Hitler
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This principle now became his new strategy, replacing all other concepts : Hold out! When the defeat of the Afrika Korps was already sealed, in his fixation on holding out he ordered several units, which he had hitherto withheld from Rommel, sent to the by now lost cause in Tunis. He curtly rejected Mussolini’s pleas that he try for another understanding with Stalin. He rejected all proposals to shorten the Eastern front by drawing in the lines. He wanted to stay in North Africa, hold Tunis, advance in Algeria, defend Crete, keep twenty-four European countries occupied, defeat the Soviet Union plus England and the United States. And with all that, his basic emotion intruding more and more frequently upon all rational thought, he wanted to guarantee that now at last—as he put it in the midst of retreat, flight, and nemesis—“international Jewry is recognized in all its diabolic dangerousness.”50
The symptoms of his intellectual decay were accompanied by a process of organizational dissolution that could be felt everywhere. The night after the beginning of the Allied landing in North Africa Hitler delivered the above-mentioned speech in Munich. Then, accompanied by his adjutants and personal intimates, he went to the Berghof in Berchtesgaden. Keitel and Jodi stayed in a building on the edge of town. The armed forces operations staff (Wehrmachtsführungsstab) was quartered in a special train at the Salzburg railroad station, while the General Staff of the army, which was really in charge of things, was far away in its headquarters near Angerburg in East Prussia. During the following days Hitler remained in Berchtesgaden. Instead of consulting and organizing defensive measures, he merely took satisfaction in the fact that it was he against whom all this gigantic armada had been assembled. He became intoxicated with the far-reaching operations of the kind he could no longer mount and criticized the enemy’s deliberate procedures. He himself, he said, would have acted more directly, and psychologically more effectively, by landing just outside Rome, in this way cutting off the Axis troops in North Africa and southern Italy.51
Meanwhile, the ring around Stalingrad was closing ever more tightly. Hitler did not return to Rastenburg until the evening of November 23, and it cannot be definitely ascertained whether he underestimated the seriousness of the situation or was attempting by a display of composure to conceal it from himself and his entourage. At any rate, when General Zeitzler asked to see him in connection with several overdue decisions, Hitler attempted to put him off until the following day. The chief of staff insisted on a meeting and proposed that immediate orders go to the Sixth Army to break out of the pocket. The result was one of those disputes that flared up repeatedly until the early part of February, when Hitler’s hold-the-line strategy ended in a debacle. By about two o’clock in the morning Zeitzler apparently thought he had convinced Hitler. At any rate, he informed the headquarters of Army Group B that he expected to obtain the signature to the break-out order early in the morning. The truth was that Hitler had evidently made one of his pseudoconcessions. But the quarrel went on into the following weeks. It took a wealth of variant forms. Hitler mustered all his arts of persuasion: long, seemingly reasonable silences, endless talking about trivialities, yielding on other points, firing an overwhelming barrage of figures. But through it all, with growing obstinacy, Hitler held to his resolve. Contrary to his usual habit, he even tried on occasion to strengthen it by enlisting the support of others. With psychological adroitness he had Göring—whose prestige had taken such a beating and who now seemed only to be waiting for a chance to exude optimism once more—issue an assurance that the Luftwaffe would be able to supply the encircled army. In the course of an argument with Zeitzler he summoned Generals Keitel and Jodi; at this time these three held the posts of chief of staff, chief of the High Command of the armed forces, and chief of the armed forces operations staff. Standing, his expression solemn, Hitler formally asked them their views: “I have a very grave decision to make. Before I make it, I should like to hear your opinions. Should I abandon Stalingrad or not?”
