headquarters, when in the spring of 1945 Havel urged him to seize the last opportunity for a political initiative: “Politics? I don’t engage in politics any more. All that disgusts me so.” In a totally contradictory way, he justified his political inaction on grounds of changing circumstances. While the war was going well, he held that time was working for him; in periods of setbacks he feared that his negotiating position would be unfavorable. “I see myself as a sort of spider,” he declared during the second phase of the war, “lying in wait for a run of luck. The thing is only to be alert and ready to pounce at the right moment.” In fact, such images concealed his continuing distaste for politics, whose stakes seemed to him too small, whose points too insipid, and which offered none of the excitement that transformed successes into triumphs. Many a time during the war years he commented that one must oneself “cut off possible lines of retreat… for then one fights more easily and resolutely.”6 Politics, according to his later viewpoint, was merely a possible line of retreat.
In renouncing politics, Hitler also returned to the principled ideological positions he had formerly held. The intellectual rigidity that had so long been hidden by his boundless tactical and methodical adroitness emerged again, becoming increasingly marked as time went on. The war brought on a process of petrifaction which soon gripped his whole personality. An alarming sign of the dehumanizing process came right at the start in Hitler’s casual order of September 1, 1939, the day the war began, that incurably ill persons be granted a “mercy death.”7 The phenomenon assumed most tangible form in Hitler’s insanely mounting anti-Semitism, which itself was a form of mythologizing atrophy of consciousness. Early in 1943 he told a foreign chief of state: “The Jews are the natural allies of Bolshevism and the candidates for the positions now held by those intellectuals who would be assassinated in case of Bolshevization. Therefore… the more radically one proceeds against the Jews, the better.” He said he preferred a naval battle like Salamis to an ambiguous skirmish and would rather smash all bridges behind him, since Jewish hatred was in any case gigantic. In Germany there was “no turning back on the course once taken.” His sense of entering upon the final conflict was obviously deepening. And the figure of the diplomat had no place in eschatology, he thought.
In our search for the specific impulse that set these processes in motion we cannot pretend that Hitler’s boredom with politics and his impatience are the whole explanation. Some writers have posited a shattering of his personality structure caused by illness. But evidence is lacking for this thesis. And often this sort of argument represents the effort of a disillusioned partisan of the regime to explain the difference between the successful and the unsuccessful phases in Hitler’s life. What comes to the fore during this second phase is the totally unchanged, rigid character of his ideas and ideologies. What stands revealed is not so much a break as the immutable core in Hitler’s nature.
But certainly his impatience was operative in all of it: the craving for dramatic intensifications, the rapid satiation with successes, the dynamism, whose author he was and whose victim he now became, and, finally, the phenomenon of temporal anxiety, which from 1937 on stamped his style of action, and was now reinforced by a sense that time was not only running out on him but working against him. Through sleepless nights, he told Mussolini, he had brooded over the advisability of postponing the war for two years. But then, considering the inevitability of the conflict and the growing strength of the enemy, he had “abruptly attacked Poland in the autumn.” On September 27, 1939, he said something similar to von Brauchitsch and Halder, and in a memorandum composed two weeks later he affirmed: “Given the situation… time can more probably be regarded as an ally of the Western powers than as our ally.” He was forever rationalizing his decision, speaking of “the good fortune of being permitted to lead this war in person” and even of his jealousy at the idea that someone after him might begin this war. Again, with a withering glance at any possible successor, he declared that he did not want “stupid wars” Coming after his death. His address to his generals on November 23, 1939, sums up his reasons for timing the war when he did. After an analysis of the situation he commented:
As the final factor I must in all modesty mention my own person as irreplaceable. Neither a military nor a civilian personality could replace me. The attempts at assassination [like that of Nobember 8, 1939, in the Burgerbraukeller] may be repeated. I am convinced of the strength of my brain and of my resolution. Wars will always be ended only by the annihilation of the opponent. Anyone who thinks differently is irresponsible. Time is working for the enemy. The present balance of forces can no longer improve for us; it can only deteriorate. If the enemy will not make peace, then our own position worsens. No compromises. Hardness toward ourselves. I shall attack and not capitulate. The fate of the Reich depends upon me alone. I shall act accordingly.
It is clear that Hitler was no longer speaking in political terms. The mood is visionary. And he found his new approach vindicated by his sensational successes in the initial phase of the war. Against Poland he had played the role of generalissimo[15] with some restraint. But he fell more and more in love with the part; and something of the infantilism that made him seek to perpetuate all pleasant experiences could be recognized in his total devotion to the map table at the Fuhrer’s headquarters. Playing general brought new stimuli, new excitements to his nerves, but also posed a dangerous challenge. Here was the supreme test of his “strength of brain,” of his hardness and resolution, and of his theatrical temperament. He faced decisions of the “most gigantic sort” and of the most deadly seriousness. His remark that only artistic people have the qualities for great generalship underlines this aspect. The effortless victories of the early period strengthened his conviction that after the fame of demagogue and politician he would also win glory as the supreme commander. And when, as the war went on and on, this glory failed to come his way, he began to pursue it—breathlessly, defiantly, until he attained doom.
Hitler’s urge for war was so compelling that he not only conceded to reverse his fundamental design but went into the conflict in spite of inadequate preparation. The downcast mood in the streets, the ostentatious refusals to cheer on various occasions in the preceding months, testified to inadequate psychological preparation of the people; and in his impatience Hitler did little to improve it. After the Reichstag speech of April 28, 1938, he avoided going before the masses. Presumably he acted on the assumption that the drama of events would in itself generate sufficient mobilizing energies. But the satisfaction the people had obviously felt upon the reoccupation of the Rhineland, the annexation of Austria, and the entry into the Sudetenland had evaporated by the time Prague was occupied. Such gratifications were no longer to be had. Neither Danzig nor the Polish Corridor seemed of great importance to the prestige of the nation that had recovered from its long humiliation. Granted, the war against Poland was more popular than any of the other engagements of the Second World War; but it lacked the magnetic element. Neither the atrocity stories about murdered, tortured, or raped Germans nor the actual number of some 7,000 victims of Polish persecution could fire the popular mind. A few months after the beginning of the war expressions of discontent increased; the SD noted that the mood of the population was “that’s what comes when a war is started without sufficient preparation.” Between Christmas and New Year’s Day police power had to be used for the first time against crowds of discontented people.8
Hitler had obviously hastened the war for fear that the population’s preparedness might sink to a still lower level. He must have thought that it would be wise to begin the struggle while he could still draw on the abating momentum of former years. “Those who avoid battles,” he had once remarked, “will never acquire the strength to fight battles.” And in one of his last speeches, in which he justified his timing of the war (“there could not have been… a more fortunate moment than that of 1939”), he acknowledged that his decision had also been influenced by the psychological consideration that “enthusiasm and readiness to sacrifice… cannot be bottled and preserved. Such spirit arises
In the psychological realm, then, the war was supposed to partly create the spirit necessary to wage it. And in a certin sense this was Hitler’s basic idea for the entire conflict—which once again revealed his gambler’s temperament. In a speech delivered at the beginning of July, 1944, he publicly admitted this principle when he conceded that the war was “a prefinancing of the future achievements, the future work, the future raw materials, the future nutritional base; but it is also tremendous training for mastering the tasks which will face us in the future.”
Preparations in the fields of economics and armaments were actually far sketchier than the psychological preparations. To be sure, official propaganda repeatedly referred to enormous defensive efforts; and the whole
