Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

back our colonies and a bit more besides. But that’s only possible if it has already received a k.o. blow.’ Fate would now have to take its course. The western offensive was only a matter of weather, and the most opportune moment.⁵⁴

By early May, the British and French were anticipating that the German western offensive could begin at any time.⁵⁵ The intention to attack in the first week of May had, in fact, been revised in the light of events in Scandinavia. But it was finally set for 10 May.⁵⁶ Hitler was confident. To those who saw him at close quarters, he appeared calm and optimistic, as if the doubts of previous months had passed, and he was now letting events take their course. He thought that France would capitulate after around six weeks, and that England would then pull out of a war which, to continue, would mean losing its Empire — something wholly unimaginable.⁵⁷ The balance of military forces was roughly even.⁵⁸ What Hitler had not been fully informed about was the critical state of Germany’s raw-material reserves: enough rubber for six months, enough fuel for only four months. Booty from the western campaign would prove crucial in securing the material base for continuing the war.⁵⁹

The level of secrecy maintained even in Hitler’s closest entourage in the days leading up to the offensive was profound. When his special armoured train, code-named Amerika, pulled out of a small, secluded station on the outskirts of Berlin on the evening of 9 May, his press chief, Otto Dietrich, thought he was en route to visit shipworks in Hamburg, and Hitler’s secretaries thought they were setting out for Denmark and Norway to visit the troops. After midnight, the train quietly switched in the vicinity of Hanover from the northbound tracks and turned westward. Even then, the destination was not disclosed. But by now there was no longer any doubt of the purpose of the journey. Hitler was in excellent spirits throughout. Dawn was breaking when they got down from the train at a little station in the Eifel. It was near Euskirchen — though there was no station place-name to reveal this since all place-name signs in the area had been removed and replaced by yellow military indicators. Cars were waiting to drive the company through hilly, wooded countryside to their new temporary home: the Fuhrer Headquarters near Munstereifel that had been given the name Felsennest (Rock Eyrie). The accommodation was cramped and simple. Apart from Hitler himself, only Keitel, Schaub, and a manservant had rooms in the first bunker. Jodl, Dr Brandt, Schmundt, Below, Puttkamer, and Keitel’s adjutant were in a second. The rest had to be accommodated in the nearby village. The woods around were filled with the springtime twittering of birds. But as his staff gathered in front of Hitler’s bunker the peaceful sounds of the countryside in spring were broken by the distant rumble of shellfire. Hitler pointed to the West. ‘Gentlemen, the offensive against the western powers has just started,’ he declared.⁶⁰

II

That offensive proceeded with a breathtaking pace that stunned the world. Even Hitler and his military leaders scarcely dared hope for such a scale of early successes.⁶¹ On the northern flank, the Dutch surrender followed within five days, the Queen and government fleeing to exile in England. Before that, the terror- bombing, Guernica-style, of Rotterdam’s old town had brought death and devastation from the skies. It was the trademark of the new type of warfare. Warsaw civilians had suffered it first; the people of British cities would soon come to dread it; and, later in the war, German citizens themselves would be exposed to its full horror. Belgian neutrality, for the second time in under thirty years, was breached along with that of the Dutch. On 28 May the Belgian army surrendered unconditionally, leaving King Leopold in effect a prisoner with the government in exile. Meanwhile, the ‘sickle cut plan’ was proving a brilliant and decisive success. Aided by the strategic and operational ineptitude of the French military command, German armoured units were able to sweep through the Ardennes, through Luxemburg and southern Belgium into northern France, breaking the thin line of French defence, and crossing the Meuse already on 13 May. Within ten days of the launching of the offensive, by the night of 20–21 May, the advance had covered 150 miles and reached the Channel coast. The ‘sickle cut’ had worked. The Allied forces had been cut in two; vast numbers were now squeezed between the coast and the oncoming German divisions. On 26 May the War Office in London bowed to what had become increasingly inevitable, and ordered the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force, the bulk of it by then fighting a desperate rearguard action just east of Dunkirk, the last remaining Channel port in Allied hands. The next days would see almost 340,000 British and French soldiers — the vast proportion of the Allied troops still in combat in north-west France — carried to safety across the Channel in an improvised armada of small boats while the Luftwaffe pounded the harbour and beaches of the port.⁶²

