The ‘pause’ that occurred after the defeat of Poland did, however, give Hitler’s regime the opportunity of reorganizing the armaments sector during the winter of 1939/40. The outbreak of war had produced significant shortages of raw materials. However, during the following months, despite the Allied blockade, they could be partially compensated for with the help of neutral states and, not least, through the trade agreement with the Soviet Union.27
In the economic sphere, experts did not consider that the camouflaged mobilization, carried out at the end of August and beginning of September, had been a success. This was because many planned economic measures had not been implemented at the start of the war, and even during the following weeks the rapid victory over Poland made such changes appear unnecessary. The economics staff of the OKW, the Economics Ministry, and the Reich Food Estate were banking on it being a long war. The economy had to be adapted to wartime conditions: investment in infrastructure was needed to survive the blockade; exports had to be increased to enable the import of vital goods; the basis of the food supply had to be further expanded. All this meant that it was necessary to refrain from undertaking major military operations and remain on the defensive.28
Hitler, however, who was banking on a rapid and decisive military success against the West, had other priorities. On 21 August 1939, he had already signed a Führer order, prepared by Göring, putting the Ju-88 programme, which had stalled during 1939, once again into high gear; up to 300 of this type of aircraft were to be built every month. However, Hitler cannot, at this point, have foreseen the results of his order. He had signed a general order, enabling the Luftwaffe to secure a substantial quota of raw materials (for example around half the consumption of aluminium) and a large part of Germany’s industrial capacity.29 The navy’s Z-Plan, which since 1939 had dominated German armaments production and was only going to be completed by the mid-1940s, was now replaced by a relatively modest programme of U-boat construction.30
Above all, however, during the autumn of 1939, Hitler launched a massive munitions programme. In November he demanded a tripling of the munitions production planned by the Army Weapons Office. This was a fundamental change of course compared with his previous interventions, which had focused, above all, on increasing the supply of weapons for the Wehrmacht. He also issued various specific orders concerning the production of artillery and munitions.31 By the end of the month, he had made his intentions more precise through a ‘Führer demand’, the final version of which he signed on 12 December. It contained planned monthly production quotas for artillery of particular calibres, and revealed that Hitler’s ideas concerning the campaign in the West were strongly influenced by his own experiences in the First World War: artillery barrages would achieve the breakthrough.32 The munitions and Ju-88 programmes were set to absorb two-thirds of armaments capacity during the first ten months of the war.33
In 1940 Hitler’s decisions began to have an impact. The redirection of raw materials and the new armaments priorities led to a sharp increase in German armaments production and an 11 per cent per capita reduction in private consumption. This reduction was to continue increasing until the end of the war. Thus, the claim that the regime was attempting to avoid imposing too much of a burden on the population for political reasons is unsustainable. Hitler wanted a quick and decisive end to the war in 1940 not because he did not believe the German people were up to fighting a long war, but simply because Germany’s economic basis, even if exploited to the limit, was incapable of sustaining a long war.34
By July 1940, the output of armaments had doubled compared with that in January. However, the information given to Hitler in February 1940 did not yet show this increase, but instead conveyed the impression that armaments production had stagnated since the outbreak of war. Hitler, therefore, decided on a reorganization. On 17 March, he appointed Fritz Todt, the General Plenipotentiary for Construction, successful builder of the autobahns and the West Wall, and head of the Wehrmacht’s construction organization named after him, as the newly created Reich Minister of Munitions.35 Thus, the reputation Todt acquired in the following months as a successful armaments manager derived less from the rapid organizational changes in the munitions sector that he introduced immediately after his appointment, and more from the new priorities in the distribution of raw materials, which had been set before his appointment.36
The year 1940 began with an event that forced Germany to revise completely its plans for the western offensive, resulting in the plan of operations that in May 1940 led to a rapid and surprising victory in the West. On 10 January a Luftwaffe courier plane, which was off course, made an emergency landing in Belgium. Documents being carried by a paratrooper officer on board fell into the hands of the Belgian military authorities, revealing details of the German plans for the attack in the West, including a paratroop assault on Belgium.37 The affair prompted Hitler to issue a ‘basic order’, which had to be posted up in every office in the Wehrmacht. It stated that ‘No one. No office, no officer must have knowledge of any secret matter, unless for official reasons it is essential’; no one was to be allowed to know more than was absolutely necessary for carrying out their task, and no one was to be put in possession of this information earlier than necessary.38 The aim of Hitler’s clamp-down was drastically to reduce the number of people who had access to his strategic-operational decisions and to channel the flow of information. In Halder’s view, expressed after the war, Hitler’s objective was to prevent the military leadership from forming an independent assessment of the situation based on a comprehensive picture of it.39
