Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

contradiction of his views had become as good as absolute. The one remaining voice among his generals which had been increasingly outspoken in its criticism was that of General Guderian. Where Keitel spoke with so little authority that younger officers scornfully dubbed him the ‘Reich Garage Attendant’, and Jodl carefully attuned his briefings to Hitler’s moods and anticipated his wishes, Guderian was terse, pointed, and frank in his remarks.¹⁷⁴ The conflicts, which had mounted since Christmas in their intensity, were ended abruptly at the end of March with Guderian’s dismissal. By that time, the final German offensive near Lake Balaton in Hungary, started on 6 March, had failed and the Soviets were marching on the last remaining oil reserves open to Germany; the Red Army had meanwhile cut off Konigsberg in East Prussia, broken through at Oppeln in Upper Silesia, taken Kolberg on the Baltic coast, opened up German defences close to Danzig, and had surrounded the SS battalions fiercely defending the strategically important stronghold of Kustrin on the Oder. In the west, outside Guderian’s sphere of responsibility, the news was at least as sombre. General Patton’s 3rd US Army had taken Darmstadt and reached the River Main; and American tanks had entered the outskirts of Frankfurt. Hitler had not expected the western front to collapse so rapidly. As always, he smelled betrayal.¹⁷⁵ And, characteristically, he was now ready to make Guderian the scapegoat for the dire situation on the eastern front.¹⁷⁶

Guderian had been expecting a stormy meeting when he arrived at Hitler’s bunker on 28 March for the afternoon briefing. He was determined to continue his defence of General Theodor Busse against the accusation that he held responsibility for the failure of his 9th Army to relieve the encircled troops at Kustrin. But Hitler was not prepared to listen. He peremptorily adjourned the meeting, keeping only Keitel and Guderian back. Without demur, the Chief of Staff was told that his health problems demanded he take with immediate effect six weeks’ convalescent leave. He was replaced by the more compliant General Hans Krebs.¹⁷⁷

Reports were by now coming in from Kesselring’s headquarters that the western front in the region of Hanau and Frankfurt am Main was showing serious signs of disintegration. White flags were being hoisted; women were embracing American soldiers as they entered; troops, not wanting to fight any longer, were fleeing from any prospect of battle or simply surrendering. Kesselring wanted Hitler to speak without delay to shore up the wavering will to fight. Goebbels agreed. Churchill and Stalin had both spoken to their nations at times of utmost peril. Germany’s position was even worse. ‘In such a serious situation, the nation cannot remain without an appeal from the highest authority,’ Goebbels noted. He telephoned General Burgdorf, Hitler’s chief Wehrmacht adjutant since Schmundt’s death, and impressed upon him the need to persuade Hitler to speak to the German people.¹⁷⁸ Next day, walking for an hour among the ruins of the Reich Chancellery garden alongside the bent figure of Hitler, Goebbels tried to exert all his own influence in pleading with him to give a ten — or fifteen-minute radio address. Hitler did not want to speak, however, ‘because at present he has nothing positive to offer’. Goebbels did not give up. Hitler finally agreed. But Goebbels’s evident scepticism proved justified.¹⁷⁹ A few days later, Hitler again promised to give his speech — but only after he had gained a success in the west. He knew he should speak to the people. But the SD had informed him that his previous speech — his proclamation on 24 February — had been criticized for not saying anything new. And Goebbels acknowledged that, indeed, he had nothing new to offer the people. The Propaganda Minister repeated his hope that Hitler would nevertheless speak to them. ‘The people were waiting for at least a slogan,’ he urged.¹⁸⁰ But Hitler had by now even run out of propaganda slogans for the people of Germany.

Goebbels remained puzzled — and, behind his admiration, irritated and frustrated — at Hitler’s reluctance to take what the Propaganda Minister regarded as vital, radical steps even at this later hour to change Germany’s fortunes. In this, he privately reflected, Frederick the Great had been far more ruthless. Hitler, by contrast, accepted the diagnosis of the problem. But no action followed. He took the setbacks and grave dangers, thought Goebbels, too lightly — at least, he pointedly added, in his presence; ‘privately, he will certainly think differently.’¹⁸¹ He was still confident of the split among the Allies he had so long been predicting. ‘But it pains me,’ Goebbels noted, ‘that he is at present not to be moved to doing anything so that the political crisis in the enemy camp deepens. He doesn’t change personnel, either in the Reich government or in the diplomatic service. Goring stays. Ribbentrop stays. All failures — apart from the second rank — are retained, and it would in my view be so necessary to undertake here in particular a change of personnel because this would be of such decisive importance for the morale of our people. I press and press; but I can’t convince the Fuhrer of the necessity of these measures that I put forward.’ It was, Goebbels pointed out, ‘as if he lived in the clouds.’¹⁸²

