This is the reason why Hitler refused to countenance a separate peace in early 1943, except possibly with Britain, despite the critical military position. A compromise with Roosevelt was never considered, because the Führer regarded him as the guiding spirit of the enemy coalition, but nor did he try to come to terms with the Soviet Union. The main issue here was not Hitler’s antipathy to Bolshevism. He had begun to develop a grudging respect for Stalin.246 Immediately after the defeat at Stalingrad, Hitler told Ribbentrop of his great admiration for the Soviet dictator and the way in which he had revived the Red Army and inspired his people. But when the foreign minister suggested putting out peace feelers to Moscow, the Führer demurred. Six weeks or so later, Hitler also rejected Mussolini and Bormann’s request for negotiations with Stalin.247 In part, this was because he feared that the overture would be interpreted as a sign of weakness; any approach would have to be preceded by a decisive military victory.248 The main problem was that in order to balance the Anglo-Americans–once a long-term programme and now an urgent necessity–Hitler still needed the resources of the Ukraine and the Caucasus. Stalin was unlikely to give him the latter or to allow him to retain the former. The war with Russia, he told Mussolini, was his ‘life’s work’. It was fear of the west which drove his intransigence in the east.
It was this determination to hold on to his territorial spoils which caused Hitler to eschew any serious attempts to seek new allies in Russia. He issued oral guidelines which seemed to discourage Wehrmacht plans to establish a Russian committee and even a ‘Russian Liberation Army’.249 Operational considerations played an important role here. Hitler doubted the reliability and effectiveness of Russian auxiliaries. The main reason for Hitler’s reserve, however, was that he did not want to tie his hands politically. He showed no interest in the ‘Europe Committee’ set up by Ribbentrop in early April 1943 to think about the ‘overall structure of the future Europe’.250 By contrast, Hitler, who had earlier supported some sort of post-war system of friendly and allied states, now expressed his contempt for the ‘small-state clutter which still exists in Europe today’, which should be ‘liquidated as soon as possible’.251
In the spring of 1943, Hitler still had a coherent strategy to win the war, or at least to force a satisfactory draw. He would hold North Africa, to deny the Anglo-Americans a launchpad against southern Europe. He would secure the Balkans, Scandinavia and the west coast of France against an Allied landing. He would retaliate against the bombing of German cities by attacking those of Britain with weapons nearing readiness, and perhaps even those of the United States. He would continue his war against the Jews. He would shore up his many European and global alliances. He would cut Britain off from its overseas lifelines through an intensified submarine campaign. Finally, he would launch a fresh offensive in Russia in order to secure some of the remaining objectives of Barbarossa, to safeguard those already gained, possibly to knock Stalin out of the war, and at the very least to demonstrate that he still held the military initiative.
Throughout the first few months of the year, Hitler prepared his next move in the east.252 In March 1943, he announced plans for an offensive south-east of Kharkov, designed to eliminate a relatively small Soviet bulge there. It was the military leaders, especially Manstein and Zeitzler, who eventually persuaded him to launch a much bigger operation at Kursk.253 Despite this, even complete success merely promised to deliver Stalin a very bloody nose; the purpose of the attack was primarily political rather than military. It was intended, as Hitler said, to act as ‘a clarion call to the world’,254 to show that the Third Reich was still a force to be reckoned with.