As always, Keitel abjectly confirmed his wishes: “With flashing eyes he exclaimed: ‘Mein Führer, stand at the Volga!’ ” And Jodi recommended waiting and seeing. Zeitzler alone once again pleaded for a break-out. Hitler was thus able to sum up the results of the conference: “You see, Herr General, I am not alone in my opinion. It is shared by both of these officers, whose rank is higher than yours. I will therefore abide by my previous decisions.” Sometimes one has the impression that Hitler, after so many partial, inadequate successes, had come to an ultimate decision that in Stalingrad he would challenge not only Stalin, not only his enemies in this sprawling, multifront war, but fate itself. The ever more patent crisis did not deter him; rather, in a curious way he put his trust in it. For his oldest recipe for success, repeatedly confirmed ever since the party conflict of the summer of 1921, had been to seek out crises in order to derive new impetus and confidence in victory from overcoming them. From the military point of view the Battle of Stalingrad was not really the turning point of the entire war; but it was that for Hitler. “If we abandon it—Stalingrad—we are really abandoning the whole meaning of the campaign,” he declared. With his passion for mythologizing, he surely felt it as a sign that this city bore the name of one of his great symbolic enemies. Here he wanted to win or go down to his doom.
By the end of January, the Sixth Army was in a hopeless position, the soldiers totally exhausted and demoralized by cold, epidemics, and hunger. But when General Paulus asked permission to surrender on the ground that the collapse was inescapable, Hitler telegraphed back: “Forbid surrender. The army will hold its position to the last soldier and the last cartridge, and by its heroic endurance will make an unforgettable contribution to the building of the defensive front and the salvation of Western civilization.” Speaking to the Italian ambassador, he compared the Sixth Army to the 300 Greeks at Thermopylae. And Göring made a similar comparison in a speech on January 30, when resistance died in the ruins of Stalingrad and only a few desperate and isolated remnants continued to defend themselves: “In future days this will be said of the heroic battle on the Volga: If thou comest to Germany, say thou sawest us lying at Stalingrad, as the law of honor and warfare hath commanded for Germany.”
Three days later, on February 2, the last remnants of the Sixth Army surrendered. A few days before, Hitler had appointed General Paulus a field marshal and promoted 117 other officers to the next higher rank. Shortly before 3 P.M. a German reconnaissance plane flying high above the city radioed that “no more fighting” could be observed in Stalingrad. Ninety-one thousand German soldiers were taken prisoner; 5,000 of them returned home years later.
Hitler’s indignation at Paulus for not having the greatness to cope with disaster and for capitulating prematurely was discharged at the military conference in the Führer’s headquarters:
How easy he has made it for himself!… The man should shoot himself as generals used to fall upon their swords when they saw that their cause was lost. That’s to be taken for granted. Even a Varus commanded the slave: Kill me now!… what does ‘life’ mean? Life is the nation; the individual must die. What remains alive beyond the individual is the nation. But how can a man be afraid of it, afraid of this second in which he can free himself from misery, if duty does not hold him in this vale of wretchedness. Paulus… will be speaking on the radio in no time—you’ll see. [Generals] Seydlitz and Schmidt will speak on the radio. They’ll lock those men in their rat-infested cellars, and two days later they’ll have them so worn down they’ll talk at once…. How can anyone be so cowardly? I don’t understand it…. What are we to do about it? What hurts me most personally is that I promoted him to field marshal. I wanted to give him that last pleasure. That’s the last field marshal I appoint in this war. Best not to count your chickens before they’re hatched…. That’s as ridiculous as anything can be. So many people have to die, and then one man like that comes along and at the last minute defiles the heroism of so many others. He could free himself from all misery and enter into eternity, into national immo
rtality, and he prefers to go to Moscow. How can there be any choice. There’s something crazy about it.52
In its psychological though not its military aspect Stalingrad was in fact one of the great turning points of the war. Both in the Soviet Union and among the: Allies the victory produced a tangible change of mood and awoke hopes that afterward were, often disappointed. At the same time, among Germany’s allies and in the neutral countries, faith in Hitler’s superiority suffered a distinct blow. In Germany, too, confidence in Hitler’s skill as a leader, already weakened, visibly faded. At his daily conference with his associates Goebbels issued instructions to exploit the defeat “psychologically for strengthening our people.” He declared that “every word about this heroic struggle would go down in history” and required that the armed forces communiqué in particular be “so phrased… that down the centuries it will continue to stir hearts.” As models he recommended Caesar’s addresses to his soldiers, Frederick the Great’s appeal to his soldiers before the Battle of Leuthen, and Napoleon’s proclamations to his Guard. “Only now, perhaps,” a special message from the office of the Reich propaganda chief read, “have we entered the Frederician era of this mighty and decisive conflict. The Battles of Kolin, Hochkirch, Kunersdorf, all three names signify grave defeats for Frederick the Great, veritable catastrophes, far worse in their effects than anything that has taken place in recent weeks on the Eastern front. But Kolin was followed by a Leuthen, Hochkirch and Kunersdorf by a Liegnitz, a Torgau and a Burkersdorf—and at last by ultimate victory….’’Yet despite such inspiring parallels, which henceforth right down to the end of the war were repeatedly cited in ever more hortatory terms, a Sicherheitsdienst report stated : “The conviction is general that Stalingrad means a turning point in the war…. Our fickle racial comrades are inclined to regard Stalingrad as the beginning of the end.”