Not only Hitler held on to a make-believe world. ‘One day, the Reich of our dreams will emerge,’ wrote Gerda Bormann to her husband. ‘Shall we, I wonder, or our children, live to see it?’ ‘I have every hope that we shall!’ jotted Martin, between the lines. ‘In some ways, you know, this reminds me of the “Twilight of the Gods” in the Edda,’ Gerda’s letter continued ‘… The monsters are storming the bridge of the Gods;… the citadel of the Gods crumbles, and all seems lost; and then, suddenly a new citadel rises, more beautiful than ever before… We are not the first to engage in mortal combat with the powers of the underworld, and that we feel impelled, and are also able, to do so should give us a conviction of ultimate victory.’¹⁸³

An air of unreality also pervaded, in part, the administrative machines of Party and state. Though, certainly, the state bureaucracy — now mostly removed from Berlin — was confronted with the actualities of a lost war in trying to cope with the acute problems of refugees from the east, housing the homeless from bomb-damaged cities, and ensuring that public facilities were kept running, much of what remained of civil administration — massively hampered through repeated breakdowns in postal and rail communications — had little to do with the everyday needs of the population.¹⁸⁴ The sober-minded and long-serving Finance Minister, Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk, for instance, completed at the end of March his plans for tax reform — criticized by Goebbels (as if they were about to be implemented) for their ‘unsocial’ emphasis on consumer tax, which would affect the mass of the population, rather than income tax.¹⁸⁵ That much of the country was by this time under enemy occupation seemed irrelevant.

Meanwhile, Martin Bormann was still working feverishly on restructuring the Party to control the new, peacetime Germany that would emerge from the war.¹⁸⁶ And as the Reich shrank, lines of communication disintegrated, and directives became increasingly overtaken by events, he sent more circulars, decrees, and promulgations than ever — over 400 in the last four months of the war — cascading down to lower functionaries of the Party. ‘Again a mass of new decrees and orders pour in from Bormann,’ noted Goebbels on 4 April. ‘Bormann has made a paper chancellery out of the Party Chancellery. Every day he sends out a mountain of letters and files which Gauleiter at present in the midst of the struggle can in practice not even read. In part, it’s a matter of completely useless stuff of no value for the practical struggle.’¹⁸⁷ A Party bureaucracy in overdrive poured out regulations on provision of bread grain, small-arms training of women and girls, repair of railways and road communications, eking out additional food from wild vegetables, fruit, and mushrooms, and a host of other issues.¹⁸⁸

Alongside such miscellanea went the constant demands and exhortations to hold out, whatever the cost. Bormann informed Party functionaries on 1 April that summary and draconian punishment for desertion awaited ‘any scoundrel… who does not fight to the the last breath’.¹⁸⁹ He detailed functionaries to work with Wehrmacht units in stiffening morale in areas close to the front and to set up quasi-guerrilla organizations such as the ‘Freikorps Adolf Hitler’ (drawn from the Party’s functionaries) and the ‘Werwolf (to be made up largely of Hitler Youth members) to carry on the fight through partisan activity in the occupied areas of the Reich. German propaganda sought to convey the impression to the Allies that they were endangered by an extensively organized underground resistance movement. In practice, the ‘Werwolf was of scant military significance, and was mainly a threat, in its arbitrary and vicious retribution, to German citizens revealing any traces of ‘defeatism’.¹⁹⁰

On 15 April Bormann put out a circular to Political Leaders of the Party: ‘The Fuhrer expects that you will master every situation in your Gaue, if necessary with lightning speed and extreme brutality…’¹⁹¹ Like more and more of his missives, it existed largely on paper. Correspondence to reality was minimal. It was a classic illustration of the continuing illusory and despairing belief in the triumph of will alone. But even the unconstrained and arbitary violence of a regime patently in its death-throes could not contain the open manifestations of disintegration. Ever fewer brown Party uniforms were to be seen on the streets. And ever more Party functionaries were disappearing into the ether as the enemy approached, looking more to self-preservation than to heroic last stands.¹⁹² ‘The behaviour of our Gau and District Leaders in the west has led to a strong drop in confidence among the population,’ commented Goebbels. ‘As a consequence, the Party is fairly