Apart from the local control of ‘national comrades’ exercised through the Party organization, which was constantly being expanded,43 the threat of any public expression of discontent with the war was dealt with by an increase in repression. To facilitate this, shortly after the outbreak of war, the apparatus of police repression – criminal police, Gestapo, and the Party’s intelligence service, the SD – was concentrated in a new organization, the Reich Security Head Office (RSHA) under Heydrich.44 In addition, a decree of 4 September made listening to foreign broadcasts a criminal offence; passing on news received from this source in public could even lead to the imposition of the death penalty. While this did not prevent unwelcome information from being spread through foreign broadcasts, it did mean that anyone referring in public to a foreign broadcast as the source of their information was taking a serious risk.45 The War Economy Decree of 4 September also provided for the punishment of ‘behaviour damaging the war effort’, such as hoarding food or slaughtering animals for the black market. Here too, in serious cases the death penalty could be imposed.46 The National Vermin Decree of 5 September introduced lengthy sentences of penal servitude and the death penalty for crimes committed by taking advantage of wartime conditions (evacuation, the blackout, and so forth), or which in general posed a threat to the ‘German people’s military capabilities’.47 Also, the Decree against Violent Criminals of 5 December introduced lengthier sentences.48
This was not all, however. After the outbreak of war, Hitler began personally to order the shooting of criminals if he concluded that the crime was particularly damaging to the home front. In some cases the victims had already been given prison sentences; other cases simply involved suspects. There was no legal authority for these arbitrary actions. News of these executions, which were usually carried out in concentration camps, was made public to act as a deterrent.49 A few days after the outbreak of the war, Himmler asked Hitler what should be done with Polish prisoners of war who had ‘friendly or even sexual relations’ with German women. Hitler ordered that the prisoners should all be shot and the women be shamed by having their hair cut off in public and then be sent to a concentration camp.50 The comprehensive War Economy Decree of 4 September, and the subsequent decrees implementing it, not only imposed drastic sanctions, but also placed substantial financial burdens on the population. Thus a 15 per cent surcharge was imposed on income tax; the consumption of beer, tobacco, and sparkling wines was subject to a special war tax, and the tax on brandy was increased. Also, overtime payments for night and Sunday work were cancelled, as well as all holiday entitlements. Thus, the various benefits introduced during the previous few years to get round the official wage freeze were being removed. At the beginning of September, food rationing was introduced; every citizen received a ration card.51 Clothing and articles of daily use were also rationed.52
During the autumn of 1939, however, the drastic measures introduced by the War Economy Decree were already proving counter-productive and unpopular; they affected, above all, workers in the armaments industry, who were already under pressure. Meanwhile, the closure of plants not vital to the war effort was causing a rise in unemployment because many of their workers could not quickly find employment in armaments plants at a time when war production was only gradually increasing. The population’s discontent with the added burdens was soon reflected in the official situation reports. Questioning the war was still taboo, and so people found an outlet for their unhappiness in particular complaints.53 Declining work discipline and an increase in ill health were clear symptoms of widespread dissatisfaction. The regime responded and various cuts were withdrawn; for example, the overtime payments for night and Sunday work and annual holidays were reinstated, planned structural changes to the wages system were dropped, and elaborate plans for tax increases postponed. This ‘soft’ policy of October and November 1939 occurred at a time when the regime had to accustom the population, which was not exactly enthusiastic about the war, to the idea of it going on for some time. That did not mean that it was in principle unwilling to impose burdens on the population during the war. Over the long term, private consumption was cut by shortages and rationing. Thus, consumer expenditure in 1943 was already 18 per cent below that in 1938. The shortage of goods meant that people’s savings increased, with this money flowing ‘noiselessly’ into the government’s coffers to finance the war.54
The Ministerial Council for the Defence of the Reich, which had been created by Hitler’s edict of 30 August, was responsible for introducing (and partially revoking) all these radical measures. Under Lammers’s chairmanship, this body consisted of Keitel, Hess, Frick, and Funk as permanent members; other ministers took part in particular sessions, the state secretaries [top civil servants] on a regular basis. The Ministerial Council was intended to provide uniform direction of the economy and the administration and had the authority to issue decrees with the force of law; as such, it had the role of replacing the defunct cabinet. Newly appointed ‘Reich Defence Commissioners’, who coordinated the civilian war effort in the military districts and were supposed to direct the various branches of the administration, were subordinated to the Ministerial Council. The fact that only Gauleiters were appointed to these posts was intended to indicate the increasing importance of the Party on the ‘home front’. However, the Ministerial Council never became an effective organization for directing the economy, let alone a war cabinet, as Göring had no particular interest in the new body, which increasingly became a battleground for inter-ministerial conflicts. He allowed it to meet only a few times until November 1939, and dealt with the necessary legislative activity by circulating draft laws and decrees for the approval of the ministries involved.55
The establishment of the Ministerial Council was intended to emphasize to the public that Hitler was concentrating on the actual running of the war and to highlight Göring’s status as second-in-command. In fact, however, Hitler kept control of the Ministerial Council, thereby securing his hold over the whole of domestic policy and legislation. He placed the business of the Ministerial Council in the hands of the Reich Chancellery (and not Göring’s), maintained the right to dissolve it, claimed the right to legislate through the Reich government and the Reichstag (and made use of that right), had Ministerial Council decrees submitted to him on a regular basis, and intervened at will in the Ministerial Council’s legislative practice.56
Thus the outbreak of war altered relatively little in the government’s style of operating. Government bodies coexisted in an uncoordinated way, or to put it another way, there was endemic conflict between rival ministries, Party agencies, special delegates, as well as the Wehrmacht and its three individual branches, all engaged in battles over responsibilities. In particular, the division of the economy into a civilian branch, for which the Reich Economics Ministry was responsible, and an armaments sector under the jurisdiction of the Wehrmacht guaranteed friction. The fact that, on 7 December, Göring removed Economics Minister Funk from power as General Plenipotentiary for the Economy, declaring himself to be the person who wielded supreme authority over the war economy, made no real difference to this situation.57 The opacity, the lack of clear structures for leadership and decision-making, as well as the conflicts between the individual authorities ensured Hitler’s untrammelled power, providing him with numerous opportunities for intervening from issue to issue in a system whose functional flaws were the precondition for his own omnipotence.