It was in this context that Hitler stepped up the production battle. He gave more powers to Fritz Sauckel in order to increase the available labour force.255 In late January 1943, the ‘Adolf Hitler Panzer Programme’ was announced with great fanfare. It determined that, in the first three months of the year, priority should be given to tank production for the eastern front. Hitler told Speer that there should be ‘the highest possible output of tanks’ even if ‘other important war production was temporarily affected thereby’.256 This message was reinforced a few months later, when Hitler demanded detailed figures on tank production and let it be known that ‘because the battles of this summer entirely depend on numerical superiority in tanks’, he expected that ‘everything would be done to maintain these figures and if possible to increase them’.257 Despite this, tanks amounted to no more than 7 per cent of production in this period; the proportion of industrial capacity devoted to aircraft construction was more than five times larger.258
The military and economic mobilization was to be accompanied by a ‘total’ mobilization of the home front. In early January 1943, even before Stalingrad fell, Hitler issued a decree demanding the release of more men to serve at the front.259 Towards the middle of the month he spoke (apparently for the first time) of a ‘total war’, and once again stressed the need to free up more manpower.260 Further decrees demanding the weeding-out of shirkers followed.261 It was also in January 1943 that Hitler introduced compulsory ‘war-related’ labour service for women below the age of forty-five. This measure was intended to bring another 5.5 million women into the workforce. In practice, there were so many exemptions–for example, for mothers with a child under five or two children under eight years of age–and so little enforcement that nobody who did not actually want to work was forced to do so against her will.262
Hitler wanted the mobilization to be not just material, but also emotional and psychological. The military defeat at Stalingrad was to be transformed into a propaganda myth of endurance and renewal.263 Taking his cue from the Führer’s phrase, Goebbels publicly announced ‘total war’ in a thunderous speech at the Berlin Sportpalast in February 1943, shortly after the fall of Stalingrad. In the summer, Hitler ordered work started on a major new war film–Kolberg–about the heroic defence of a fortress during the Napoleonic Wars which was designed not merely to stiffen the spirit of resistance in Germany but to cultivate appreciation for Hitler’s idol Bonaparte–who was to be portrayed as an ‘admirable figure’. Goebbels and the Führer gave instructions that the director–Veit Harlan–should be given access to whatever Wehrmacht extras he needed to create a ‘large canvas’. No expense was to be spared in order to make a film which would put Hollywood in the shade.264 Speer’s armament efforts also came into their own, for whatever the actual increase in production, there is no doubt that he could tell a powerful story about the economy,265 which reassured not merely Hitler but the German people. For example, when discussing the construction of the Atlantic Wall, Hitler demanded ‘an appropriate propaganda’ under the slogan ‘further strengthening of the Atlantic Wall since Dieppe’.266 Here production and propaganda were two sides of the same coin.
The Führer was acutely conscious of fractures within his vaunted Volksgemeinschaft, but his room for manoeuvre was limited. On the one hand, he was reluctant to force middle-class women into menial work, especially if they were of childbearing age. This was not just an ideological issue. Hitler was aware that discontented female munitions workers had been a major source of unrest during the First World War. He was also anxious to preserve the illusion of normality as much as possible in order to keep civilian spirits up. On the other hand, the spectacle of bourgeois women being spared the rigours routinely expected of their proletarian counterparts sat ill with the regime’s ideology. Especially problematic were the privileges claimed by the wives and families of senior party members, which were bad for morale. Hitler repeatedly demanded that these were not to be abused, and that party members and their relations must behave in a way that was ‘exemplary’ for the rest of the population.267 As a token of his determination to break with convention, Hitler awarded the first war medals to women. The British air-attacks, which ground men and women into the dust equally, proved a great leveller.268
Hitler’s answer to the problem of shortages was more immediate. These were to be remedied by p
illaging the occupied territories. ‘The Führer urgently points out,’ Speer recorded, ‘that shortages in the Reich should be dealt with in the first instance at the expense of the occupied territories.’269 For example, if there was a dearth of bicycles for armaments workers then those in Holland, Belgium, Denmark and so on should be confiscated. The same applied to trams. In due course, two decrees to that effect followed.270 This was the implicit bargain Hitler now struck with the German people: their European empire would not bring them the plenty that had been promised, but at least it helped to alleviate the want.271
Hitler was clear about the basic problem, which was not only a matter of production but also of transportation and mobility. In mid January 1943, he stressed the need to release more vehicles for the army in the east.272 In early February 1943, he lamented the loss of locomotives and the large casualties among train crew, which he hoped to reduce by the deployment of anti-aircraft weapons.273 A month later, the dire shortage of transport led him to appoint a ‘plenipotentiary for the registration of motor vehicles’.274 ‘The war,’ he remarked, ‘was in its essence a question of transport.’ The Germans’ failure to ‘master’ the ‘problem of mobility’, Hitler went on, had cost them Stalingrad, and was at the root of the crisis in North Africa. The main advantage enjoyed by Germany, he claimed, was that of ‘interior lines’, which reduced the amount of transport needed, but he warned that whoever solved the problem of mobility first would win the war.275
In May 1943, two central planks of Hitler’s strategy collapsed. The Axis forces in Tunisia capitulated. In military terms, it was a much greater disaster than Stalingrad, with well in excess of 130,000 Wehrmacht personnel taken prisoner, many more than had entered captivity with Paulus.276 Characteristically, Hitler intervened in person to demand (unsuccessfully) that the last planes out evacuated not the wounded but vital heavy equipment.277 This move reflected not the Führer’s heartlessness per se, but his prioritizing of materiel over men. Strategically, the end in Africa was even more catastrophic than the disaster on the Don. ‘Tunisgrad’278–as it became known–blew the Axis position in the Mediterranean wide open, undermined Mussolini’s standing in Italy and provided the Allied air forces with bases to attack fortress Europe from the south.
