Inwardly convinced that his enemies were intent on bringing about that total destruction — the Morgenthau Plan of 1944, envisaging the reduction of a defeated Germany to the status of an agricultural country with a pre-industrial economy, had given sustenance to this belief153 — no measure was for him too radical in the fight for survival. Consistent only with his own warped and peculiar brand of logic, he was prepared to take measures with such far-reaching consequences for the German population that the very survival he claimed to be fighting for was fundamentally threatened. Ultimately, the continued existence of the German people — if it showed itself incapable of defeating its enemies — was less important to him than the refusal to capitulate.
Few, even of his closest acolytes, were ready to follow this self-destructive urge to the letter. Albert Speer was one of those looking to the future after a lost war — and after Hitler, the man whom he had revered, and who had given him his career, his route to power and influence. Perhaps the ambitious Speer was still hoping to have some part to play in a Germany without Hitler. At any rate, he knew the war was irredeemably lost. And he was looking — like Guderian in the military sphere — to save what could be saved of the economic substance of the country. He had no interest in a Germany going down in a maelstrom of destruction to satisfy the irrational and pointless principle of ‘heroic’ self-sacrifice rather than capitulation. He knew only too well that the preservation of Germany’s material substance for a post-Hitler future had long been the aim of the leading industrialists with whom he had worked so closely.154 He had hindered the implementation of Hitler’s orders for the destruction of French industry. And in recent weeks, he had arranged with Colonel-General Heinrici in Upper Silesia, Field-Marshal Model in the Ruhr (now on the verge of being taken by the western Allies), and Colonel-General Guderian for the entire eastern front that factories, mines, railways, roads, bridges, waterworks, gasworks, power- stations, and other installations vital to the German economy should be spared destruction wherever possible.155
On 18 March, Speer passed to Below a memorandum he had drafted three days earlier. Below was to choose a favourable moment to hand it to Hitler.156 The memorandum stated plainly that the final collapse of the German economy would occur within four to eight weeks, after which the war could not be continued. The prime duty of those leading the country must be to do what they could for the civilian population. But detonating bridges, with the consequent major destruction of the transport infrastructure, would signify ‘the elimination of all further possibility of existence
A strong hint of Hitler’s likely response could be gleaned at the military briefing that evening, when the topic arose of evacuation of the local population from the combat zone in the Saar. Hitler’s express order was that the complete evacuation should be undertaken forthwith. Consideration could not be given to the population.158 A few hours after the briefing ended, just before Speer left for a tour of the threatened areas on the western front, Hitler summoned him. According to Speer’s recollection, noted down ten days later, Hitler told him coldly that should the war be lost, the people would also be lost, and that there was no necessity of taking consideration of the basis even of its most primitive survival. The German people had proved the weaker in the struggle. Only those who were inferior would remain.159
Hitler had promised Speer a written reply to his memorandum. It was not long in coming, and was predictably the opposite of what Speer had recommended. Whatever the cost, in Hitler’s view, intact vital installations for industrial production could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands as had happened in Upper Silesia and the Saar.160 His decree of 19 March, headed ‘Destructive Measures on Reich Territory’, was consistent with a philosophy by now wholly at odds with Speer’s. ‘The struggle for the existence of our people,’ his decree ran, ‘compels the use of all means, also within the territory of the Reich, to weaken the fighting power of our enemy and its further advance. All possibilities of imparting directly or indirectly lasting damage to the striking power of the enemy must be exploited. It is an error to believe that undestroyed or only temporarily disabled transport, communications, industrial, and supplies installations can again be made operational for our own purposes at the recapture of lost territories. The enemy will leave us only scorched earth at its retreat and drop any consideration for the population. I therefore order: 1) All military transport, communications, industrial, and supplies installations as well as material assets within Reich territory, which the enemy can render usable immediately or within the foreseeable future are to be destroyed, 2) Those responsible for the implementation of this destruction are: military command authorities for all military objects, including transport and communications installations, the Gauleiter and Reich Defence Commissars for all industrial and supplies installations and other material assets. The troops are to provide the necessary aid to the Gauleiter and Reich Defence Commissars in the implementation of their task…’161