Continuation of the war
Hitler initially behaved as if he was uncertain how to proceed with the further conduct of the war with the western powers. His entourage gained the impression that, at the end of September, he was still toying with the idea of a peace treaty. Thus, on 23 September, Goebbels learnt from the Reich press chief, Dietrich, who had just come from Hitler’s headquarters, that, in view of the impending victory over Poland, he was not ‘averse to making peace’; he wanted ‘to separate France from Britain’, in other words make contact with the French g
overnment. Dietrich immediately added, however, that Ribbentrop ‘didn’t really [have] any contacts’ in Paris.58 On 28 September, Hitler told Dahlerus, who had still not given up his attempts at Anglo-German mediation, that the precondition for peace was that he was allowed ‘a completely free hand with Poland’.59
With such remarks Hitler was evidently trying gradually to convince those among the leadership who were unhappy with the idea of a major war of the inevitability of his course of action. For Hitler was already focusing on the possibility of a German offensive in the West. He appears to have already made a remark along these lines on 12 September, although without informing the army leadership of these plans.60
On 27 September, the day on which Warsaw surrendered, Hitler told a meeting of army commanders that, like it or not, they must get used to the fact that the war was going to continue. The other side would benefit most from the passage of time and so it was important not to ‘wait until the enemy comes to us’; they had to go onto the attack themselves and ‘the sooner the better’. The troops were quite capable of quickly having another go; the campaign in Poland had basically been an exercise, a manoeuvre. The war aim was to ‘force England to its knees’, and to crush France.61 The war in the West must begin between 20 and 25 October and be fought initially in Belgium and Holland.62 However, the military leadership was sceptical about, indeed opposed to, Hitler’s plan to launch an attack in the West.63
Two days later, Hitler explained to Goebbels and Rosenberg, who was also present, how occupied Poland was to be dealt with in the future. Up until now, in view of the possibility of negotiations taking place with the western powers, he had left open the question of what they were going to do with a defeated Poland, not excluding the possibility of allowing a rump Polish state to continue to exist. This was, in fact, basically a phantom project, as is clear from the fact that that no serious attempts had been made to appoint a provisional Polish government.64 Now, however, with victory in sight and peace with the western powers a long way away, his ideas acquired a clearer focus. Although the notion of some kind of a Polish rump state had not been abandoned, it was now going to be much smaller and, in addition, become part of a brutal plan for a reorganization of the region along racial lines. As Goebbels noted, according to this plan, Poland was going to be divided into ‘3 zones’: ‘the old German territory’, which was to be ‘totally Germanized’ and, with the aid of ‘military peasants’, was to become ‘core German territory’ again; a strip of territory stretching eastwards up to the river Vistula, where ‘the good Polish element’ would live and enjoy a certain autonomy within a ‘protectorate’ (in his notes Rosenberg used the expression ‘a Polish statehood’); and the new territory beyond the Vistula, which would contain the ‘bad Polish elements and the Jews, including those from the Reich’.65 He had already taken a fundamental decision to ‘resettle’ the Jews from the Reich a few days before.66 Hitler reflected that they had gained ‘a huge amount of territory’, but at the same time had to accept that ‘Moscow’s influence in the Baltic states had been strengthened’. However, he was ‘convinced of Russia’s loyalty’, particularly since Stalin was pocketing ‘a big prize’. 67
Hitler was referring to the Treaty of Borders and Friendship with the Soviet Union, signed by Ribbentrop in Moscow on 27 September, which had altered the spheres of influence agreed in August.68 The Soviets wanted Lithuania, with Germany being compensated by receiving the central Polish territory between the rivers Bug, Vistula, and San.69 This implied that the Soviet Union had no interest in the heart of Polish territory and was relaxed about the possibility that a rump state might be established there.70 In a secret additional protocol it agreed to allow those Reich citizens and persons of German heritage living within its sphere of influence to go to Germany.71
Both nations stated in a joint declaration that they believed that peace between Germany and the western powers ‘would be in the true interests of all nations’. Both governments declared that they would seek to bring an end to the war and, if their efforts proved unsuccessful, this ‘would show that England and France are responsible for continuing the war’, and both governments would ‘consult together about the appropriate steps to take’.72 Finally, in Directive 5 of 30 September, Hitler established a military administration in occupied Polish territory. He reserved the right to settle the ‘political arrangements’ in the part of Poland that had neither been annexed by Germany nor was occupied by the Soviet Union.73