The Führer’s problem was that he could not be sure where the Anglo-Americans would strike next. British Intelligence mounted an ingenious deception campaign, Operation Mincemeat, to persuade him that the blow would fall in Sardinia and Greece, rather than their next target, Sicily.279 The anxiety about the Balkans remained with Hitler, tying down considerable resources, until he evacuated the region just over a year later.280 Part of the motivation here was economic, to protect the mineral resources of the Balkans. Hitler also felt politically vulnerable. On 20 May 1943, he expressed his fears about the British family connections and sympathies of the Italian High Command. Hitler said that he expected everything he sent to the Duce would be passed on to London. Hitler’s expectation was that the Italians would soon abandon the Axis.281
It was in this context that Hitler issued a decree in May 1943 forbidding leading state, party and military men from maintaining ‘international’ contacts. ‘The experiences of the war,’ he stated with obvious reference to the situation in Italy, ‘have shown me beyond doubt that family relationships between German men and foreign circles can very easily have damaging effects on the common good.’ ‘This applies particularly,’ Hitler continued, ‘for the international family connections of governing and formerly governing princely houses.’ For this reason, he forbade senior figures from being married to women from countries ‘which are at war or in a state of political hostility with us’. The same applied if they had familial, social or business relationships to enemy countries and were thus to be regarded as ‘internationally bound’.282 The Third Reich was turning still further in on itself. In Hitler’s mind, the ‘go-betweens’, once a valuable part of his engagement with the west, were no longer a sally-port, but a weak spot in his own defences.
Hitler also suffered a catastrophic setback at sea. The intensified submarine campaign against the British supply lines across the Atlantic culminated in March, with nearly 630,000 tons of shipping sunk, at the cost of fifteen U-boats lost. If that rate had been maintained, Britain would probably have been starved out, and the Allied war machine on the near side of the Atlantic would have ground to a halt. Allied counter-measures, especially the increased use of radar, soon turned the tide. After an inconclusive April, sinkings dropped to 264,000 tons in May 1943; forty-one submarines were lost. Devastated by this battering, Dönitz temporarily withdrew his U-boats from the Atlantic. Hitler accepted the defeat with resignation and without recrimination. He had long foreseen the development of Allied countermeasures, and had been surprised at the run of good luck enjoyed by the U-boats.283 Right at the end of the month, Hitler ordered a ‘rapid increase in the production of U-boats’. He demanded the production of ‘at least’ forty submarines per month. Speer was put in charge of this effort.284 U-boats were redeployed to the Mediterranean and the Arctic. It was clear, though, that the Kriegsmarine would not be bringing Britain to its knees anytime soon.
