Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

head of the police in northern Italy and formerly the chief of Himmler’s personal staff, opened up in Zurich in February 1945 with Allen W. Dulles, head of the United States’ Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Europe, were aimed primarily at saving Wolff’s skin (ultimately, in this, proving successful) but, beyond that, at offering to deliver surrender of German forces in Italy — which did eventually capitulate prematurely, on 2 May 1945 — as part of a ploy to split the western Allies from the Soviet Union. The feelers were almost certainly put out with Himmler’s knowledge, looking to an ‘arrangement’ which would bypass Hitler’s implacable hostility to a negotiated end to the war by dispensing with the Fuhrer in an attempt to rescue what was possible of the SS’s power by linking forces with the West in the fight against Bolshevism. (See Padfield, Himmler, 572–7.)

89. TBJG, II/15, 251–2 (28 January 1945).

90. TBJG, II/15, 232 (26 January 1945).

91. TBJG, II/15, 255 (28 January 1945).

92. LB Stuttgart, 860–61 (27 January 1945). See TBJG, II/15, 259 (29 January 1945) for Goebbels’s summary of the tenor of reports from British newspapers, asking whether British war aims had been upturned by the mounting Soviet threat.

93. TBJG, II/15, 253 (28 January 1945).

94. TBJG, II/15, 254–5 (28 January 1945); also TBJG, II/15, 220 (25 January 1945).

95. TBJG, II/15, 264–5 (29 January 1945). As so often, Goebbels had a few days earlier compared Hitler with Frederick the Great during the Seven Years War (TBJG, II/15, 221 (25 January 1945)).

96. TBJG, II/15, 273 (30 January 1945).

97. TBJG, II/15, 275 (30 January 1945).

98. TBJG, II/15, 256 (28 January 1945).

99. Text of speech in Domarus, 2195–8; quotations, 2195, 2197. According to Traudl Junge, Hitler railed in private about the appalling stories of Soviet barbarity coming from the eastern regions, repeatedly declaring: ‘It cannot and must not be that these cultureless beasts inundate Europe. I’m the last bulwark against this danger.’ (‘Es kann und darf nicht sein, dass diese kulturlosen Bestien Europa uberscbwemmen. Icb bin das letzte Bollwerk gegen diese Gefahr.’) (IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, 125; Galante, 139 (with a loose translation).) Bormann wrote of the ‘Russian atrocities’ in a letter to his wife of 30 January, telling her that ‘the Bolsheviks are ravaging everything’, and ‘regard ordinary rape as just a joke, and mass shootings — particularly in the rural districts — as an everyday occurrence’ (Bormann Letters, 164).

100. Joachim Gunther, Das letzte Jahr. Mein Tagebuch 1944/45, Hamburg, 1948, 453–4.

101. TBJG, II/15, 285 (31 January 1945); 301–2 (2 February 1945), where Goebbels admitted that ‘in intellectual circles’ there was disappointment over the absence of any assessment of the likely development in the east.

102. StA Neuburg an der Donau, vorl. Slg. Schum. Anh.3, SD-Au?enstelle Friedberg, 3 February 1945: ‘Die Propaganda hat es nicht fertiggebracht, den Glauben an eine positive Wendung zu starken. Selbst die Fuhrerrede zum 30. Januar vermochte nicht die lauten Zweifel zu beseitigen.’

103. Speer, 431–2. Guderian was mistaken in believing that Hitler had locked it away in his safe unread (Guderian, 407).

104. Speer, 434.

105. According to Bormann (Bormann Letters, 168), the New Reich Chancellery was not usable for the time being. However, Goebbels had discussions with Hitler in the large study there on 12 February and described the New Reich Chancellery as ‘still completely undestroyed’ (TBJG, II/15, 371 (13 February 1945)).

106. See a description of the damage in Bormann Letters, 168; also Schroeder, 197, 199; TBJG, II/15, 306 (5 February 1945), 320 (6 February 1945), 327 (7 February 1945); IfZ, ED 100, Irving- Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, 123; Galante, 138 (Junge); Boldt, 35; Anton Joachimsthaler, Hitlers Ende. Legenden und Dokumente, Augsburg, 1999, 58–60.