That incident in Mechelen in Belgium also prompted Hitler to review his most recent decision to attack in the West. It dated from 10 January, and envisaged 17 January as the date of attack.40 A few days later, he cancelled the attack, telling Jodl he wanted to place the whole plan of the operation on ‘an entirely new basis, in particular in relation to secrecy and the element of surprise’. On 20 January, Hitler told the army and Luftwaffe chiefs that, in view of the fact that the enemy had acquired concrete ideas about German intentions, and these had been confirmed by the ‘airman affair’, the war could now be won only if they ensured with a ‘fanatical determination’ that ‘operational ideas [remained] secret’. The period between the giving of the order and the attack must be radically shortened in order to maintain the element of surprise.41 The following day he demanded from Brauchitsch and Halder ‘permanent readiness for action, in order to make use of possible favourable weather conditions in February’.42 The army leadership ensured the implementation of his directive: from 1 February 1940 onwards, the army in the West was on standby to launch an offensive within twenty-four hours.43
The renewed postponement of the campaign provided the German leadership with the opportunity fundamentally to alter the plan of attack. The original plan of the OKH envisaged the main attack as focused on two armies advancing north and south of the Belgian fortress complex of Liège. From now onwards, however, Hitler began increasingly to intervene in the operational planning.
In November 1939, Hitler had responded to the Luftwaffe’s arguments that, in the event of war, they would have to reckon on the transfer of enemy air force units to the Netherlands, by insisting that the army should partially occupy the country, although without ‘Fortress Holland’ in the centre and with only limited forces. At the same time, in November, Hitler had demanded that the army shift the main focus of attack to the southern flank of the front.44 The Chief of Staff of Army Group A, Erich von Manstein, was thinking along the same lines, also wanting the main focus of the attack to be in southern Belgium. The enemy would not anticipate a tank offensive through the Ardennes, which, despite the obstacle presented by the wooded hills, would be entirely feasible. German forces should advance towards the Somme, and then along it towards the Channel, thereby cutting off and destroying the enemy forces in Belgium and northern France.45 On 17 February, Hitler’s Wehrmacht adjutant, Schmundt, arranged a meeting between Hitler
and Manstein, whereupon the ‘Führer’ adopted Manstein’s ideas, ensuring that the operational plans were revised accordingly. On 24 February, the OKH issued a new directive, moving the main focus of attack to the southern flank, and also ordering the rapid occupation of the Netherlands with much larger forces.46
Mussolini, a reluctant ally
In January, Goebbels noted down comments Hitler made at a small soirée about his future plans: he was ‘determined to fight a major war against England’; it must be ‘swept out of Europe and France must be deposed as a great power’. Then Germany would have ‘hegemony and Europe would have peace’. After that he wanted ‘to spend a few more years in office, carry out social reforms and his building plans, and then withdraw’. He would then ‘simply hover over politics as a benign spirit’ and write down all the things that still preoccupied him, ‘the gospel of National Socialism, so to speak’.47 A few days later, Goebbels noted Hitler’s remarks about the ‘the old Holy Roman Empire’, whose imperial tradition he wished to continue and with a clear goal: ‘on the basis of our organization and our elite we must automatically one day come to rule the world’.48
However, there was still a long way to go. In terms of foreign policy, at the beginning of 1940 the main objective was to repair the damaged relationship with Hitler’s main ally, Mussolini. For the ‘Duce’ was clearly still very uncertain about whether or not to enter the war on Hitler’s side. At the beginning of January, Hitler received a long letter from Mussolini in which he subjected the policies of his German ally to very frank criticism on a number of points. The Poles, the ‘Duce’ told him, deserved to be ‘treated in a way that did not provide subject matter for enemy speculation’. He should create ‘a Polish state under German supervision’, in order to remove the western powers’ main argument for continuing the war. This state could get rid of all the Jews; he thoroughly approved of Hitler’s plan to deport them all to a large ghetto near Lublin. Hitler must, Mussolini continued, ‘on no account seize the initiative on the western front’; victory in the West was more than doubtful, for ‘the United States would not permit the complete destruction of the democracies’.
