Finally, but far from least, we come to Hitler himself. He never deviated from what had been the leitmotiv of his political existence, that there would never, ever, be a ‘cowardly’ capitulation and internal revolution as there had been in 1918. He consequently and consistently refused all entreaties from his paladins to consider a negotiated settlement. For him, that could only follow a victory, not a defeat. There was never a chance of that, once the vice closed on the Third Reich after the major enemy successes, east and west, from June 1944 onwards. The Allied demand for ‘unconditional surrender’ simply played to his mentality and convictions. ‘Heroic’ total destruction was for him infinitely preferable to what he saw as the coward’s way out of capitulation. The plight of the German people did not concern him. They had proved weak in the war, and deserved to go under. After the failure of the Ardennes offensive, he was clear-sighted enough to see that his last card had been played. But he clutched at one straw after another in desperation and impotence to turn the tide that was about to engulf him. Suicide was the obvious and likely way out. In fact, it became the only way out. It was simply a matter of time, and of timing, so that he could not be captured by the Russians. It was also the easy way out for him, since he knew that whatever happened he had no future after the war. But as long as he lived, his power—if over a rapidly diminishing Reich— could not be challenged, as Goring and Himmler learnt even in the very last days of his life.
Hitler’s personality was self-evidently scarcely insignificant to Germany’s continued fight. Generals and political leaders alike found him absolutely intransigent if they proposed any alternative course of action. Even in the last weeks some went in to see him demoralized and disconsolate and came away with new enthusiasm and determination. Under a different head of state, say Goring (until his ousting on 23 April 1945 Hitler’s designated successor), it seems highly likely that Germany would have sued for peace at some point earlier than May 1945. It is indeed questionable whether in the event of Hitler’s earlier demise Goring (or Himmler, the only other feasible candidate to have succeeded) would have had the internal authority with the generals to continue the prosecution of the war. Such a counter-factual scenario only emphasizes once more how much Hitler’s insistence on the continuation of the war provided the major obstacle to halting it. This cannot, however, be regarded solely as a matter of Hitler’s domineering personality—his intransigence, his detachment from reality, his readiness to take the country and German people down with him to total perdition—however important this was. Beyond this is the question of why the power elite was prepared to allow him to dictate in such disastrous fashion to the end.
Albert Speer ruminated in pseudo self-reproach in his memoirs about why, when it was obvious that Germany was as good as finished economically and militarily, Hitler was not faced with any joint action from those military leaders in regular contact with him to demand an explanation of how he was going to end the war (with the implication that they might have forced him to do so). Speer thought of such a move coming from Goring, Keitel, Jodl, Donitz, Guderian and himself.11 The proposition, as he well knew, was absurd.12 Structurally as well as individually, the group he mentioned was divided and (his own and Guderian’s growing estrangement aside) in any case arch-loyalists, three of whom fervently backed Hitler’s ‘hold-out’ orders.
Confronting Hitler in any organized body, political or military, was completely impossible. The dissolution, from early in the Third Reich and ever more pronounced during the war, of all structures of collective government ensured that. Mussolini’s deposition in July 1943 had come from within his own organization, the Fascist Grand Council. And above Mussolini, at least nominally, stood an alternative source of loyalty: the King of Italy. No similar structures existed in Nazi Germany. Hitler was head of state, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, head of government and head of the Party. He had consistently resisted suggestions to reinstate a form of collective government in the Reich cabinet and the creation of a senate of the Nazi Party to determine, among other things, the succession. The Gauleiter were summoned to assemble periodically, but only to hear pep-talks from Hitler. Even in the armed forces, there was a damaging division between the High Command of the Wehrmacht (responsible for operations outside the eastern front) and the High Command of the Army (responsible for only the eastern front).
