Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

When he had first seen the prototypes of the V2, Hitler had envisaged 5,000 of the rockets being directed against Britain in a massive initial onslaught.²³³ But when the eventual launch took place on 8 September, it proved possible only to dispatch twenty-five rockets in a period of ten days.²³⁴ They were little more than a pin-prick in the Allied thrust against Nazi Germany. Even so, Hitler expected a great deal from the further deployment of the weapon.²³⁵ By the end of the war, through the brutal exploitation of foreign workers, it had proved possible to aim over 3,000 V2s mainly at London, Antwerp, and Brussels. There was no defence against the missiles. Their terroristic effect was considerable, causing the deaths of 2,724 persons in England and many more in Belgium. Their military effect was, however, negligible.²³⁶

Meanwhile, the development of the one secret weapon certainly capable of affecting Germany’s war fortunes, the atomic bomb, had been worked on since the start of the war (though with only slow progress). The research was given special support by Speer in 1942 but, despite his offer of increased funding, was still nowhere near completion and — though the German nuclear scientists were unaware of it — lagged far behind advances made in the USA. There had seemed no need to force research on such a weapon during the early, triumphant phase of the war. By the time of Speer’s meeting with leading atomic scientists, including Otto Hahn and Werner Heisenberg, in mid-1942, a nuclear weapon was — as the Armaments Minister was told — theoretically possible but in practice several years off. Hitler, already aware in a general sense of the feasibility of an atomic bomb in the more distant future, took Speer’s report as confirmation that he would never live to see its deployment, that it could play no part in the present war. Consequently, he took no great interest in it. By this time, in any case, the resources needed to deploy it were simply not available — and diminishing fast. It is as well, nevertheless, that the bomb was not on offer: Hitler would not have hesitated for an instant to drop it on London and Moscow.²³⁷

A key part of Hitler’s strategy was the deployment of large numbers of fighters on the western front to regain the initiative in the air. He had emphasized this in his briefing with Jodl at the end of July.²³⁸ In August, when Speer and Adolf Galland, the flying ace who headed the Luftwaffe’s fighter arm, tried to persuade him to use the fighters in the Reich rather than at the western front, he had exploded in such a frenzy of rage that he had ordered a stop to all aircraft production in favour of total concentration on flak.²³⁹ Speer had ignored the outburst of frustration. In September, fighter production reached a record 2,878 aircraft — a two-and- a-half-fold increase over production in January.²⁴⁰ Hitler had his fighters.

Whether they would have any fuel was another question. Hitler knew that raw materials and fuel had sunk to perilous levels. Speer sent him a memorandum on 5 September pointing out that the loss of chrome from Turkey meant that the entire armaments production would grind to a halt within sixteen or so months, by 1 January 1946. Hitler took the news calmly.²⁴¹ It can only have encouraged him in the thought that there was nothing to lose, and that everything had to be staked on the new western offensive. He was also informed by Speer that the fuel situation was so critical that fighter squadrons were being grounded and army movements restricted. To make 17,500 tons of fuel — what had formerly been two-and-a-half days’ production — available for the Ardennes offensive, delivery to other parts of the front had to be seriously curtailed.²⁴²

Together with Jodl, Hitler pored over maps of the Ardennes while lying on his sick-bed at the end of September.²⁴³ He later told Goebbels that he had spent the weeks of his illness almost exclusively brooding over his revenge. Now he was well again, he could begin to put his intentions into effect.²⁴⁴ It would be his final gamble. As he knew, it was a long shot. ‘If it doesn’t succeed,’ he told Speer, ‘I see no other possibility of bringing the war to a favourable conclusion.’ ‘But,’ he added, ‘we’ll pull through.’²⁴⁵

From Hitler’s perspective, there was no alternative. Even if the fronts could be stabilized, the shortages of fuel meant the war would be lost within months.²⁴⁶ As his negative response to Oshima’s proposal had shown, he would not entertain thoughts of suing for peace with Stalin from a position of weakness. He was equally dismissive of suggestions from Papen that soundings could be made towards peace in the west.²⁴⁷ He had to regain the initiative — and this could only be achieved in the west. That was his thinking in autumn 1944. In Speer’s view, Hitler knew that he was playing his last card.²⁴⁸