As far as the alliance with the Soviet Union was concerned, Mussolini warned Hitler not ‘to keep sacrificing the principles of your revolution to the political requirements of a particular political situation’; he must not ‘abandon the anti-Semitic and anti-Bolshevik banner . . . that you have held high for 20 years’. This was followed by a clear warning: ‘Any further move towards Moscow would have catastrophic repercussions in Italy’. ‘The solution to your problem of living space lies in Russia and nowhere else. . . . Four months ago Russia was still world enemy No.1; it can’t have become world friend No. 1 and it isn’t.’ Italy, wrote Mussolini in a more conciliatory tone, wanted to be Germany’s ‘reserve’, ‘from a political and diplomatic point of view’, ‘from an economic point of view’, as well as from a ‘military point of view’.49
Hitler, who, in his discussions with his entourage, made no bones about his dissatisfaction with his Italian ally,50 waited two months before replying. His response was twice as long as Mussolini’s lengthy epistle.51 Above all, he tried to persuade Italy to enter the war, saying that if Italy did not fight now, it would, in a few years’ time, be compelled to fight against the same opponents. By referring in the same paragraph to the problem of delivering German coal to Italy as a result of the British blockade, and promising an alternative solution, he was underlining the dependence of his ally on Germany for supplies of an essential raw material. He defended his alliance with Russia as a ‘clear division of spheres of influence’ with Stalin’s empire. It was possible to establish a ‘tolerable situation’ between the two countries because the Soviet system was in the process of getting rid of its ‘Jewish-internationalist leadership’ and developing ‘a Russian nationalist state ideology and economic theory’. This statement shows that Hitler was resorting to the (optimistic) idea of a ‘nationalist Russia’ that he had believed in at the beginning of the 1920s on the basis of developments in the early days of the Soviet Union. During these months, Hitler frequently discussed the unnatural alliance with Moscow with Goebbels, often referring to the allegedly inferior racial composition of the Soviet leadership. At the end of December, he expressed the view that Stalin was ‘a typical Asiatic Russian. Bolshevism had removed the West European leadership in Russia’.52 Two weeks later, he claimed that for Germany that had been a ‘very good thing. Better a weak partner as neighbour than an alliance treaty, however good’.53 In March, he asked himself: ‘Will Stalin gradually liquidate the Jews? Perhaps he only calls them Trotskyists to fool the world.’54
In his letter Hitler rejected Mussolini’s request that he should establish a Polish state; he claimed that if Poland had been left to itself after the victory there would have been a ‘ghastly chaos’, which he clearly enjoyed sketching out in detail. He attempted to persuade Mussolini to ignore the mission to Europe that the deputy American Secretary of State, Benjamin Sumner Welles, had embarked on at the end of February. This concern was presumably the reason why Hitler answered Mussolini’s letter at all and dealt with his criticisms in a relatively conciliatory tone. He did not, he wrote, rule out the possibility that the point of the mission was mainly to enable the Allies to gain time. Welles had been sent by the President to find out from the British, French, German, and Italian governments the prospects for peace. After an initial meeting with Mussolini and Ciano in Rome, Welles went on to Berlin in April, and then returned to Rome.