Everything now depended on the planned summer offensive in the east. Throughout the late spring and early summer of 1943, a huge strike force was assembled. In late June 1943, Hitler received word of a possible Russian willingness to make a separate peace.285 He did not immediately reject the overture, but nor did he seize on it. That same month, Hitler rejected once again the idea of deploying anti-Soviet prisoners of war under General Vlasov.286 He also refused to countenance Hans Frank’s suggestion that the Third Reich capitalize on the revulsion against Stalin associated with the discovery of the murdered Polish officers at Katyn (April 1943) to pursue a more conciliatory course in Poland, and to recruit Poles into the Wehrmacht.287 The reason for Hitler’s hard line was not primarily racial, but political. He feared that it would complicate any compromise peace with Stalin, supposedly repeating the mistakes of Bethmann-Hollweg’s pro-Polish policy, which had stood in the way of an arrangement with Tsarist Russia.288 Hitler also doubted the military value of such formations, Polish or Russian, and he feared that they would just become the vehicle for Slavic political ambitions. Besides, it would risk repeating the error the German High Command had made of sending Lenin to revolutionize Russia in 1917.289 This was an extraordinary remark for Hitler to make, for it showed that he was perfectly aware that the Bolshevik revolution was not the result of a Jewish-plutocratic plot, but the product of a bold gambit by the German High Command.
On 5 July 1943, Hitler finally launched his attack at Kursk, Operation Zitadelle.290 The contrast with the offensives of the previous four years was striking. Hitler knew that he was no longer capable of a war of large-scale manoeuvre. For all the firepower and armour he concentrated at Kursk, the offensive was a limited and primarily attritional operation designed to eliminate a large Soviet salient. In those terms, it seemed set to succeed. The Wehrmacht lacked the element of surprise, but it managed to batter its way through the first lines of the Red Army defences. Soviet manpower and equipment losses were substantial.291 Those of the Germans were far lower. The legendary tank battle at Prokhorovka on 12 July was particularly costly for the Red Army.292 There was no question of any strategic breakthrough, but a major tactical victory over the Soviet Union, which could be exploited politically and propagandistically, appeared possible.
In fact, Hitler by then had already decided to call off the operation. On 10 July, the Allies landed in Sicily. The Italian defence collapsed within days. On 12 July, the Red Army launched a major offensive against Army Group Centre near Orel, north of Kursk. It is not clear which of these two challenges caused Hitler to halt the attack at Kursk;293 he did not immediately divert forces from the east, and given that Kursk was primarily a political operation designed, among other things, to reassure allies, it would have been counter-productive to do so. There is no doubt, however, that from now on the Ang
lo-American threat to his southern flank absorbed the greater part of his attention. The Kriegsmarine was instructed to move the bones of the Hohenstaufen emperor Frederick II, one of Hitler’s idols, from Sicily to the mainland.294 The battle for the island dragged on until the middle of the following month, but by then Hitler was already in the middle of the crisis he had long feared. Perhaps bowed down by the stalemate at Kursk, the Allied invasion of Sicily, and the imminent defection of Italy, Hitler suffered a major physical collapse on 18 July. He required substantial medication from Dr Morell before he was able to see the Duce at their meeting the following day.295
On 25 July 1943, Mussolini was deposed in a coup. The new Badoglio government pledged continued allegiance to the Axis, but Hitler was not deceived. He was well aware that the Marshal was his ‘bitterest enemy’. The defection of Italy was now imminent. Hitler’s reaction was swift. Sicily would have to be evacuated–fast. Unusually, Hitler gave priority to saving men rather than equipment. ‘Materiel here, materiel there,’ he remarked, ‘that doesn’t matter, the people are more important.’ The reason for this soon became clear. The Führer assumed that the Hermann Göring Division would be able to overawe the Italians without the use of heavy equipment. ‘We will be able to sort out the Italians with small arms alone,’ he remarked.296 A day later, Hitler ordered the transfer of substantial forces from the east to Italy, and the consequent surrender of the Orel salient to the Red Army. He laid down that these were to be ‘politically sound units, which are above all politically close to fascism’, and nominated the 3rd SS Panzer Division (‘Death’s Head’); it was partly recruited from concentration camp guards.297 Their mission was thus as much political as it was military. These reinforcements were unable to stop the Allies landing at Salerno south of Naples. Determined German counter-attacks were seen off. The Anglo-Americans now had a foothold on the European mainland.
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