Hitler

by Peter Longerich

  War with the United States

  On 7 December the crisis on the eastern front was temporarily overshadowed by a new development. News of the Japanese attack on the American fleet in Pearl Harbour reached Führer headquarters.47 It was not unexpected. Since the beginning of November 1941, Japan and the United States had been negotiating about the lifting of the oil embargo that the United States had imposed on Japan in July 1941. In this way the United States had been trying to force the Japanese to abandon their aggressive policy in Indochina. The negotiations could be seen as having failed when, at the end of November, the US Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, demanded that, in return for the lifting of the embargo, Japan withdraw all its troops from China and Indochina. The Japanese government was not prepared under any circumstances to agree to this demand, which would have meant conceding the failure of its policy of expansion. It now prepared to conquer the oil-rich British and Dutch colonies in South-East Asia, which entailed the threat of a war with the United States. Thus, in order to preempt a possible American intervention, the Japanese government decided to attack the main base of the American Pacific fleet in Hawaii.

  On 17 November, Ribbentrop had already been informed by the German embassy in Tokyo that an imminent Japanese attack was very probable and the German Foreign Minister then indicated to the Japanese the possibility of a German declaration of war on the United States.48 When ambassador Oshima prepared Ribbentrop for the failure of the negotiations with the United States, the German Foreign Minister urged the ambassador to declare war on the United States, as ‘the situation can hardly ever be more favourable for Japan than it is now’.49 According to his telegram, intercepted by the American secret service, Oshima reported to Tokyo that Ribbentrop had added the reassurance that, in the event of Japan becoming involved in a military conflict with the United States, Germany would immediately join in the war. A separate peace with the United States would, he said, be inconceivable for Hitler.50 Presumably, Ribbentrop had secured this assurance from the ‘Führer’ during a meeting immediately preceding Ribbentrop’s interview with Oshima, as Hitler was in Berlin to attend the celebrations to mark the expansion of the Anti-Comintern Pact.51

  During the first days of December, the Japanese government informed its allies in Rome and Berlin about the impending war with America, requesting them to respond with rapid declarations of war and to make a tripartite agreement committing themselves not to agree a separate peace with the United States.52 Having received Hitler’s approval, Ribbentrop responded on 5 December with a draft tripartite agreement.53 As far as the ‘Führer’ was concerned, the fact that this agreement bound the Japanese not to quit a war with the United States, thereby pinning America down in East Asia for a lengthy period, was sufficiently valuable to make it worth his while to declare war on the United States.54

  Thus, behind the decision to declare war on the United States lay a calculation that formed part of Hitler’s war strategy. His claims, following 7 December, to have been completely surprised by the Japanese attack could only have referred to its timing and location. Since the end of November, he must have been anticipating such a move during the next few days or, at the most, weeks.55 However, Hitler not only expressed his surprise, but attempted to portray the developments in the Pacific as a liberation. For he and his entourage assumed that the war in the Pacific would prompt the United States to reduce its arms deliveries to Britain and its increasingly massive presence in the North Atlantic in recent months. Thus, the Japanese attack would provide Germany with sufficient time to bring the continent completely under its control before any American intervention in Europe was possible.

  On 11 December, Hitler announced the declaration of war on the United States in a major speech to the Reichstag.56 At its core was a lengthy personal attack on President Roosevelt. Since his Chicago speech of October 1937 (in which he had demanded that those powers that interfered violently in the internal affairs of others should be placed under ‘quarantine’) Roosevelt had openly opposed the German Reich and increasingly interfered in ‘European matters’. Hitler went on to list the various stages of President Roosevelt’s ‘increasingly hate-inspired and inflammatory policies’, accusing him of having, since the outbreak of war, systematically led the United States into the camp of Germany’s enemies. Moreover, he declared that he was ‘mentally disturbed’ – just as Woodrow Wilson had been. There could only be one explanation for the fact that this man had been able to maintain himself in power: behind Roosevelt was the ‘eternal Jew’, who, like Roosevelt, was aiming ‘simply to destroy one state after another’. As the climax of the speech, Hitler announced the declaration of war on the United States, while at the same time, reading out the terms of the Japanese–German–Italian agreement, which had been signed that same day. It contained the commitment of all three powers to pursue the war with the United States and Great Britain to its victorious conclusion and not to seek a unilateral armistice or a separate peace.57

