Hitler

by Peter Longerich

  These weaknesses could only be partially compensated for by further enlisting the services of allies. During the previous months the German leadership, and Hitler in particular, had made strenuous efforts to get Italy and Hungary to promise to increase their respective contingents to the size of an entire army, while the Romanians had promised two armies. All these contingents arrived on the southern sector of the eastern front during the summer.78

  A development that occurred during the planning phase of the summer offensive illustrates the extent to which Hitler overestimated Germany’s military potential. In February, the commander-in-chief of the navy suggested an alternative strategy to Hitler. The main focus of the war during 1942 should not be on the Soviet Union. Instead, through a dual offensive in North Africa and the Caucasus, and with a simultaneous campaign by the Japanese via the Indian Ocean, the attempt should be made to destroy the British position in the Near East.79 Hitler had basically approved these ideas in March, but, significantly, for after the conclusion of the summer offensive (and not as an alternative).80 Thus, he was returning to his far-reaching plans for the post-Barbarossa phase, although with the decisive difference that he now wanted to advance in the Near East without having first defeated the Soviet Union.

  On 8 May, the Wehrmacht began a series of attacks on the eastern front, intended to prepare the ground for the real summer offensive.81 Within a few days the Kerch peninsula in eastern Crimea was conquered. However, the fortress of Sebastopol, which was strongly defended, managed to hold out until the beginning of July.82 By the end of May, the Wehrmacht was able to cut off a Soviet advance from the Izyum salient towards Kharkov, which began on 12 May, with a counter offensive, which captured 240,000 Red Army troops. However, a further German offensive to sort out the whole situation round Izyum lasted until the end of June and, as well as the tough Soviet resistance in Sebastopol, resulted in the great summer offensive, originally planned to begin on 15 June, being delayed for two weeks.83

  The news from the eastern front aroused great expectations among the German population for the success of a major summer offensive, but also fears that, despite all their military efforts, it would not succeed in finally defeating the Soviet colossus. Concerns about the uncertain length of the war, the continuing enemy air raids, and, last but not least, the precarious food situation, were in fact creating a rather tense atmosphere.84

  While in the East the initial signs were promising, Hitler’s attention was focused on the start of the major offensive in the southern sector of the front, which he believed would prove decisive for the war. An opportunity for him to report to the Party leadership on the great events that were impending was provided on 22 May 1942, when the Gauleiters and Reichsleiters attended a memorial ceremony for the Gauleiter of Weser-Ems, Carl Röver, who had died suddenly.85

  Figure 12. By the middle of 1942 queues such as this at fruit and vegetable stalls were an everyday sight. Food shortages, which had occurred repeatedly from the beginning of the so-called Third Reich and grew more acute during the war, depressed the public ‘mood’. The regime’s assurances of a glorious future could not alleviate the gloom.

  Source: Scherl/Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo

  After the ceremony Hitler gave a speech lasting two hours. Goebbels’s notes give the impression of a very serious and crisis-laden atmosphere, in which Hitler endeavoured to provide new hope in the light of the coming offensive. He remarked that the members of the leadership corps were now all between 45 and 60 years of age and ‘it may well be unfortunate for the National Socialist movement that we are all of the same age and so, when death comes to our ranks, it could have a devastating effect. . . . He himself hoped that he would outlive the war, as he was convinced that nobody else would be in a position to deal with the problems created by it.’ Hitler then talked about the ‘world situation’, in particular the dramatic crisis of the past winter. In a long-winded discourse he blamed it on the Wehrmacht leadership, the leadership of the Reich railways, the judiciary and the civil service. ‘He is also of course aware that the Jews are determined under all circumstances to win this war, since they know that defeat would also mean personal liquidation for them.’ It was a case of ‘triumph or downfall’. In addition, according to Goebbels, Hitler said that he was ‘determined to give the Soviets the coup de grace this summer’. Victory in the East was the basis for the ‘creation of a new Eastern Marches’, for which Hitler sketched out grandiose future prospects: ‘There we shall hugely extend our land. There we shall acquire coal, grain, oil and above all national security. . . . A shrewd population policy, above all using the resettlement of ethnic Germans, could within sixty, seventy years easily increase the German population to 250 million.’ However, according to Hitler, they should ‘not believe that with this war all war would be abolished. In future too, war would still be the father of all things.’86

