Hitler

Eastern territories as abortionists. See Heiber, “Der Generalplan Ost,” in: VJHfZ 1958:3, p. 292.

80. Cf. the document in VJHfZ 1958:3, p. 299. For Otto Hofmann’s statement see ND, NO-4113.

81. IMT XXXVII, p. 517; also Tischgesprache, p. 253.

82. Mein Kampf, p. 383.

83. Tischgesprache, p. 288, and Zoller, p. 105.

84. A statement by Kaltenbrunner, who was echoing similar ideas in the top leadership of the SS; cf. IMT XXXII, p. 297 (3462-PS). For this context cf. Martin Bormann’s memorandum of January 29, 1944, cited in Jacobsen and Jochmann, Ausgewahlte Dokumente, under that date.

85. Hitler’s Table Talk, pp. 110, 621. See also the note on Rosenberg’s conversation with Hitler of December 14, 1941, in: IMT XXVII, p. 272 (1517-PS). The name “Tauria” was Rosenberg’s idea; Hitler preferred “Gotenland.”

86. Dallin, pp. 281 f.

87. Tischgesprache, p. 320. The metaphor of the “trophy cup” bobbed up elsewhere, for example, in the course of Hitler’s nocturnal monologue on January 30, 1933. See Gorlitz and Quint, Adolf Hitler, p. 367.

88. From the draft by State Secretary Stuckart; see the records of the interrogation of Stuckart’s associate H. Globke on September 25, 1945, RF-602, IMT IV, pp. 472 ff.; also ND, NG-3572, NG-3455, and the file notation on the predatory discussion in Goring’s headquarters on June 19, 1940, printed in IMT XXVII, pp. 29 ff. (1155-PS). According to Erich Kordt, Nicht aus den Akten, p. 393, Calais and Boulogne were to remain in German possession as bases. For Hitler’s comment on the Channel positions see Tischgesprache, p. 336.

89. Ever since 1940 a National Planning Commission for the Design of German Soldiers’ Cemeteries had been at work under the direction of Professor Wilhelm Kreis. The Commission’s assignment was defined as follows: “Facing westward on the cliffs of the Atlantic coast magnificent structures will rise as an eternal memorial to the liberation of the Continent from dependency on the British and to the unification of Europe under the leadership of her German heartland nation. The austere, noble beauty of the soldiers’ cemetery at Thermopylae serves as symbol for the German inheritance of the spirit of Hellas’s classical culture. Towers soaring massively over the plains of the East will rise as symbols of the taming of the chaotic powers of the eastern steppes by the disciplined might of Teutonic forces for order—surrounded by the graves of the warrior generation of German blood who, as so often for the past two thousand years, saved the existence of Occidental civilization from the destructive tidal waves out of Central Asia.” Cited in Brenner, Die Kunstpolitik des Nationalsozialismus, pp. 128 f.

90. These examples are taken from the collection of Himmler’s letters by Helmut Heiber, Reichsfuhrer!… and in order of quotation may be found on pp. 194, 222 f., 251, 145, 95. See also Heiber’s foreword, especially pp. 22 f.

91. Zoller, p. 73, and Libres propos, p. 123. On Hitler’s superstitiousness see Tischgesprache, pp. 166 f. and 333.

92. Hitler e Mussolini, pp. 165 f., cited from Bullock, p. 706. Schmidt, Statist, relates that Hitler gave Mussolini “a regular tongue-lashing.” Mussolini, Schmidt wrote, had been “so excited by the news of the air raid on Rome that after his return from Rome he urgently requested my notes on the conversations. He had not been able to follow them, we were told.”

93. Heiber, Lagebesprechungen, p. 231 (on May 20, 1943).

94. Speer, p. 301.

95. Goebbels, Tagebucher 1942–43, pp. 392 ff. For Hitler’s remark to Ribbentrop see Zwischen London und Moskau, p. 265.

BOOK VIII

1. Himmler, referring to Hitler’s orders. What must be achieved, he stated in a letter to SS leader and Police Chief Prutzmann dated September 7, 1943, was a situation in which “no human being, no cattle, not a bag of grain, not a railroad track remains behind; not a house remains standing, not a mine exists that has not been wrecked for years to come, not a well that has not been poisoned. The enemy must really find a totally scorched and destroyed country…. Do everything that is humanly possible.” Quoted from Heiber, ReichsFuhrer!… p. 233.