The evacuation had been greatly helped by Hitler’s decision, at 11.42a.m. on 24 May, to halt the German advance with the spearhead a mere fifteen miles or so from Dunkirk. Post-war suggestions that Hitler was deliberately allowing the British troops to get away as an act of generosity to encourage Britain to come to the peace table with its armies intact are far-fetched.⁶³ Hitler himself was alleged to have told his entourage a fortnight or so later that ‘the army is the backbone of England and the Empire. If we smash the invasion corps, the Empire is doomed. Since we neither want to nor can inherit it, we must leave it the chance. My generals haven’t grasped that.’⁶⁴ Such sentiments, if they were indeed expressed in those terms, were no more than a self-justification for a military mistake. For the decision not to move on Dunkirk was taken for military reasons, and on military advice. According to his Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus von Below, ‘the English army had no significance for him’ at Dunkirk.⁶⁵

Hitler had flown that morning, 24 May, to Charleville, almost 100 miles east of the Channel, to visit the headquarters of Colonel-General Gerd von Rundstedt, commander of Army Group A, which had made the remarkable advance in the ‘sickle movement’ along the southern flank. When Hitler arrived at half-past eleven, Rundstedt gave him a report on the situation. The suggestion to hold back the motorized units came not from Hitler, but from Rundstedt, one of his most trusted generals. Hitler agreed, adding that the tanks had to be conserved for the coming operations in the south and that a further advance would restrict the scope for action of the Luftwaffe.⁶⁶ Hitler was keen to press on with the attack to the south without the delay that he thought would come about if they took a few days dealing with the surrounded allied troops in Dunkirk.⁶⁷ When Brauchitsch arrived next morning, the 25th, wanting to advance the tanks on to the plains, Hitler opposed him, arguing that the numerous canals criss-crossing Flanders made it an unsuitable terrain for tanks.⁶⁸ But he left the decision to Rundstedt, who rejected the suggestion because of the need to have the tanks recover for the operations to come in the south.⁶⁹ Halder, as well as Brauchitsch, was dismayed.⁷⁰ They would have to come to terms with a Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht who intervened directly in the direction of operations.⁷¹ But there was no magnanimity in the decision to hold back the tanks. As we have seen, Hitler wanted to strike Britain a knock-out blow to force her to accept peace-terms. He had no interest in allowing the British troops to escape captivity or destruction. He had been persuaded by Goring to let the Luftwaffe finish off the encircled enemy.⁷² He thought few of the British would escape.⁷³

In fact, the Luftwaffe could not deliver on Groing’s promises. Despite its claims of success, bad weather and the Royal Air Force contrived to prevent the easy pickings Goring had imagined. Dunkirk did nothing to enhance the Luftwaffe’s prestige.⁷⁴ Within two days, Hitler realized that the halt order had been an error. On 26 May, he reversed his decision and finally ordered the advance on Dunkirk to prevent further evacuations.⁷⁵ Few of the encircled troops had got away by then.⁷⁶ But the delay of forty-eight hours proved vital in enabling the British to orchestrate the extraordinary retreat — a masterpiece of improvisation accompanied by much good luck — over the next days.

In military terms Dunkirk seemed, as one stunning success followed another, of secondary importance to Germany. It amounted in reality to a massive defeat for Britain. But that the troops were brought back under such conditions to fight again another day was converted by the new British Prime Minister Churchill (who had come into office on the very day that the western offensive had begun), and by popular myth, into a symbol of the British fighting spirit — the archetypal triumph in adversity. As such, the great setback at Dunkirk provided a boost to British morale at one of the lowest points in the nation’s long history. In another way, too, Dunkirk was fateful. If the British Expeditionary Force had been lost, it is almost inconceivable that Churchill would have survived the growing pressure from those powerful forces within Britain that were ready to seek terms with Hitler.⁷⁷