For Hitler the debacle of Stalingrad meant a fresh thrust into mythological realms. From that time on, his imagination was captivated by images of catastrophic collapse. The Casablanca Conference, at which Churchill and Roosevelt at the end of January proclaimed the principle of unconditional surrender, and thus on their part burned all bridges behind them, reinforced these fantasies. Starting with the strategy of holding firm at any price, which dominated all of 1943, as the end drew nearer Hitler more and more categorically developed the strategy of a flamboyant downfall.
Lost Reality
We must turn the newly won Eastern territories into a Garden of Eden.
Adolf Hitler
It is a great evil when men who determine the destiny of the earth deceive themselves concerning what is possible…. Their obstinacy or, if you will, their genius lends a temporary success to their endeavors. But since these come into conflict with the plans, the interest, the entire moral existence of their contemporaries, forces of opposition turn against them. After a certain time, which for their victims is very long but in the historical view is very short, nothing remains of all their enterprises but the crimes they have committed and the sufferings they have caused.
Benjamin Constant
From the beginning of the Russian campaign on, Hitler led a retired life. His headquarters, which also housed the High Command of the armed forces, was once again located in the extensive woods beyond Rastenburg in East Prussia. A system of walls, barbed wire, and mines protected the grouping of bunkers and buildings. The prevailing atmosphere was peculiarly gloomy and monotonous. Visitors have described the place as a blending of monastery and concentration camp. The small, unadorned rooms with their plain deal furniture formed a striking contrast to the pomp of past years, the spacious halls, the grand perspectives and all the theatrical lavishness of Berlin, Munich, and Berchtesgaden. Sometimes it seemed as if Hitler had retreated back to the cave. Italian Foreign Minister Ciano compared the inhabitants of the headquarters with troglodytes, and found the atmosphere depressing: “One does not see a single colorful spot, not a single lively touch. The anterooms are full of people smoking, eating and chatting. Smell of kitchens, uniforms, heavy boots.”53
During the early months of the war Hitler had taken occasional trips to the front, and visited battlefields, headquarters, or military hospitals. But after the first failures he began to shun reality and withdraw into the abstract world of map tables and military conferences. From that time on, his experience of the war was almost exclusively as lines and figures on paper landscapes. He faced the public less and less often; he shrank from the onetime grand appearances. With the defeats he lost the energy he needed for striking poses. Once he had dropped his monumental attitudes, the changes in him showed all too plainly: he moved through the scenery of headquarters wearily, with hunched shoulders, one foot dragging, eyes staring dully out of a pasty face. His left hand had a slight tremble. Here was a man obviously on the physical downgrade, a bitter man, who admitted that he was plagued by melancholia. And he plunged ever deeper into the complexes and hatreds of his early years. To be sure, Hitler’s personality had always been marked by rigid, static features. But with this phase it is clear we are witnessing a galloping process of regression. At the same time it seems as if this regression were once more revealing his true, unvarnished nature.