2. For example, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke and the majority of his friends belonging to the Kreisau Circle. George F. Kennan called Count von Moltke “the greatest person, morally, and the largest and most enlightened in his concepts, that I met on either side of the battle lines”; George F. Kennan, Memoirs 1925–1950, p. 121.

3. See Schellenberg, pp. 279 ff. On Himmler’s affidavit, see Felix Kersten, Totenkopf und Treue, pp. 209 ff. After reading this medical report (which, however, was prepared without an examination of the patient), Kersten concluded that Hitler belonged in a mental hospital, not in the Fuhrer’s headquarters. For the entire subject of the “resistance” within the SS, its motives and its various initiatives, see Hohne, pp. 448 ff.

4. Cited in Dietrich Ehlers, Technik und Moral einer Verschworung, p. 102. It is a common misunderstanding, probably first voiced by Bullock, p. 736 f., that the Kreisau Circle consisted merely of thinkers and that its members were even proud of their contempt for all action; cf. especially Ger van Roon, Neuordnung im Widerstand, where ample evidence is presented to refute this notion.

5. See Ehlers, p. 93. For the principle arguments against the German nationalist conspirators see Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, pp. 98 ff.

6. Inquiries among the workers, inspired by the Jesuit priest Alfred Delp, who belonged to the Kreisau Circle, yielded rather discouraging results. Von Trott’s memoranda also speak of widespread passivity in the working class; cf. Hans Mommsen, “Gesellschaftsbild und Verfassungsplane des deutschen Widerstands,” in Schmitthenner and Buchheim, ed., Der Deutsche Widerstand gegen Hitler, p. 75. A Social Democratic opinion poll taken in 1942 came to the conclusion: “We will not be able to bring the masses out into the streets”; see Emil Henk, Die Tragodie des 20. Juli 1944, pp. 21 ff., and Allen Welsh Dulles, Germany’s Underground, p. 108. During the war significant resistance by the radical Left existed only after the beginning of the attack on the Soviet Union. That resistance came to a focus in the “Rote Kapelle” headed by Lieutenant Harro Schulze-Boysen and Administrative Secretary (Oberregierungsrat) Arvid Harnack; some of the members engaged in espionage for the Soviet Union. In August, 1942, some one hundred persons were arrested in connection with these activities; many of them were executed shortly afterward. Another group around Anton Saefkow was caught early in July, 1944; its fate, as we shall see below, played a part in precipitating Stauffenberg’s decision to act.

7. Ehlers, p. 143. For the biography of Stauffenberg see now Christian Muller, Oberst i.G. Stauffenberg. Incidentally, when Stefan George died in Minusio near Locarno on December 4, 1933, Stauffenberg with his two brothers and eight other friends of George were at his bedside.

8. Fabian von Schlabrendorff, Offiziere gegen Hitler, p. 138.

9. Speidel, pp. 113 ff. Characteristically, Hitler had waited until a few hours before the meeting to inform the two field marshals that it would take place, and where.

10. A specific motive for Hitler’s sudden departure has been occasionally mentioned. It is said that shortly after Rundstedt and Rommel left, a V-1 that had veered off course struck in the vicinity of the Fuhrer’s headquarters. Actually, we can regard this only as the pretext that Hitler used to avoid the confrontation; for why should a rocket accidentally striking in Margival have made a meeting in distant Roche-Guyon any more dangerous. On the incident itself see Speidel, p. 119.

11. Speidel, pp. 155 ff.

12. Communication to the author from Baroness von Below.

13. Zoller, p. 184. Hitler requested that the clothes “be sent to Fraulein Braun at the Berghof with