107. See Ada Petrova and Peter Watson, The Death of Hitler: the Final Words from Russia’s Secret Archives, London, 1995, 84; Boldt, 73; Joachimsthaler, 47ff.

108. Schroeder, 197, 378 n.364; IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, 123; Galante, 137 (Junge); Joachimsthaler, 46–7, 65ff.

109. Joachimsthaler, 48, 75–7.

110. TBJG, II/15, 200 (23 January 1945).

111. Descriptions were provided by Hitler’s secretaries Christa Schroeder, Traudl Junge, and Johanna Wolf. See Schroeder, 197–8; IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, 124– 5; Galante (Junge), 138; Joachimsthaler, 73–81.

112. Guderian, 416.

113. Schroeder, 197, and 59–60, 318 n.75 for descriptions of the Old Reich Chancellery (Radziwill Palais).

114. Below, 405; Boldt, 37–8 (giving the impression that the meetings were still held in the undamaged wing of the Old Reich Chancellery).

115. Below, 403–4.

116. Schroeder, 197; IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, 124; Galante, 138 (Junge).

117. TBJG, II/15, 320 (6 February 1945); see also 371 (13 February 1945).

118. IfZ, ED 100, Irving-Sammlung, Traudl Junge Memoirs, 123; Galante, 138 (Junge); Irving, Doctor, 216–17.

119. See the appointments diary kept by Heinz Linge, and preserved for the period 14 October 1944–28 February 1945, IfZ, F19/14, Fols.450–77 (for February 1945). The following description of Hitler’s daily routine is based on this appointments diary and Schroeder, 198–9.

120. For his medications, see Redlich, 243, 358–62; Irving, Doctor, 208ff.; Maser, 401–6; Heston, 82–9; Schenck, 446–50. Hitler, looking drained, told Goebbels in January that his working day was around 16–18 hours, and ran through the night (TBJG, II/15, 262 (29 January 1945)). Two months later, he informed Goebbels that he had had two hours sleep during the previous twenty-four hours (TBJG, II/15, 644 (31 March 1945)).

121. These were similar themes to the ‘table talk’ monologues of the earlier war years, noted down by Heim, Picker, and Koeppen. In 1951, a further series of monologues, allegedly by Hitler, dictated to Bormann, came to light (seventeen from February 1945, a last one on 2 April). The tone of the monologues is unmistakably that of Hitler. The themes are familiar, as are the rambling style and the discursive dips into history. There is talk, among other topics: of Churchill’s responsibility (influenced by Jews) for the war; of Britain’s rejection of German peace-offers which would have enabled the destruction of Bolshevism and saved the British Empire; of an unnatural coalition aiming to destroy Germany, a will to exterminate which gave the German people no other choice but to continue the struggle; of the example of Frederick the Great; of the need for eastward expansion, not the quest for colonies; of exposing to the world ‘the Jewish peril’ and of his warning to Jews on the eve of the war; of the timing and necessity of the war against the Soviet Union; of the difficulties caused for Germany by Italy’s weakness and blunders; of regrets that Japan did not enter the war against Russia in 1941, and the inevitability that the United States would enter the war against Germany; of the missed chance of going to war in 1938, which would have given Germany an advantage; of time always being against Germany; of being compelled to wage war as Europe’s last hope; and of the need to uphold the racial laws, and claim on gratitude for having eliminated Jews from Germany and central Europe. The monologues have a self-justificatory ring to them. They are intended for posterity, establishing a place in history. They have a reflective readiness — unusual, if not unique, for Hitler — to contemplate responsibility for errors, for example, in policy towards Italy and Spain.

The monologues were not, as those from 1941–4 were, the product of musings during meals attended by others in his entourage, or during the ‘tea hours’ with his secretaries. Neither a secretary nor anyone else mentioned them at the time, or apparently knew they were being compiled. Gerda Christian (formerly Daranowski), writing to Christa Schroeder long after the war, did not regard them as authentic, though she accepted that they