Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

the conquered and subjugated territories of the east, a ‘solution’ would gradually begin to emerge before long.

7. ZENITH OF POWER

‘The Fuhrer is greatly puzzled by England’s persisting unwillingness to make peace… He sees the answer (as we do) in England’s hope in Russia…’

‘Decision: Russia’s destruction must therefore be made a part of this struggle… If we start in May 1941, we would have five months to finish the job.’

Diary entries of General Halder, Chief of the General Staff, 13 and 31 July 1940

‘Only when there’s no more going back… is the courage found for very big decisions… That’s how it is, too, in our present situation.’ Goebbels was summarizing what Hitler had been saying at lunch on 15 January 1940. Hitler had begun by grumbling about unreliable weather-forecasts; half-decent weather was needed for the offensive, he had stated. He then went on to philosophize about strength in adversity — one of his regular themes, and to become even more repetitive as the war wore on. He referred to the usual heroes in the German pantheon — Bismarck and, even more so, Frederick the Great — adding on examples from his own ‘time of struggle’ to illustrate how danger brought forth special qualities of courage and boldness in the ‘historical genius’. ‘The Fuhrer was always greater in adversity than in fortune,’ added the impressionable Propaganda Minister. Goebbels had, however, registered the serious point of Hitler’s typically narcissistic musings on his own ‘greatness’: there could be no going back. This imperative had been directly linked to German policy in Poland — an indication that Hitler and Goebbels were only too aware of the Rubicon that had been crossed with the descent into the barbaric treatment of the Poles. ‘We simply must not lose the war,’ Goebbels summed up. ‘And all our thinking and action has to follow from that.’¹

A characteristic technique that Hitler had of couching his arguments was invariably to pose stark alternatives, one of which he promptly dismissed out of hand or ridiculed. The fait accompli, resting on force deriving from underlying strength, was the only bargaining position he recognized. Concession, compromise, retreat were to his mind inconceivable. If the way back was ruled out, only the bold forward move remained. It was how he had acted since his ultimatum demanding the Party leadership in 1921, and his foolhardy launching of the putsch in 1923. By 1940, given the ways in which in particular the army and the Foreign Ministry, over the course of the previous years and especially since early 1938, had allowed themselves to be manoeuvred into near total dependency on Hitler, this way of thinking had drawn inexorably into its slipstream all the agencies of a complex, modern state system. Aided by a good deal of enthusiastic backing and the ineffectiveness of limited, often weak-kneed, resistance, Hitler had brought his own subjective philosophy — that the only way out was through the bold strike, and without delay since time was working against Germany — into near alignment with objective circumstances.

But these circumstances, the conditions in which the crucial decisions of 1940–41 would be taken, had not been shaped by Hitler alone. He had placed the Reich in a quandary. The war could not be ended. That was now a decision out of Germany’s control, unless Britain could be forced to the conference table or militarily defeated. But neither militarily, as the chiefs of the armed forces made plain, nor economically, as every indicator demonstrated, was Germany equipped at this stage to fight the long war with which, it was known, the British were already reckoning.² The Wehrmacht had entered into hostilities in autumn 1939 with no well-laid plans for a major war, and no strategy at all for an offensive in the West. Nothing at all had been clearly thought through.³ The Luftwaffe was the best equipped of the three branches of the armed forces. But even here, the armaments programme had been targeted at 1942, not 1939.⁴ The navy’s operational planning was based upon a fleet that could not be ready before 1943.⁵ In fact, the 1939 Z-Plan — halted at the start of the war — would leave Germany with severe limitations at sea until 1946. And within the confines of that plan, the building of U-boats necessary for an economic blockade of Britain was deliberately neglected by Hitler in favour of the interests of the army. However, the army itself lacked even sufficient munitions following the brief Polish campaign (in which some 50 per cent of the tanks and motorized units deployed were no longer serviceable) to contemplate an immediate continuation of the war in the West.⁶

The war could have been over had the French government been bold enough to send at least the forty divisions it had promised the Poles into action against the far smaller German forces left guarding the western front in September 1939.⁷ At the outbreak of war the Germans could spare only thirty-two divisions for the western front. The French had at the time ninety-one divisions, though it was reckoned that it would take ten days to mobilize fifty of these divisions.⁸ By the end of the Polish campaign it was in any case too late. As it was, the breathing-space that the German army gained during the repeated postponements of the western offensive, much to Hitler’s chagrin, in the winter of 1939–40 was crucial in allowing the time and opportunity to put the army in a state of readiness to attack France.⁹

Hitler had to gamble everything on the defeat of France. If Britain could be kept from gaining a foothold on the Continent until this were achieved, Hitler was certain that the British would have to sue for peace. Getting Britain out of the war through isolation after a German defeat of France was Hitler’s only overall war-strategy as the abnormally icy winter of 1940 gradually gave way to spring.¹⁰ Ranged against Germany at some point, Hitler was aware, would be the might of the USA. Currently dominated by isolationism, and likely to be preoccupied by the forthcoming presidential elections in the autumn, its early involvement in a European conflict could be discounted. But as long as Britain stayed in the war, the participation — at the very least by benevolent neutrality — of the USA, with its immense economic power, could not be ruled out. And that was a factor that was out of Germany’s reach. It was all the more reason, objectively as well as simply in Hitler’s manic obsession with time, to eliminate Britain from the war without delay.¹¹

The East was at this point at the back of Hitler’s mind — though not out of it. Mussolini had written to Hitler at the beginning of January, exhorting him not to relinquish his long-standing principles of anti-Bolshevism (and antisemitism) for tactical purposes.¹² In his reply, sent over two months later, Hitler claimed, somewhat disingenuously, that Stalin had transformed Bolshevism into ‘a Russian-national state ideology and economic idea’, which Germany had no interest in combating.¹³ Privately, he was saying something different. Bolshevism, he commented over lunch on 12 January, was the form of ‘state organization’ that matched the Slavs. He likened Stalin to a modern Ivan the Terrible, who had done away with the traditional ruling class and replaced it with Slavs. That was good for Germany. ‘Rather a weak partner as neighbour than an alliance treaty, however good,’ he cynically added.¹⁴ In his memorandum the previous October he had already remarked that Soviet neutrality could be reckoned with at present, but that no treaty or agreement could guarantee it in the future. ‘In eight months, a year, let alone a few years this could all be different,’ he had said.¹⁵ ‘If all treaties concluded were held to,’ he told Goebbels, ‘mankind would no longer exist today.’¹⁶ Hitler presumed that the Russians would break the non-aggression pact when it suited them to do so. For the time being they were militarily weak — a condition enhanced by Stalin’s inexplicable purges; they were preoccupied with their own affairs in the Baltic, especially the troublesome Finnish war; and they posed, therefore, no danger from the East. They could be dealt with at a later stage. Their current disposition provided still further evidence for Hitler that his attack on the West, and the elimination of Britain from the war, could not wait.

There was a certain logic in the presumption that, following a defeat of France and the offer of ‘reasonable’ terms, Britain would bow to the inevitable in its own self-interest. There continued to be strong lobbies in Britain that thought along those lines. There was nothing inexorable about Britain’s decision to ‘go it alone’ in the summer of 1940. But that decision, when it came, would vitiate the one strategy Hitler had. In his assumption that immediate self-interest was the only maxim of war and peace, he crassly underestimated the resilience and idealism that had arisen in Britain following the march into Prague in 1939 and which, in summer 1940, the new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was able to evoke among the British people. The ‘duel’ between Hitler and his arch-enemy Churchill would dominate the summer. Its outcome would in many ways determine the further course