At the beginning of October, fighting in Poland gradually came to an end. After the occupation of Warsaw, on 2 October, Hitler ordered the bells to be rung throughout the Reich for one hour for a whole week. Three days later, he visited the city in order to take a victory parade by the Wehrmacht. In Schloss Belvedere, the residence of Marshal Piłsudski until his death, he paid tribute to a statesman whom he had long revered. The gesture was intended to demonstrate that he considered the Polish leadership that had taken over following Piłsudski’s death and abandoned the rapprochement with Germany to be responsible for the war.74
On 6 October, Hitler made a ‘peace offer’ to the western powers in a speech in the Reichstag. This move was motivated above all by domestic considerations, responding to the German population’s pronounced yearning for peace, which continued even after victory over Poland. Hitler’s image as a ‘peace Chancellor’, which had been carefully cultivated during the years before the war, was to remain during the early phase of the conflict and not be immediately replaced by his pose as a ‘warlord’. The logic underlying Hitler’s proposal was both simple and at the same time insolent. The western powers should stop the war, since the original reason for their intervention, the German attack on Poland, had been removed as a result of the collapse of the Polish state. A ‘reordering of the ethnographic situation’ in the whole of eastern and south-eastern Europe, that is to say a ‘resettlement of nationalities’, was necessary, so that ‘there are better lines of separation than is the case today’. However, the ‘final reorganization of this area’ was a problem that only Germany and the Soviet Union could solve. Provided the western powers accepted this, then they could move on to deal with future problems together. Hitler sketched out a comprehensive European security system, and proposed limits on armaments and a convention to protect civilian populations. He stressed once again that his government had no interest in a further revision of the German borders, but simply demanded the return of Germany’s colonies.75
With this ‘offer’ Hitler had quite cleverly made the restoration of peace appear to be up to the enemy. If, as was probable, the western powers did not accept his offer, he would have the basis for a propaganda campaign blaming Britain and France for continuing the war. In this way the German people could be gradually weaned off their widespread illusions about the possibility of peace and get used to the reality of a lengthy war. The assumption was that this would not damage the image of Hitler as the ‘peace chancellor’. And, indeed, asserting that Germany was not guilty of a war started by the western powers became an established ritual leitmotif in numerous diplomatic and public statements by Hitler during the coming months and years.
On the morning of 10 October, it became clear just how strong the hopes for peace were. According to the SD reports ‘almost overnight, a rumour that the English government had resigned and the English king had abdicated and that an armistice had been declared spread all over the Reich’. The rumour spread so quickly, among other things, because postal and railway officials had informed their colleagues throughout the Reich of the sensational news by telephone and telegraph. There were outbursts of spontaneous jubilation, in some plants the work breaks ran over time because the employees were busy discussing the new situation. According to the SD, the official denial of the rumour, broadcast on the radio, produced deep depression.76
The ‘ethnic reorganization’ of Poland
From 5 October onwards, Hitler took a number of more or less precipitate decisions, leading, before the month was ov
er, to the replacement of the military occupation in Poland by a civilian administration. The waning prospects for peace with the western powers provided him with the opportunity of subjecting Poland to an ‘ethnic reorganization’. This was to be undertaken by radical elements from the Party and SS rather than by the army, which began increasingly to protest against the SS terror in Poland. This had the effect of further damaging the relationship between Hitler and the generals, already under strain as a result of Hitler’s plan to attack the West in the autumn.77
Around a half of the Polish territory occupied by Germany was directly ‘incorporated’ into the Reich by enlarging the Prussian provinces of Upper Silesia and East Prussia, as well as by creating two new ‘Reich Gaus’, West Prussia and Posen, soon renamed Danzig-West Prussia and the Wartheland. The official line was that this was not in fact a restoration of the territorial situation existing prior to the First World War, an idea shared by the Foreign Ministry and the Interior Ministry.78 Instead, in accordance with Hitler’s instructions,79 and following Göring’s initiative, territory twice the size of the previous area was integrated into the Reich, territory that, with the exception of Danzig, was overwhelmingly inhabited by Poles. The Danzig Gauleiter, Albert Forster, and the president of the Danzig senate, Arthur Greiser, took over power in the two new Reich Gaus as Reich governors [Reichsstatthalter]. The Reich governors were entitled to control the whole of the Reich administration in the two Gaus and, through their position as Gauleiters, to secure the influence of the Party. Hitler specifically insisted on the Gauleiters being made as powerful as possible.80 This provided the preconditions for a ruthless ‘Germanization policy’ in the two Reich Gaus.81
Hitler Page 87