Hitler had issued his own guidelines for the meetings Welles had with Göring, Ribbentrop, and Hess. He ordered that they should be ‘reserved’ and, ‘if possible, avoid’ answering specific questions, such as whether there was going to be a Polish state in the future. Apart from that, they should say that the war had been forced on Germany and that they were determined to ‘break the destructive will of the western powers’. The American diplomat should not be left under any illusion that Germany was interested in discussing the possibility of peace. As a result, according to Welles, the meetings with German officials led nowhere.55 On 2 March, Hitler himself received Welles and, as was his wont, delivered a lengthy monologue, convincing the latter that the Germans had decided to continue the war.56
On 10 March Ribbentrop handed over Hitler’s 8 March letter to Mussolini during a visit to Rome; he had been assigned the task of at last getting Italy to enter the war.57 Ribbentrop told Mussolini that Germany was aiming to attack France and Britain during the course of the next few months. Its rear would be protected because Stalin had given up the idea of world revolution and, after the departure of Litvinov, all Jews had been removed from key positions. During another meeting the following day, Mussolini gave his agreement in principle to enter the war, although only after prompting by Ribbentrop.58 Hitler expressed himself ‘very satisfied’ with the success achieved by Ribbentrop in Rome,59 and met Mussolini at the Brenner Pass on 18 March. The ‘Duce’ used the few minutes left to him after Hitler’s usual lengthy monologue to reaffirm his decision to enter the war, but without naming a specific date. However, he emphasized that the Italian forces needed at least three or four months to be ready for war.60
‘Weserübung’ [Weser Exercise]
At the end of 1939/beginning of 1940, Hitler began increasingly to consider the idea of expanding the war to Scandinavia. The ‘Weserübung’ [Weser Exercise], the occupation of Denmark and Norway, which Hitler decided on in March, had a long pre-history.61 On 10 October 1939, the commander-in-chief of the navy, Raeder, alerted Hitler to the possibility of using U-boat bases in Norway, which he hoped to secure with the aid of pressure from the Soviet Union; Hitler agreed to consider the idea.62
On 30 November 1939, the Soviet Union attacked Finland, after it had refused to agree to Soviet demands to concede certain bits of territory.63 The tough Finnish resistance against the numerically far superior Soviet forces met with sympathy from the western powers, and an
expeditionary force was prepared to support Finland, which was also intended to enter Swedish territory, cutting off German imports of iron ore.64 In this conflict Hitler was definitely on the side of his Soviet ally, acknowledging the fact that in the German–Soviet treaties of 23 August and 28 September Finland had been declared to be part of the Soviet sphere of influence. The prospect that British and French troops could be shortly landing in Scandinavia meant that he was hoping for a rapid Soviet victory, particularly as he resented the fact that, in spring 1939, the Finnish government had rejected his offer of a German–Finnish non-aggression pact. A leading article in the Völkischer Beobachter, presumably written by Hitler, attributed this decision to the influence of the ‘the English warmongers’.65
The Soviet attack on Finland ensured that Norway now increasingly entered the calculations of the belligerent powers. Apart from the fear that the British might establish themselves in Norway and so close off the North Sea, the fact that Germany received two-thirds of its iron ore from Sweden via the ice-free port of Narvik was of decisive importance. In mid-December, Admiral Raeder arranged a meeting between Hitler and Vidkun Quisling, the leader of the Norwegian National Socialist splinter party, Nasjonal Samling, and succeeded in getting Hitler to order the OKW to discuss with Quisling plans for the occupation of Norway, either peacefully (following a Norwegian request for assistance) or by force.66
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