The problem was compounded by the fact that Hitler was not just supreme commander of the Wehrmacht as a whole, but also Commander-in-Chief of the Army. Even compared with other authoritarian regimes, the personalization of rule in Hitler’s regime was extreme. Structures of power, each imbued in varied measure with Nazi ideological values, were all bound to Hitler, gaining legitimation from his ‘charismatic leadership’. The fragmentation of governance reflected the character of Hitler’s absolute power, even when this started to wane in the very last weeks. Though Hitler’s mass appeal as a charismatic leader had been in steep decline since the middle of the war, the fragmentation of rule beneath him that had been a hallmark of his charismatic rule from the beginning lasted to the end. It was a fundamental reason why an earlier collapse, or a resort to a negotiated settlement—any alternative to the inexorable course to self-destruction—did not take place.
The mindset of the ruling elite had attuned to the character of charismatic domination and underpinned the structural determinants preventing any challenge to Hitler. Among Nazi leaders, the personal bonds forged with him at an earlier time proved almost impossible to break even when the nimbus of infallibility built into the personality cult faded. So did the utter dependence on Hitler for positions of power. Speer admittedly distanced himself, though very belatedly, and even he felt an inward urge to make a perilous and futile last trip back into the Fuhrer Bunker in the very last days to say his personal farewell to the leader he had once idolized. Goring, despite bearing the brunt of Hitler’s fury at the failure of the Luftwaffe, never broke with him. His deposition from all his offices on 23 April followed a misunderstanding wilfully exploited by Bormann, one of the Reich Marshal’s arch-enemies. Bormann himself was the loyal right hand of his master, turning Hitler’s tirades and outbursts into bureaucratic regulations and orders. Himmler was the strong arm of repression who, despite surreptitiously going his own way in the last months in an attempt to retain a position of power in a post-Hitler world, continued to recognize his dependency. The breach with Hitler came at the very last, and, as with Goring, seems to have followed a misunderstanding, when Himmler presumed reports of the Dictator’s breakdown on 22 April had meant his effective abdication. The most committed of all the top Nazi leaders, and among the most clear-sighted of Hitler’s acolytes, Joseph Goebbels, was one of the very few prepared to stay with him to the end and cast himself on the great funeral pyre of the Third Reich.
Beneath the top echelon of Party bosses, the Gauleiter still presented a phalanx of outright loyalists, whatever their private feelings, who had long since bound themselves irredeemably to Hitler, even though in the last weeks they started of necessity to take independent action as communications with Berlin broke down. Their last collective meeting with Hitler, on 24 February 1945, showed that Hitler’s authority was still intact among this important group.
Among military leaders, the stance of Grand-Admiral Karl Donitz, head of the navy and at Hitler’s death his nominated successor as head of state, is illustrative of the lasting bonds with Hitler. In contrast to his post-war reputation of a military professional who had simply done his duty, Donitz had been one of the foremost fanatics in his support for Hitler’s orders to fight to the last, an outright Nazi in his attitude. But with Hitler gone, the chief and unyielding barrier to capitulation was removed. Given overall responsibility and feeling freed from his oath of loyalty to Hitler, Donitz saw the need to bow to military and political reality and looked immediately to find a negotiated end to a lost war. This sudden reversal of his stance by Donitz underlines as clearly as anything how much the fight to the end, down to complete defeat and destruction, was owing not just to Hitler in person, but to the character of his rule and the mentalities that had upheld his charismatic domination.
Of the reasons why Germany was able and willing to fight on to the end, these structures of rule and underlying mentalities behind them are the most fundamental. All the other factors—lingering popular backing for Hitler, the ferocious terror apparatus, the increased dominance of the Party, the prominent roles of the Bormann– Goebbels–Himmler–Speer quadrumvirate, the negative integration produced by the fear of Bolshevik occupation, and the continued readiness of high-ranking civil servants and military leaders to continue doing their duty when all was obviously lost—were ultimately subordinate to the way the charismatic Fuhrer regime was structured, and how it functioned, in its dying phase. Paradoxically, it was by this time charismatic rule without charisma. Hitler’s mass charismatic appeal had long since dissolved, but the structures and mentalities of his charismatic rule lasted until his death in the bunker. The dominant elites, divided as they were, possessed neither the collective will nor the mechanisms of power to prevent Hitler taking Germany to total destruction.