  On the afternoon of the following day, Hitler then spoke to the Reichleiters and Gauleiters assembled in the Reich Chancellery. According to Goebbels’s detailed account, Hitler began by describing the situation created by the war against the United States, which for the Reich had fallen ‘like a gift into its lap’. For ‘the German people would have been very disturbed by a declaration of war by us on the Americans, without it being counterbalanced by the East Asian conflict. Now everybody regards this development as almost inevitable’. He tried to downplay the difficulties on the eastern front by announcing that the Wehrmacht was in the process of ‘adjusting the front line’ and he was determined ‘next year to finish off Soviet Russia at least [sic!] as far as the Urals.’

  Following on from that, Hitler referred once again to his ‘prophecy’ that he would ‘annihilate’ the Jews in the event of a world war, an issue that, as he emphasized, ‘should be treated without any sentimentality’. At first sight, his statement appears to contain nothing really new. For months Hitler had considered himself engaged in a ‘war against the Jews’ and, during the past months, had announced their impending annihilation on several occasions, and both Goebbels and Rosenberg had said the same thing.58 However, now that, with the declaration of war against the United States, the war had expanded into a real ‘world war’ Hitler’s ‘prophecy’ inevitably came closer to its realization. With his increasingly anti-Semitic rhetoric, which he also maintained during the coming days and weeks in conversations with Rosenberg,59 Himmler,60 and Goebbels,61 Hitler was indicating to his entourage in December 1941 that he was determined that the mass murder of the Jews, which had already begun in the Soviet Union, Poland, and in Serbia, should be further intensified and extended.62

  At the end of his speech Hitler stated ‘that we must achieve victory, because otherwise as individuals and as a nation we shall be liquidated’. ‘Such an enormous loss of life as is currently occurring can only be historically and ethnically [völkisch] justified through the conquest of land and soil on which future generations of peasants can serve our national life’.63

  Conflict with the generals

  Back in his headquarters, Hitler was forced to respond to the alarming progress being made by the Soviet offensive against Army Group Centre. On 13 December, he had told Oshima he wanted to withdraw his best divisions from the front and re-equip them in the West.64 Now this was out of the question.

  On 15 December, he warned his Army group commanders that withdrawals during the winter had the ‘most serious consequences’ and ordered the immediate transfer of divisions that were being created from the reserve army or were in the West to the eastern front. ‘Exceptional efforts had to be made’ to improve the ‘transport situation in the east’.65 Any units capable of combat that could be put together had to be sent to the front by air.66 A day later, Hitler issued a general order banning any retreat. Officers were ordered ‘to do their personal utmost to compel the troops to engage in fanatical resistance in their positions, irrespective of whether the
enemy had broken through on their flanks or in the rear’.67 Thus, on this day, 16 December, Hitler was effectively taking over the functions of commander-in-chief of the army.68

  On the same day, the commander of Army Group Centre, Fedor von Bock, informed Hitler that if he withdrew there was the danger of his having to leave behind his heavy weapons. At the same time, given the order to hold their ground, ‘I am concerned that in some places the troops may withdraw without having received the order to do so’. Bock was not the only commander, who, now that the enemy had taken the military initiative, was at a loss and unable to cope.69 Late in the evening of 16 December Hitler telephoned Bock, explaining that withdrawing into a rear position without artillery and matériel was pointless. ‘The only decision that could be taken was not to withdraw an inch and to fill the gaps and hold the line’. When Bock replied that there was a danger that the Army Group’s front might be penetrated, Hitler replied that that was a risk they had to take.70