  The concentration of military forces in the East during the spring also meant that the Luftwaffe in the West was not in a position to provide an effective defence against the RAF or to mount a substantial counterattack on Great Britain. Hitler was increasingly compelled to get to grips with this problem. After the destruction of the densely populated historic centres of Lübeck and Rostock at the end of March and beginning of April,87 he ordered attacks on cities in Britain that were primarily of cultural rather than military significance, as the Luftwaffe was too weak for major raids on Britain’s industrial centres. He hoped that these so-called ‘Baedeker raids’, as British propaganda dubbed the attacks on cities like Exeter, Bath, Norwich, or York,88 would at least have a psychological effect.89 The RAF had, however, only just begun its major offensive against German cities. During the night of 30/31 May, it launched the first 1,000-bomber raid in military history on Cologne, which, contrary to expectations, did not wipe out the city, but destroyed 13,000 dwellings and killed almost 500 people, more than any previous air raid. Two nights after the bombing of Cologne, the RAF launched a big raid on Essen, carried out by almost 800 bombers and, during the remaining seven months of the year, the RAF took part in over fifty more raids on German cities, with several hundred bombers involved each time.90 Moreover, in July, the Luftwaffe largely had to abandon its ‘retaliation’ attacks on Britain because of heavy losses.91 As the Luftwaffe was unable to defend Germany effectively against British raids, in Hitler’s view ‘retaliation’ was the only feasible way of stopping the British air offensive. Thus, he increasingly placed his hopes in new rocket systems on which Luftwaffe and army engineers were working flat out. He was hoping they would bring about a change in the air war during 1943.92

  Heydrich’s death and its aftermath

  During May and June, alongside the preparations for the summer offensive, the regime initiated a concrete programme for the murder of the European Jews. How this decision was reached is unclear;93 the result, however, was unambiguous. The distinction made hitherto between East European Jews, who were shot or gassed, and the West and Central European Jews, who were deported to the East and deployed in forced labour, vegetating in ghettos under miserable conditions, was no longer applied. Now the trains from the Reich, from Slovakia, and, from July onwards, also from other European countries went directly to Auschwitz and to the other death camps that had been constructed in the meantime.94 In May, Himmler, to whom Governor General Frank had already transferred significant responsibilities in March, secured the appointment of the Higher SS and Police Leader in the General Government, Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, as state secretary for security issues in Frank’s regime. This appointment specifically covered all ‘matters involving Jews’.95 Himmler now set about gradually extending the murder programme to every district in the General Government and to occupied Upper Silesia.96 At the same time, a second wave of murders was unleashed in the occupied parts of the Soviet Union.97 This meant that the original plan, which had still been referred to in Heydrich’s statement at the Wannsee Conference, namely to deport the Jews to the Soviet territori
es that had not yet been occupied, had finally been abandoned.

  However, during May and June, certain events occurred which are likely to have accelerated the shift to a Europe-wide deportation programme. On 18 May 1942, a left-wing Berlin resistance group, the majority of whose members were of Jewish origin, carried out an arson attack on a propaganda exhibition, ‘The Soviet Paradise’, which the Propaganda Ministry was putting on in Berlin’s Lustgarten. Those involved were soon arrested. As a reprisal, on 27 May, the Gestapo arrested a large number of Berlin Jews. A total of 154 were transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp and shot, together with another 96 Jewish inmates. In addition, a further 250 Jews were also transferred to Sachsenhausen and held there as hostages. The Jewish community in Berlin was informed that, in the event of another ‘act of sabotage’, these people would also be shot.98