The isolation into which Hitler had retreated after the quarrel with the generals increased after Stalingrad. He often sat brooding, sunk in deep depression. Or else, with inward turned gaze, he would take a few aimless steps at the side of his Alsatian through the headquarters terrain. A tense awkwardness hung over all relationships: “Faces froze into masks,” one of the participants wrote. “Often we stood about in silence.” Goebbels noted in his diary:
It is tragic that the Führer has so cut himself off from life and is leading an excessively unhealthy life. He no longer gets out in the fresh air, no longer has any relaxation; he sits in his bunker, acts, and broods…. The solitude in the Führer’s headquarters and the whole method of work there naturally have a depressing effect on the Führer.54
In fact Hitler began more and more palpably to suffer from his selfchosen isolation. In contrast to his youth, he complained, he could “no longer stand being alone.” His life style, already marked by a spartan note during the first years of the war, became plainer and plainer. The meals at the Führer’s table were notorious for their simplicity. Only once more did he attend a performance of Götterdämmerung in Bayreuth, and after the second Russian winter he no longer wanted even to hear music. From 1941 on, it had been his task, he later declared, “in all circumstances not to lose my nerve, but where there is a breakdown anywhere constantly to find escapes and remedies in order somehow to fix matters up…. For five years I have been cut off from the outer world; I have not gone to the theater, not heard a concert, no longer see any movies. I live solely for the task of leading this struggle because I know that unless a person of iron will stands in the background, the struggle cannot be won.” The question remains, however, whether the very sacrifices he imposed on himself in his maniacal insistence on the exercise of will, whether this single-minded concentration upon the war, did not constrict his mind and rob him of all inner freedom.
The tensions he underwent were discharged, more powerfully than ever before, in an unquenchable urge to launch into tirades. He found a new audience in his secretaries, for whom he tried in vain to provide a “congenial atmosphere” by offerings of cake and a fireplace fire. Sometimes he had his adjutants, his doctors, Bormann, or some chance guest join them. As his insomnia grew worse, he steadily extended his monologues. By 1944 the members of the circle would be desperately forcing their eyes to stay open until the graying dawn. Only then, as Guderian reports, would Hitler “lie down for a brief slumber, from which the pushing brooms of the scrubwomen at his bedroom door would awaken him by nine o’clock at the latest.”
He continued to stick to the themes which had been part of the repertory of earlier years, and which are recorded in the table talk: his youth in Vienna, the First World War and the years of struggle, history, prehistory,
nutrition, women, art, the fight for survival. He grew exercised over the “hopping around” of the dancer Gret Palucca, over the “stunted smears” of modern art, over Conductor Knappertsbusch’s fortissimi, which forced opera singers to shriek so that they “looked like tadpoles.” He spoke of his disgust with the “idiotic bourgeoisie,” with the “herd of swine” in the Vatican or with the “insipid Christian heaven.” Along with ruminations about the imperial racial state, Hannibal’s elephants, Ice Age catastrophes, Caesar’s wife, or “the gang of jurists” came recommendations for a vegetarian diet, a prospectus for a popular Sunday newspaper that would carry “lots of pictures,” and serialized fiction “so that the gals can get something ou of it.”55 Stunned by the unending torrent of words, the Italian Foreign Minister commented that Hitler was probably very happy to be Hitler because it permitted him to talk eternally.
More striking than the endless flow of his monologues was, at least in the recorded material, the crudity of expression, in which he unmistakably relapsed back to his origins. The ideas themselves, the anxieties, wishes and aims, were unchanged from his early days. What is more, he now laid aside all the disguises and statesmanlike poses, and fell back on the vehement and vulgar phrases of the beer-hall demagogue, not to say the denizen of the flophouse. With a good deal of zest he discussed cannibalism among the partisans or in besieged Leningrad. He called Roosevelt a “cracked fool,” Churchill’s speeches “a souse’s bullshit,” and irritably denounced von Manstein as a “pisspot strategist.” He praised the Soviet system for forgoing all the “humanitarian blather,” and imagined how he would meet a mutiny in Germany by “shooting a batch of a few hundred thousand people.” One of his favorite, “constantly repeated” maxims was the sentence: “A dead man can no longer put up a fight.”56