  During a meeting in the middle of the night of 16/17 December, Hitler told Halder and Brauchitsch, who was anxious to resign, that there ‘can be no question of a withdrawal’. There was only one problem at the front: ‘The enemy has more troops. He doesn’t have more artillery. He is worse off than we are.’71 The following day Hitler agreed to Bock’s request for leave on health grounds. He had made the request earlier, but Bock was surprised at the speed with which Hitler had now granted it. He was replaced as commander of Army Group Centre by Field-Marshal Günther von Kluge, the commander of the 4th Army.72 Brauchitsch, who for some time had not felt up to the job, also tendered his resignation as commander-in-chief, which Hitler accepted on 19 December, officially on the grounds of Brauchitsch’s ‘heart problems’.73

  Hitler had been critical of Brauchitsch for some time, but had told Goebbels in September that he could not ‘sack the army’s commander-in-chief in the middle of a campaign’.74 However, the situation on the eastern front had now become so critical that Hitler not only got rid of Brauchitsch, but, after Bock and Rundstedt, was also determined to dismiss the third army group commander on the eastern front, the commander of Army Group North, Field-Marshall Wilhelm von Leeb. In the middle of January, Leeb was replaced by Colonel-General Georg von Küchler. A few days earlier, because of Reichenau’s sudden death from a heart attack, Hitler had had to reappoint Bock to the post of commander of Army Group South.75 In the middle of December he also decided to get rid of Colonel-General Falkenhorst, who was in charge of operations in northern Finland, and had dismissed him by the end of the year.76

  Hitler decided not to name a successor to Brauchitsch, but instead to take over command of the army himself. While during the past weeks he had been repeatedly intervening in the operations of the armies and army groups over the head of Brauchitsch, now he could claim the right to do so in accordance with the military hierarchy.77 On 20 December, he instructed Halder to ‘hold position and fight to the last man’. There must be no withdrawal. If enemy troops broke through their lines, they must be ‘finished off in the rear’. ‘Dynamic officers’ should be assigned to the critical points to speed up the delivery of supplies and to organize those soldiers who had become separated from their units and deploy them in combat. The battle had to be fought with the most brutal means: ‘Prisoners and local inhabitants should be ruthlessly stripped of their winter clothing . . . all abandoned farmsteads are to be burnt down.’78

  On the same day, Hitler received panzer general Guderian at the latter’s request for an audience that lasted five hours. Hitler banned Guderian from withdrawing his troops to a position in which they had the prospect of surviving the winter, a step the general had been advocating and in fact had begun to carry out. Instead, Hitler insisted his troops ‘dig in and [defend] every square metre’. When Guderian dared to object that digging in was impossible because the ground was frozen hard, Hitler countered that they could use artillery to blast craters, as had been done in Flanders during the First World War. However, Guderian pointed out that the winter conditions in the two countries were completely different. Being forced to remain in his current position would mean a switch to positional warfare and, during the coming winter, the ‘cream of our officer and NCO corps would be sacrificed’. Hitler responded that no doubt Frederick the Great’s grenadiers had not wanted to die, but the king had been justified in demanding that they sacrifice their lives, and he was now claiming the same right. Guderian argued that the sacrifices were not comparable; most of his troops were dying from the intense cold. Hitler responded by accusing him of lacking perspective and having too much compassion for his soldiers.

  Guderian’s attempts to give Hitler a realistic description of conditions at the front proved unsuccessful because the ‘Führer’ considered his reports exaggerated. The general’s suggestion, made later on in the meeting, that Hitler replace his senior staff officers with men with front-line experience was brusquely rejected. Six days later, Guderian was dismissed at the instigation of his new superior, Kluge, and placed in the OKH reserve.79

