On the contrary, it was better to destroy even this basis, because ‘the people had shown itself to be the weaker, and the future belongs exclusively to the stronger people of the east. What will remain after this struggle will be in any case only the inferior ones, since the good ones have fallen.’ At these words, Speer told Hitler in a handwritten letter he delivered to the Dictator some days later, he was ‘deeply shocked’. He saw the first steps to fulfilling these intentions in the destruction order of the following day.139
During the days that followed, backed by Walther Rohland and his colleagues in the Ruhr Staff of his Ministry, Speer travelled through western Germany trying (partly by using Nazi arguments that the installations were necessary to sustain production for winning the war) to overcome the initial readiness of the Gauleiter to implement Hitler’s order. How easy it would have been in practice for them to carry out the destruction might actually be doubted. It seems likely that industrialists and factory bosses would have cooperated with local Party functionaries to block many attempts at senseless destruction.140 Speer also persuaded them that Hitler’s evacuation orders were impracticable.141 Model, too, after some hesitation came round to accepting Speer’s arguments and agreed to keep destruction of industrial plant in the Ruhr to a minimum, though the military, as implementation orders show, would have been prepared to carry out the destruction.142 In Wurzburg, Gauleiter Otto Hellmuth, generally seen as one of the more moderate Party bosses, was all set to go ahead with implementing the ‘Nero Order’. It would, indeed, be pointless though, he admitted, if there were no chance of a change in the situation at the last minute. He asked Speer when the decisive ‘miracle weapons’ were going to be deployed. Only when Speer told him bluntly: ‘They’re not coming’, did he agree not to destroy the Schweinfurt ballbearing factories.143
Hitler had, however, meanwhile learnt of Speer’s efforts to sabotage his order. When the Armaments Minister, on his return to Berlin, was summoned to meet him, he met a frosty reception. Hitler demanded that he accept that the war could still be won. When Speer demurred, Hitler allowed him twenty-four hours to consider his answer. On his return—after composing a lengthy, handwritten justification of his position, which, in the event, he did not hand over—Speer said merely: ‘My Fuhrer, I am unconditionally behind you.’144 That sufficed. Hitler felt his authority intact; there had been no loss of face; Speer had backed down.145 A brief glimpse of the old warmth between the two returned. Speer exploited the situation to obtain from Hitler the crucial concession and vital qualification of his earlier order, that the implementation of any destruction lay in the hands of his Armaments Minister.146 With that, Speer was able to prevent the ‘scorched earth’ that Hitler had ordered (though the Wehrmacht nevertheless blew up numerous bridges within Germany as it retreated).147 It was an important victory, even if it might cynically be interpreted as aimed as much at securing Speer’s own future existence as that of the German people.148 And on top of Hitler’s inability to insist that his evacuation orders were carried out, it was a further sign, as Goebbels recognized, that Hitler’s authority was waning.149
This was, nevertheless, not the point of collapse. The foundations were shaking. But they still—just about— held together. Decisive in that, as ever, was the leadership position of Hitler himself. Though the leaders of the Third Reich plainly saw Hitler’s days as numbered, they still knew that they openly crossed him at their peril. Ribbentrop dared not take his peace feelers further without Hitler’s imprimatur. Himmler and Kaltenbrunner were extremely careful to hide their own soundings. Wolff, too, knew what dangerous ground he was treading, though at least he had some geographical distance between him and Berlin. And Speer had ultimately retreated from complete confrontation. He had avoided the possibility of the severe sanctions that might then have arisen, even if he now saw Hitler’s favour in armaments matters turn from him to his long-standing rival, Karl Otto Saur. In no case had any of the paladins looking to their own positions in a post-Hitler future openly challenged the Dictator. Apart from fear of the consequences, since Hitler could still call upon powerful military and police forces to back him, each of them still acknowledged that his own powers still rested on the higher authority of the Fuhrer. Divided among themselves, fearful of the consequences, and still beholden to Hitler, they posed no threat of a fronde.150 Hitler’s power was set to go on to the end.
8. Implosion
We’re issuing orders in Berlin that practically don’t even arrive, let alone can be carried out. I see in this the danger of an extraordinary diminution of authority.
I
Berlin in April 1945 was a city bracing itself for the storm about to blow. All possible preparations were being hastily made to try to counter the coming onslaught from the east. Everyone knew that it could not be long before the city was engulfed in the fighting. The mood had reached rock bottom. Only the occasional expression of gallows humour punctuated the fatalistic acceptance that there was no way out.1 But as the seemingly interminable dark days of those truly terrible winter months of 1944–5 gradually gave way to a sunny and warm spring, some Berliners tried their best to shut out the war for a few fleeting moments.
For anyone passing through the Tiergarten, the beautiful park in the centre of the city (if now horribly damaged, occupied by heavy artillery and serving as a source of much needed firewood), beneath trees coming into bloom and accompanied by the chirping of the birds, or looking out from the balconies of spacious villas in the Grunewald, on the western outskirts of Berlin, the war could seem far away (though the ruins of some villas could provide a swift reminder). But fleetingly pleasant activities, unremarkable strands of peacetime everyday life, were in early April 1945 no more than an attempt to ‘seize the day’, to grasp what might be one of the last chances of enjoyment before grim reality overtook them.
Others sought to ‘seize the night’ as women and soldiers in districts of central Berlin frantically engaged in ‘a hectic search for pleasure’ in shelters, basements of buildings reduced to rubble and dark pathways through the ruins. Looting and thieving were commonplace. Despite the harsh penalties, a black market flourished in food and almost any material goods to be found. Resort to any form of alcohol—including stolen medical supplies—served for many to blot out fears of what was in store.2
Whatever illusions people still briefly entertained swiftly passed. And in any case only a few were in a position to share them. Most were too worn down by cares and worries, trying to cope with the severe privations of daily existence. For the city, like every other big city in the country, was in physical appearance and the psychological disposition of its inhabitants deeply scarred by the war. The main feature of Berlin’s outward appearance was, in fact, not just the devastated city centre, the desolate facades, the bomb craters, the ruined buildings that were no more than empty shells, but its emptiness—the lack of traffic and people on the streets, the shops bereft of goods, the houses without furniture.3 At night, ‘a ghost town of cave-dwellers was all that was left of this world metropolis’, noted one observer.4 Practically every evening, as people ate their meals by flickering candlelight—since electricity usage was heavily rationed—sirens would announce the latest air raid and lead to the nightly descent into the nearest shelter. It was a sharp tug out of any reveries—a reminder that the end was fast approaching, and that the Red Army was only a short distance away, poised to launch its attack on the Reich capital.
Hitler’s own dreamworld during nocturnal visits to the cellars of the New Reich Chancellery as he sat by the model, constructed by his architect Hermann Giesler, of his home town of Linz as it would appear at the end of a victorious war provided him, too, with a momentary distraction from the clammy pressure of the war. Beyond that, his fantasies fitted the mask that he wore even now, refusing to concede to himself or anyone else that his world had collapsed into ruins. He had, at the latest since the failure of the Ardennes offensive, known that defeat was certain. But he could not openly admit it. This was part of the continuing act of the indomitable Fuhrer which he had unceasingly upheld throughout the mounting adversity—the constant pretence, to himself as well as his entourage, that all would eventually turn out well. His dreams and illusions were a defiance of the reality gripping him most of