  On the same day, 27 May, Heydrich, both head of the RSHA and, as deputy Reich Protector, Hitler’s strong man in Prague, was seriously injured in an attack by Czech resistance fighters, trained by British Intelligence and dropped by parachute. To begin with, it looked as if Heydrich’s condition was stabilizing, but after a few days it deteriorated.99 On the same day as the assassination attempt, Hitler ordered that everybody who had helped those involved should be ‘shot together with his whole family’. In addition, 10,000 suspect or politically compromised Czechs, not already incarcerated, were to be arrested and all of them shot ‘in concentration camps’. In fact, however, the following day Karl Hermann Frank, Heydrich’s state secretary, was able to persuade Hitler to drop this part of his order.100

  The next day, 29 May, Hitler told Goebbels that they must take ‘vigorous and ruthless action against those [in the Protectorate], who are supporting assassination attempts’. 101 When Goebbels then responded by mentioning his aim of ‘deporting all the Jews from Berlin’, since ‘there were now 40,000 Jews hanging around in the capital of the Reich who have nothing more to lose’ (he was referring to the attack on the Soviet Paradise exhibition), Hitler immediately agreed. He ordered Speer to replace Jewish workers with foreign workers and in September raised this issue again.102

  To a wider audience during the lunch that followed, Hitler insisted that they must ‘liquidate the Jewish threat, whatever the cost’. He did not want ‘the Jews to be evacuated to Siberia’, thereby distancing himself from Heydrich’s old plan. The best thing would be to ‘resettle [them] to Central Africa’, where there was a climate that ‘certainly would not make them strong and hardy’. However, in view of the military situation, this goal was completely unrealistic – at the beginning of May the British had landed in Madagascar, the deportation destination for Jews favoured by Germany’s ‘Jewish experts’ in 1940. Hitler was evidently trying to gloss over the real situation. In any case, he continued by saying that it was his aim ‘to make western Europe completely free of Jews’.103 These comments show that it is possible that at this stage no final plan for murdering the western European Jews had been decided. In fact, large-scale deportations from France to Auschwitz began only in July, whereas deportations from Central Europe to a death camp (Maly Trostinets near Minsk) had already started in May.104

  On 4 June, Heydrich died of septicemia, and, a few days later, an elaborate state memorial ceremony was held in Berlin for him.105 In his commemorative address Himmler committed himself to ‘atone for his death, take over his task and now more than ever destroy the enemies of our people without mercy or weakness’.106 Finally, Hitler paid tribute to Heydrich in a short address. He had been ‘one of the best National Socialists, one of the strongest defenders of the idea of the German Reich, one of the greatest opponents of all the enemies of this Reich’.107

  Following the ceremony, in the presence of Lammers, Bormann, Karl Hermann Frank, and other top functionaries, Hitler received the Czech Protectorate government, led by President Hacha, who tried to distance themselves from the assassination. Hitler made a speech in which he threatened his guests that he would ‘deport a few million people from Bohemia and Moravia . . . if necessary during the war’.108 Immediately after this meeting Frank ordered the commander of the security police in Prague – referring specifically to a ‘meeting with the Führer’ – to carry out retaliatory action against the Czech village of Lidice near Kladno, despite there being no proof of any support for the assassins coming from this village. In pursuit of this order, on 10 June, the security police murdered all 199 men, deporting the women to Ravensbrück concentration camp, and the children to the Chelmno death camp after the ‘racially valuable ones’ had been sorted out.109 A few weeks later, during his table talk, Hitler referred to this brutal action with approval.110

  However, the retaliation for the death of Heydrich, the organizer of the Einsatzgruppen murders and the deportation programme, above all affected the Jews, in other words those against whom, in the first instance, the regime was fighting the war. On 10 June 1942, a thousand Jews from Prague were deported to Majdanek and to camps in the surrounding area, where they were incarcerated.111 Much more serious, however, was the fact that, following Heydrich’s assassination, the Nazi leadership was evidently determined to intensify and accelerate the expansion of the mass murder of Jews throughout Europe that was already under way.