  During the winter crisis, Hitler dismissed a number of other generals, in some cases in dramatic circumstances. When, at the end of December, the Red Army succeeded in landing troops on the Kerch peninsula and at Feodossiya on the south coast of Crimea and forcing the Germans to withdraw from Kerch,80 Hitler dismissed the commanders of the two corps involved, Helmuth Förster and Count von Sponeck.81 Sponeck was sentenced to death by a court martial; Hitler changed the sentence to life imprisonment, however.82 On 17 January, he dismissed the commander of the 8th Army, Col-General Adolf Strauss.83 The commander of 28th Corps, Freiherr von Gablenz, was also relieved of his command.84 On 8 January 1942 he discharged Colonel-General Erich Hoepner from the Wehrmacht with loss of pension rights without a court martial or any other legal basis because, on his own responsibility, Hoepner had withdrawn a corps that had almost been cut off.85 On 20 January, he relieved the commander of the 4th Army, Georg von Küchler, of his command; the general had confessed in a private conversation that he no longer felt up to the job.86

  The decisive result of this crisis was that Hitler had consolidated his authority over his generals. He believed that his interventions in the winter crisis, his strict order banning any retreat, and his ruthless decisions on personnel had prevented the German army in the East from suffering a total catastrophe in the winter of 1941/42. However, by banning any withdrawal he had prevented the military from developing and deploying other options such as the use of delaying tactics, evasion of contact with the enemy, or a major withdrawal. The conflict with his generals resulted in the military leadership suffering a permanent loss of operational freedom of manoeuvre; from now onwards, they had to put up with constant interventions by Hitler even in matters of tactics.87

  Feeling confirmed in his role as a military commander, on 19 January, Hitler told Goebbels that in his relations with the generals he had ‘often felt like someone whose main function was to pump up rubber men from whom the air had all escaped’. He had needed ‘to exert all his energy’ ‘to resist this general collapse in morale’.88 He was, however, overlooking the fact that (continuing the simile of the generals as ‘rubber men’) he was the one who had let the air out in the first place.

  By the end of 1941, the Red Army offensive in the area of Army Group Centre89 had driven the Wehrmacht some 100–150 kilometres back to the west and a coherent front line no longer existed. After lengthy hesitation,90 on 15 January Hitler finally felt compelled to issue a Führer order withdrawing the whole Army Group Centre on a broad front. He emphasized that, even with this ‘move backwards’, ‘the troops’ sense of superiority over their opponents and the fanatical will to inflict the greatest possible damage’ must be sustained.91

  In January, in the area of Army Group North,92 the Red Army succeeded in advancing over the river Volchov, which links Lake Ilmen with Lake Ladoga, although the 18th Army managed to contain the breakthrough. As a result of the German tactic of holding ground at any pr
ice, Soviet offensives south of Lake Ladoga in January succeeded in surrounding a German combat group in the district of Cholm. By the end of February, six German divisions had been surrounded in the district of Demyansk, which Hitler was desperate to hold onto as the base for a later offensive. The pockets were supplied by air and could only be reopened in spring 1942. In the southern sector of the front,93 a major Soviet offensive, launched towards the Dnieper on 20 January, was blocked, and, at the beginning of March, a further Soviet attack on Kharkov came to a halt in the spring thaw. The Soviet counter-offensive had stalled.The winter crisis had considerable repercussions for the domestic situation in Germany. As a result of the lack of concrete news from the eastern front since December94 and Hitler’s surprise take-over of command of the Army, there were growing concerns about the military situation in the East. There were worrying rumours about the eastern front, encouraged by letters from the front and stories told by soldiers on leave. Moreover, after Germany’s declaration of war on the United States, there were concerns about the expansion and extension of the war. Official propaganda was faced with a profound crisis of credibility.95

  Hitler, however, was not prepared to comment publicly on the evident difficulties and reverses by providing ‘a word of reassurance’. He evidently wished to avoid associating himself personally with the crisis. By remaining silent in the greatest crisis of his regime, he was taking the risk that his ‘charisma’, the exceptional leadership qualities attributed to him, would suffer yet more damage. In order to get on top of the growing mood of crisis, the regime adopted a strategy of diverting attention and providing people with something to do.