Before he could fully focus his attention on operational preparations for the coming offensive, a lingering remnant of the July bomb-plot momentarily detained him. Hitler had suspected since early August that Rommel had known about the plot against him.²⁴⁹ This had been confirmed by the testimony of Lieutenant- Colonel Casar von Hofacker, a member of Stulpnagel’s staff in Paris implicated in the plot, who had provided a written statement of Rommel’s support for the conspiracy. Hitler showed the statement to Keitel and had Rommel summoned to see him. The field-marshal, recuperating from his injuries at home near Ulm, claimed he was not fit to travel. At this, Keitel wrote Rommel a letter, drafted by Hitler, suggesting he report to the Fuhrer if innocent. Otherwise, he would face trial. He should weigh up the consequences and if necessary act on them. Hitler ordered the letter and Hofacker’s incriminating statement to be taken to Rommel by General Wilhelm Burgdorf (Schmundt’s replacement as his chief adjutant).

Burgdorf, accompanied by his deputy, General Ernst Maisel, drove to Rommel’s home at Herrlingen on Saturday, 14 October, and handed over the letter together with Hofacker’s statement. Rommel inquired whether Hitler was aware of the statement. He then requested a little time to think matters over. He did not take long. Hitler had given orders to Burgdorf that Rommel should be prevented from shooting himself — the traditional mode of suicide among officers — and should be offered poison so that the death could be attributed to brain damage following the car accident. Mindful of Rommel’s popularity among the German public, Hitler offered him a state funeral with all honours. Faced with expulsion from the army, trial before the People’s Court, certain execution, and inevitable recriminations for his family, Rommel took the poison.²⁵⁰

Hitler was represented by Rundstedt at the state funeral in the town hall at Ulm on 18 October. Rundstedt declared in his eulogy that Rommel’s ‘heart belonged to the Fuhrer’. Addressing the dead field-marshal, he intoned: ‘Our Fuhrer and Supreme Commander sends you through me his thanks and his greetings.’ For public consumption, Hitler announced the same day that Rommel had succumbed to his severe wounds following his car accident. ‘With him, one of our best army leaders has passed away… His name has entered the history of the German people.’²⁵¹

Another, more far-reaching, problem preoccupied Hitler in the middle of October: Hungary’s attempt to defect from its alliance with Germany. Hitler had feared (and expected) this eventuality for weeks. The alliance with Hungary had become increasingly unstable across the summer. The defections of Romania and Bulgaria in August had then made it a matter of time before Hungary would seek to extricate itself from its dependence upon Germany. The feelers, known to German intelligence, put out both to the western allies and to the Soviet Union after Romania’s defection gave a clear sign of the way things were moving. Another indicator, following the Romanian switch of sides, was the replacement by Admiral Horthy, the head of state, of the puppet Sztojay government, installed at German behest in March, by a military administration under General Geisa Lakatos directly answerable to him. At the beginning of October, Horthy had sent a delegation to Moscow to begin negotiations to take Hungary out of the war. A Soviet offensive driving forward on the Hungarian plains, beginning on 6 October, though fought off by German panzer divisions, gave the final impetus. Tough conditions laid down by Molotov, on behalf of the Allies, for Hungary to change sides, including an immediate declaration of war on Germany, were accepted by Horthy and signed by the Hungarian delegation in Moscow on 11 October. Their implementation had to await the coup being prepared in Budapest against the German forces in Hungary. Pressed by the Soviet Union to act, Horthy informed the German envoy Edmund Veesenmayer on 15 October that Hungary was leaving the German alliance and announced the armistice in a radio broadcast in the early afternoon.²⁵²

Hitler had not stood idly by while these developments were taking place. Both strategically, and also on account of its economic importance for foodstuffs and fuel supplies, everything had to be done to prevent Hungary going the way of Romania and Bulgaria. For weeks, Hitler had been preparing his own counter-coup in Budapest, aimed at ousting Horthy, replacing him with a puppet government under Ferencz Szalasi — fanatical leader of the radical Hungarian fascist Party, the Arrow Cross, a former discharged army officer who had subsequently served a three-year jail sentence — and thus ensuring that Hungary did not defect. Already in mid-September Otto Skorzeny, Hitler’s leading troubleshooter (since his daring rescue of Mussolini a year earlier), had been called to the Wolf’s Lair and told that Horthy was approaching the western Allies and the Russians with a view to an imminent separate peace, and was ready to throw himself on the mercy of the Kremlin. Hitler ordered Skorzeny to prepare an operational plan to seize by force the Citadel in Budapest — the fortress which was the residence of Horthy and his