The decree was never put into practice. Though, initially, several Gauleiter — prominent among them Gauleiter Friedrich Karl Florian in Dusseldorf — were eager to carry out Hitler’s orders to the letter, Speer was eventually successful in persuading them of the futility of the intended action. In any case, the Gauleiter agreed that it was in practice impossible to implement the order.162 Model was one of the front-line military commanders also prepared to cooperate with Speer in keeping destruction of industrial plant to a minimum. By the end of March, with difficulty, Speer had managed to convince Hitler — aware though he was of the Armaments Minister’s effective sabotage of his order — that he should be granted overall responsibility for implementing all measures for destruction. This took the key decisions out of the hands of the Gauleiter, Hitler’s key representatives in the regions. It meant, as Hitler knew, that everything possible would be done to avoid the destruction he had ordered.163
The non-implementation of the ‘scorched earth’ order was the first obvious sign that Hitler’s authority was beginning to wane, his writ ceasing to run. ‘We’re giving out orders in Berlin that in practice no longer arrive lower down, let alone can be implemented,’ remarked Goebbels at the end of March. ‘I see in that the danger of an extraordinary dwindling of authority.’164
Hitler continued to see himself as indispensable. ‘If anything happens to me, Germany is lost, since I have no successor,’ he told his secretaries. ‘He? has gone mad, Goring has squandered the sympathies of the German people, and Himmler is rejected by the Party,’ was his assessment.165
Hitler had been absolutely dismissive of Goring’s leadership qualities in ‘turbulent times’ in speaking to Goebbels in mid-February 1945. As ‘leader of the nation’, he was ‘utterly unimaginable’.166 Tirades about the Reich Marshal were commonplace. On one occasion, fists clenched, face flushed with anger, he humiliated Goring in front of all present at a military briefing, threatening to reduce him to the ranks and dissolve the Luftwaffe as a separate branch of the armed forces. Goring could only withdraw to the ante-room and swallow a few glasses of brandy.167 But despite regular exposure to Goebbels’s vitriol about the Reich Marshal and impassioned entreaties to dismiss him, Hitler persisted in his view that he had no suitable replacement.168
Hitler’s attitude towards Himmler had also hardened. His blind fury at the retreat of divisions — including that specially named after him, the Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler — of Sepp Dietrich’s 6th Panzer Army in the face of heavy losses and imminent encirclement in bitter fighting on the Danube was directed at Himmler. The Reichsfuhrer-SS was in despair at the breach with Hitler, symbolized in the order he was forced to carry to Dietrich commanding his four Waffen-SS divisions, among them the elite Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, to remove their armlets in disgrace.169 With Hitler now feeling betrayed even by his own SS commanders, Himmler’s waning star sank steeply with his own evident failings as Commander of Army Group Vistula. Hitler held the Reichsfuhrer-SS personally responsible for the failure to block the Soviet advance through Pomerania. He accused him of having immediately fallen under the influence of the General Staff — a heinous offence in Hitler’s eyes — and even of direct disobedience of his orders to build up anti-tank defences in Pomerania. Blaming others as usual, he took the view that Pomerania could have been held if Himmler had followed his orders. He intended, he told Goebbels, to make plain to him at their next meeting that any repetition would lead to an irreparable breach.170 Whether the rift was further deepened through rumours abroad — in fact, close to the truth — linking Himmler’s name with peace soundings is unclear.171 But there was no doubt that Himmler’s standing with Hitler had slumped dramatically.172 The Reichsfuhrer-SS remained, for his part, both dismayed at the rupture in relations, and cautious in the extreme, aware that even now his authority hinged solely on Hitler’s continued favour.173 But after being relieved of his command of Army Group Vistula on 20 March, Himmler increasingly went his own way.
The circle of those Hitler trusted was diminishing sharply. At the same time, his intolerance of any
