in combating Jews and Bolsheviks, the influence of the churches, and, of course, architectural plans, along with the usual reminiscences of earlier years.¹³⁰ Even the news, on 3-4 June, that the Allies had taken Rome, with the German troops pulling back to the Apennines, was received calmly. For all its obvious strategic importance, Italy was, for Hitler, little more than a sideshow.¹³¹ He would have little longer to wait for the main event.

Hitler seemed calm, and looked well compared with his condition in recent months, when Goebbels accompanied him to the Tea House on the afternoon of 5 June. Earlier, he had told the Propaganda Minister that the plans for retaliation were now so advanced that he would be ready to unleash 300-400 of the new pilotless flying- bombs on London within a few days.¹³² (He had, in fact, given the order for a major air-attack on London, including use of these new weapons, on 16 May.)¹³³ He repeated how confident he was that the invasion, when it came, would be repulsed. Rommel, he said, was equally confident.¹³⁴ The field-marshal indeed appeared to have overcome much of his initial scepticism of the previous autumn, when Hitler had made him responsible for the Atlantic defences (though Goebbels thought the report by one of his underlings, following a visit to Rommel, ‘to some extent alarming’).¹³⁵ On 4 June Rommel had even left for a few days’ leave with his family near Ulm. Other commanding officers in the west were equally unaware of the imminence of the invasion, though reconnaissance had provided telegraph warnings that very day of things stirring on the other side of the channel. Nothing of this was reported to OKW at Berchtesgaden or, even more astonishingly, to General Friedrich Dollmann’s 7th Army directly on the invasion front.¹³⁶

On their walk to the Tea House, Goebbels spotted no signs of depression or mental tiredness in Hitler. He was still unfolding plans for a future after the war. He ruled out any arrangement with Britain. He thought the country finished, and was determined, given half an opportunity, to impart the death-blow. The English plutocracy had planned, he went on, for war against Germany since 1936. Britain and Italy would eventually be made to pay for the war. Goebbels returned from the walk with fears for the course of the war should Hitler’s health not hold up. The Propaganda Minister entrusted one wish to his diary, following discussion of a number of personnel issues (not least, his long-standing criticisms of Goring and Ribbentrop): that the Fuhrer ‘may become harder in his material and personnel decisions than he actually is’.¹³⁷ Among such decisions, Goebbels was still hoping that Hitler would provide him with full powers to introduce genuine ‘total war’ measures — far more radical than those adopted so far — within Germany. For this, the Propaganda Minister would still have to wait some weeks.

That evening, Goebbels was back at the Berghof. After the meal Hitler and his entourage viewed the latest newsreel. The discussion moved to films and the theatre. Eva Braun joined in with pointed criticism of some productions. ‘We sit then around the hearth until two o’clock at night,’ wrote Goebbels, ‘exchange reminiscences, take pleasure in the many fine days and weeks we have had together. The Fuhrer inquires about this and that. All in all, the mood is like the good old times.’ A thunderstorm broke as Goebbels left the Berghof. It was four hours since the first news started to trickle in that the invasion would begin that night. Goebbels had been disinclined to believe the tapping into enemy communications. But coming down the Obersalzberg to his quarters in Berchtesgaden, the news was all too plain; ‘the decisive day of the war had begun.’¹³⁸

Hitler went to bed not long after Goebbels had left, probably around 3a.m. When Speer arrived next morning, seven hours later, Hitler had still not been wakened with the news of the invasion. In fact, it seems that the initial scepticism at the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht that this indeed was the invasion had been finally dispelled only a little while earlier, probably between 8.15 and 9.30a.m.¹³⁹ Influenced by German intelligence reports,¹⁴⁰ Hitler had spoken a good deal in previous weeks that the invasion would begin with a decoy attack to drag German troops away from the actual landing-place. (In fact, Allied deception through the dropping of dummy parachutists and other diversionary tactics did contribute to initial German confusion about the location of the landing.¹⁴¹) His adjutants now hesitated to waken him with mistaken information. According to Speer, Hitler — who had earlier correctly envisaged that the landing would be on the Normandy coast — was still suspicious at the lunchtime military conference that it was a diversionary tactic put across by enemy intelligence. Only then did he agree — Jodl had earlier been opposed¹⁴² — to the already belated demand of the Commander-in-Chief in the West, Field-Marshal von Rundstedt (who had expressed uncertainty in telegrams earlier that morning about whether the landing was merely a decoy), to deploy two panzer divisions held in reserve in the Paris area against the beachhead that was rapidly being established over 100 miles away.¹⁴³ The delay was crucial. Had they moved by night, the panzer divisions might have made a difference. Their movements by day were hampered by heavy Allied air-attacks, and they suffered severe losses of men and material.¹⁴⁴

At the first news of the invasion, Hitler had seemed relieved — as if, thought Goebbels, a great burden had fallen from his shoulders. What he had been expecting for months was now reality. It had taken place, he said, exactly where he had predicted it.¹⁴⁵ The poor weather, he added, was on Germany’s side.¹⁴⁶ He exuded confidence, declaring that it was now possible to smash the enemy. He was ‘absolutely certain’ that the Allied troops, for whose quality he had no high regard, would be repulsed. ‘If we repel the invasion,’ Goebbels noted, ‘then the scene in the war will be completely transformed. The Fuhrer reckons for certain with this. He has few worries that this couldn’t succeed.’ No one among the Nazi leaders congregated in