initiative — the gamble of ‘Operation Barbarossa’ — would lead, by the end of 1941, as the German war effort met with setback and crisis, the war in the East dragged on into the infinite future, and the Americans finally entered the arena, to precisely the vice setting around Germany that Hitler had wanted to avoid. A way out would now be difficult, if not impossible. The chips were down. And, by that time, the death camps were commencing operations. Victory or total destruction were emerging as the only options left. Hitler’s ‘all-or-nothing’ mentality had enveloped the German state and shaped the alternatives for its future. But by the end of 1941, though military fortune would fluctuate in a war that still had long to run, the odds would already be stacked in favour of destruction, not victory.
I
Between January and March 1941 the operational plans for ‘Barbarossa’ were put in place and approved by Hitler. Despite his show of confidence, he was inwardly less certain. On the very day that the directive for the attack on the Soviet Union was issued to the commanders-in-chief of the Wehrmacht, 18 December 1940, Major Engel had told Brauchitsch (who was still unclear whether Hitler was bluffing about invading the USSR) that the Fuhrer was unsure how things would go. He was distrustful of his own military leaders, uncertain about the strength of the Russians, and disappointed in the intransigence of the
Already by the beginning of February, Hitler had been made aware of doubts — at any rate a mood less than enthusiastic — among some of the army leaders about the prospects of success in the coming campaign. General Thomas had presented to the Army High Command a devastating overview of deficiencies in supplies.8 Halder had noted in his diary on 28 January the gist of his discussion with Brauchitsch early that afternoon about ‘Barbarossa’: ‘The “purpose”
Halder pulled his punches at a conference with Hitler on 3 February. He brought up supply difficulties, but pointed to methods by which they could be overcome, and played down the risks that he had been emphasizing only days earlier. The army leaders accepted Hitler’s emphasis on giving priority to the capture of Leningrad and the Baltic coast over Moscow. But they neglected to work out in sufficient detail the consequences of such a strategy.12 Hitler was informed of the numerical superiority of the Russian troops and tanks. But he thought little of their quality. Everything depended upon rapid victories in the first days, and the securing of the Baltic and the southern flank as far as Rostov. Moscow, as he had repeatedly stressed, could wait. According to Below, Brauchitsch and Halder ‘accepted Hitler’s directives to wage war against Russia without a single word of objection or opposition’.13
In the days that followed the meeting, General Thomas produced further bleak prognoses of the economic situation. Fuel for vehicles sufficed for two months, aircraft fuel till autumn, rubber production until the end of March. Thomas asked Keitel to pass on his report to Hitler. Keitel told him that the Fuhrer would not permit himself to be influenced by economic difficulties. Probably, the report never even reached Hitler. In any case, if Thomas was trying through presentation of dire economic realities to deter Hitler, his method was guaranteed to backfire. A further report demonstrated that if quick victories were attained, and the Caucasus oilfields acquired, Germany could gain 75 per cent of the materials feeding the Soviet war industry. Such a prognosis could only serve as encouragement to Hitler and to other Nazi leaders.14
Hitler remained worried about a number of aspects of the OKH’s planning. He was concerned that the army leadership was underestimating the dangers from Soviet strikes at the German flanks from the Pripet Marsh, and called in February for a detailed study to allow him to draw his own conclusions.15 In mid-March, he contradicted the General Staff’s conclusions, asserting — rightly, as things turned out — that the Pripet Marsh was no hindrance to army movement. He also thought the existing plan would leave the German forces overstretched, and too dependent upon what he regarded as the dubious strength of the Romanian, Hungarian, and Slovak divisions — the last of these dismissed merely on the grounds that they were Slavs — on the southern front. He ordered, therefore, the alteration from a two-pronged advance of Army Group South to a single thrust towards Kiev and down the Dnieper. Finally, he repeated his insistence that the crucial objective had to be to secure Leningrad and the Baltic, not push on to Moscow which, at a meeting with his military leaders on 17 March, he declared was ‘completely immaterial’
II
While the preparations for the great offensive were taking shape, however, Hitler was preoccupied with the dangerous situation that Mussolini’s ill-conceived invasion of Greece the previous October had produced in the Balkans, and with remedying the consequence of Italian military incompetence in North Africa.
He did everything possible to avoid discomfiting Mussolini when the Italian dictator, embarrassed by the military setbacks in Albania and North Africa (where greatly outnumbered British troops had early in the month captured the Italian stronghold of Bardia), arrived at a small railway station near Salzburg, on 19 January for two days of talks at the Berghof.
Hitler and his military leaders were waiting on the platform in the snow.18 The talks began without delay. There was no hint of a mention of Italian military reversals. Discussion focused mainly on the Balkans, and on a renewed attempt, through personal persuasion by the Duce, to bring about Spanish intervention in the war and agreement to a German assault on Gibraltar.19 Reporting to Ciano on his private talks, Mussolini said ‘he found a very anti-Russian Hitler, loyal to us, and not too definite on what he intends to do in the future against Great Britain’. A landing was ruled out. The difficulty of such an operation contained an unacceptable risk of failure, after which Britain ‘would know that Germany holds only an empty pistol’.20
On the afternoon of 20 January, Hitler spoke for about two hours in the presence of military experts on the approaching German intervention in Greece. ‘He dealt with the question primarily from a technical point of view,’ Ciano recorded, ‘relating it to the general political situation. I must admit that he does this with unusual mastery. Our military experts are impressed.’21 Though the ‘very anti-Russian Hitler’ that Mussolini saw pointed to the future dangers from the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death, when the Jews, at present pushed out of the leadership, could take over again, and when Russian air-power could destroy the Romanian oil-fields, he gave not the slightest inkling that at that very time he was preparing to attack in the East.22 As usual, the Italians would be kept in the dark until the last minute.
Mussolini returned from the talks ‘elated’ (as Ciano remarked) ‘as he always is after a meeting with Hitler’.23 It was as well the Duce left when he did. Had he stayed two days longer his growing sense
