Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

Germany.⁶⁵

Again it was Ribbentrop who was stirred by the suggestion.⁶⁶ He heard around the same time from the German ambassador in Moscow, Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, that the Soviet Union was interested in a rapprochement with Germany.⁶⁷ He scented a coup which would dramatically turn the tables on Britain, the country which had dared to spurn him — a coup that would also win him glory and favour in the Fuhrer’s eyes, and his place in history as the architect of Germany’s triumph. Hitler for his part thought that Russian economic difficulties and the chance spotted by ‘the wily fox’ Stalin to remove any threat from Poland to the Soviet western borders were at the back of any opening towards Germany. His own interests were to isolate Poland and deter Britain.⁶⁸

Ribbentrop was now able to persuade Hitler to agree to the Soviet requests for resumption of trade negotiations with Moscow, which had been broken off the previous February.⁶⁹ Molotov told Schulenburg, however, that a ‘political basis’ would have to be found before talks could be resumed. He left unclear what he had in mind.⁷⁰ Hitler again poured cold water on Ribbentrop’s eagerness to begin political talks. Weizsacker’s view was that the Foreign Minister’s notions of offering mediation in the Soviet conflict with Japan and hinting at partition of Poland would be rejected ‘with a peal of Tartar laughter’.⁷¹ Deep suspicions on both sides led to relations cooling again throughout June. Molotov continued to stonewall and keep his options open. Desultory economic discussions were just kept alive. But at the end of June, Hitler, irritated by the difficulties raised by the Soviets in the trade discussions, ordered the ending of all talks.⁷² This time the Soviets took the initiative. Within three weeks they were letting it be known that trade talks could be resumed, and that the prospects for an economic agreement were favourable.⁷³ This was the signal Berlin had been waiting for. Schulenburg in Moscow was ordered to ‘pick up the threads again’.⁷⁴

Four days later, Ribbentrop’s Russian expert in the Foreign Ministry’s Trade Department, Karl Schnurre, invited the Soviet Charge d’Affaires Georgei Astakhov and trade representative Evengy Babarin to dinner in Berlin. Acting under detailed instructions from the Foreign Minister himself, he indicated that the trade agreement could be accompanied by a political understanding between Germany and the Soviet Union, taking into account their mutual territorial interests. The response was encouraging.⁷⁵ Within three days Ribbentrop was directing Schulenburg to put the same points directly to Molotov. Schnurre wrote himself to Schulenburg: ‘Politically, the problem of Russia is being dealt with here with extreme urgency.’ He was in daily contact with Ribbentrop, he stated, who in turn was in constant touch with the Fuhrer. Ribbentrop was concerned to obtain a breakthrough in the Russian question, to disturb Soviet — British negotiations, but also to bring about an understanding with Germany. ‘Hence the haste with which we sent you the last instructions.’⁷⁶ Molotov was non-committal and somewhat negative when he met Schulenburg on 3 August. But two days later, through his informal contacts with Schnurre, Astakhov was letting Riobentrop know that the Soviet government was seriously interested in the ‘improvement of mutual relations’, and willing to contemplate political negotiations.⁷⁷

Towards the end of July, Hitler, Ribbentrop, and Weizsacker had devised the basis of an agreement with the Soviet Union involving the partition of Poland and the Baltic states.⁷⁸ Hints about such an arrangement were dropped to Molotov during his meeting with Schulenburg on 3 August.⁷⁹ But Stalin was in no rush. And by now he had learned what the Germans were up to, and the broad timing of the intended action against the Poles.⁸⁰ But for Hitler there was not a moment to lose. The attack on Poland could not be delayed. Autumn rains, he told Count Ciano in mid-August, would turn the roads into a morass and Poland into ‘one vast swamp… completely unsuitable for any military operations’. The strike had to come by the end of the month.⁸¹

III

Hitler, meanwhile, did everything possible to obscure what he had in mind to the general public in Germany and to the outside world. He had told the NSDAP’s press agency in mid-July to publish the dates of the ‘Reich Party Rally of Peace’ — longer than ever before, and scheduled to take place at Nuremberg on 2-II September 1939. It was also announced that he would attend a huge gathering, expected to attract 100,000 people, on 27 August to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Battle of Tannenberg.⁸² By then, detailed military plans to launch the attack to destroy Poland no later than 1 September had been in existence for several weeks.⁸³