  During these critical days, Hitler was having unusually frequent meetings with Himmler. Between 27 May, the day of the assassination attempt, and the memorial ceremony on 9 June they met a total of eight times. Once again we do not know the content of their conversations, but we can presume that they were closely connected with Himmler’s actions to speed up the ‘Final Solution’ that immediately followed.

  Himmler’s efforts were not hindered by a transport ban in the General Government between 19 June and 7 July as a result of the coming summer offensive; on the contrary, it simply prompted the reorganization of the deportation and murder programme. While the transports from the Reich to Maly Trostnets near Minsk had to be interrupted, in June they were already being replaced by an increase in transports to the ‘old people’s ghetto’ in Theresienstadt.112 The transports from Slovakia that were originally intended to go to the Lublin district were now rerouted to Auschwitz where, on 4 July, for the first time, a selection of Jews ‘incapable of work’ took place, who were then murdered immediately after their arrival.113 In addition, the deportations from western Europe to Auschwitz were now significantly expanded. On 11 June, deportation quotas were fixed for a total of 135,000 people from France, Belgium, and the Netherlands and, before the end of the month, Himmler established the target of achieving ‘sooner rather than later the total liberation of France from Jews’.114

  After the lifting of the transport ban on 7 July the deportations from the Reich to Maly Trostnets, and thus the murder of German Jews, were resumed.115 In July the security police also began the deportation of Croatian Jews, of whom 5,000 were murdered in Auschwitz during August.116 Also in June, the SS arranged with the Antonescu regime for the deportation of the Romanian Jews117 (which the Romanians then, however, prevented), and Himmler tried to persuade the Finnish prime minister, Johan Rangell, to deport the Finnish Jews, albeit in vain.118 Above all, the deportations within the General Government to the three death camps that were now available – Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka – were being carried out on a large scale.119 After lengthy meetings with Hitler on 11, 12, and 14 July, Himmler used his liaison officer in the Führer headquarters, Karl Wolff, to press for an even larger transport capacity for deportations to the death camps. Then, having visited Auschwitz and Lublin’s Higher SS and Police Leader, Globocnik, on 19 July he ordered that the ‘resettlement [i.e. murder] of the whole of the Jewish population of the General Government be carried out and completed by 31 December 1942’.120

  While we can only presume that, in the middle of July, Hitler discussed the murder of the Jews in the General Government with Himmler, we have clear written proof for the so-called second wave of murders in the Soviet Union, which had already begun in May and to which arou
nd half a million people fell victim. On 28 July, Himmler wrote to Gottlob Berger, the head of the SS Head Office: ‘The occupied eastern territories [i.e. the Soviet territories] are being made free of Jews. The Führer has placed the implementation of this very difficult order on my shoulders.’ The document clearly demonstrates that Himmler was not acting on the basis of a general authorization, a single Führer order, but evidently received an explicit order from Hitler for each of the occupied territories.121

  In July 1942, when the SS began to involve the whole of Europe in the programme for murdering the Jews, Hitler also decided to give Himmler the responsibility for combatting Soviet partisans. Behind this decision lay the idea of also murdering the surviving Jews in the East, in other words to follow the method he had already proposed to Himmler in December 1941: ‘to exterminate Jews – as partisans’.122

  On 18 August, Hitler signed Directive No. 46, ‘Guidelines for the Enhanced Combatting of Partisan Activities in the East’. In it he set Himmler the task of making sure that ‘by the start of the winter . . . these bands [must have been] basically exterminated’.123 Himmler reported to Hitler regularly on the ‘successes’ of the ‘fight against the bandits’. At the end of 1942, he passed on to Hitler a report from Hans-Adolf Prützmann, the Higher SS and Police Leader in southern Russia, in which Prützmann stated that in the course of ‘combatting bandits’ in his area of responsibility, which included the Ukraine and Bialystock, during the period from 1 September to 1 December 1942, he had ‘executed’ a total of 363,211 Jews. A note in the margin indicates that Hitler had read this document.124