Remarkably, for the best part of three months during this summer of high drama, with Europe teetering on the brink of war, Hitler was almost entirely absent from the seat of government in Berlin. Much of the time, as always, when not at his alpine eyrie above Berchtesgaden, he was travelling around Germany. Early in June he visited the construction site of the Volkswagen factory at Fallersleben, where he had laid the foundation stone a year or so earlier. From there it was on to Vienna, to the ‘Reich Theatre Week’, where he saw the premiere of Richard Strauss’s Friedenstag, regaling his adjutants with stories of his visits to the opera and theatre there thirty years earlier, and lecturing them on the splendours of Viennese architecture. Before leaving, he visited the grave of his niece, Geli Raubal (who had shot herself in mysterious circumstances in his Munich flat in 1931). He flew on to Linz, where he criticized new worker flats because they lacked the balconies he deemed essential in every apartment. From there he was driven to Berchtesgaden via Lambach, Hafeld, and Fischlham — some of the places associated with his childhood and where he had first attended school.⁸⁴

At the beginning of July, he was in Rechlin in Mecklenburg, inspecting new aircraft prototypes, including the He 176, the first rocket-propelled plane, with a speed of almost 1,000 kilometres an hour. Whenever he expressed particular interest, Goring told him that everything would be done to ensure it would soon be ready for service. No one dared explain that their deployment lay in the distant future.⁸⁵

Then in the middle of the month Hitler attended an extraordinary four-day spectacular in Munich, the ‘Rally of German Art 1939’, culminating in a huge parade with massive floats and extravagant costumes of bygone ages to illustrate 2,000 years of German cultural achievement.⁸⁶ Less than a week later he paid his regular visit to the Bayreuth festival. At Haus Wahnfried, in the annexe that the Wagner family had set aside specially for his use, Hitler felt relaxed. There he was ‘Uncle Wolf, as he had been known by the Wagners since his early days in politics. While in Bayreuth, looking self-conscious in his white dinner-jacket, he attended performances of Der fliegende Hollander, Tristan und Isolde, Die Walkure, and Gotterdammerung, greeting the crowds as usual from the window on the first floor.⁸⁷

There was also a second reunion (following their meeting the previous year in Linz) with his boyhood friend August Kubizek. They spoke of the old days in Linz and Vienna, going to Wagner operas together. Kubizek sheepishly asked Hitler to sign dozens of autographs to take back for his acquaintances. Hitler obliged. The overawed Kubizek, the archetypal local-government officer of a sleepy small town, carefully blotted every signature. They went out for a while, reminiscing in the gathering dusk by Wagner’s grave. Then Hitler took Kubizek on a tour of Haus Wahnfried. Kubizek reminded his former friend of the Rienzi episode in Linz all those years ago. (Wagner’s early opera, based on the story of a fourteenth-century ‘tribune of the people’ in Rome, had so excited Hitler that late at night, after the performance, he had hauled his friend up the Freinberg, a hill on the edge of Linz, and regaled him about the meaning of what they had seen.) Hitler recounted the tale to Winifried Wagner, ending by saying, with a great deal more pathos than truth: ‘That’s when it began.’ Hitler probably believed his own myth. Kubizek certainly did. Emotional and impressionable as he always had been, and now a well- established victim of the Fuhrer cult, he departed with tears in his eyes. Shortly afterwards, he heard the crowds cheering as Hitler left.⁸⁸

Hitler spent most of August at the Berghof. Other than when he had important visitors to see, daily life there retained its usual patterns. The routine was more relaxed than in Berlin, but its rituals were equally fixed and tedious. Lengthy midday meals, dominated by the sound of Hitler’s voice, the arrival of the press reports (typed in large letters on the special ‘Fuhrer typewriter’, and usually necessitating the household to search for the misplaced reading glasses that he refused to be seen wearing in public), walks down the hill to the ‘Tea House’ for afternoon tea or coffee and cakes (usually producing further monologues on favourite themes), an evening snack followed by a film and more late-night talk for those unable to escape. Magda Goebbels told Ciano of her boredom. ‘It is always