HISTORY SHOWS that wars fought on a military plane alone seldom come to a good end. And heads of state who during a war have done nothing but lead campaigns and have failed to consolidate their victories politically—have failed to shape successful battles into a new order—resemble rockets that shoot flaring into the sky and fall, burnt out, as fast as they rose. In this sense Hitler was a shooting star that glowed only briefly and in its fall shattered the German Reich and shook the entire world.
This dichotomy between the political and the military ran through the whole of Hitler’s career. A simple soldier, he “decided in November 1918 to go into politics” because he believed the Germans had lost the First World War politically, not militarily. In his role as politician he gave the German people a new order on the domestic front, only to drop the Second World War into their laps. When his political strategy of force in peacetime ceased to produce results, he would not admit that this line of approach had been pursued as far as it should be. Instead he pushed on further, practicing his unrestrained excesses, his rash adventures, and his suicidal methods upon the German people in wartime. Twenty years after his first switching of roles the politician again became a soldier—and lost the Second World War by military catastrophes of almost unparalleled magnitude.
At first he seemed the very personification of daring and success, energy, and good luck. His generalship seemed altogether inspired. In less than two years he had secured military control of almost the entire European continent. Allies flocked to his victorious standard; new alliances and pacts followed hard upon the brilliant military advance. Hitler, carried away by the intoxication of victory, made frequent use of a significant comparison. He would declare that something of the spirit of Napoleon’s revolutionary armies had flown before the marching feet of the National Socialist army in Europe, that the new ideas had opened the way for the tanks and prepared the way for the Wehrmacht. But his lack of moderation and his political irrationality were to change all this so utterly!
What chances a great, farsighted, and moderate statesman would have had during those years. Such a statesman would have resisted all temptations to convert the military successes of the war into permanent territorial conquests. He would have given the defeated nations peace, and for his own nation, aside from temporary military guarantees, would have sought no other political ends than those he had announced when he took up arms in September 1939.
From 1939 to 1941, what could Hitler not have done on the European continent, provided he had clear aims, a program of foreign policy, and a rational concept of how Europe was be shaped; if he had shown the other peoples of Europe new ways to progressive evolution and peaceful cooperation; if, respecting the native traditions and problems of other nations, he had left them their independence, or restored that independence; if he had not, by his everlasting suspicion, poisoned all relationships with the other nations of Europe. Comparisons have often been drawn between the German political mentality on the one hand, and the mentality of the English on the other. The unsentimental English have been highly successful in their government of other people. It has been said of the Germans that they have a soft heart but a hard hand. But with Hitler even the soft heart was lacking, while the hard hand was only too evident. He added to this a large measure of psychological incompetence. By his ignorance of foreign countries, his inability to grasp the psychology of other nations, his violent methods, and his attitude that he was master, by his stubbornness and his unteachable arrogance, by his exaggerated prizing of Mussolini on the one hand and his corroding suspicion of all other political friends and allies on the other, he threw away enormous political capital. He occupied countries but conquered no hearts. He promised liberties, and forged new fetters. He had unique opportunities to shape constructively the future of Europe—and muffed every one of them. A whole continent that the soldier had won was, during those years, at the disposal of the politician; he might have done glorious things with it. Instead he converted it into a political rubble heap.
This estimate of Hitler’s foreign policies is not my personal one alone. In recent years many Germans, politicians and military men both, have made substantially similar remarks to me in more or less blunt terms. Most of them, it should be added, thought Hitler was not responsible for these misguided policies; they blamed his advisers, his military or civilian governors in the occupied territories. Hitler himself supposedly did not know what these officials of his were doing.
After the successful campaign in Poland the victor might have contented himself with Danzig, the Polish Corridor, and the areas inhabited by German elements. To have done so would have been to convince the world of the morality of his action. He would also have gained prestige and won respect for the principles of a meaningful and constructive nationality policy in Europe—a policy which had an important place in his doctrines. The Poles enjoyed the sympathies of the world as a “poor, homeless people” of twenty millions. A generous peace leaving part of Poland independent would have been the mark of a genuine statesman, although such an attempt at a magnanimous solution would have been somewhat nullified by the Russian occupation of East Poland. But Hitler manifested not the slightest trace of any such farsighted attitude; in fact the grave psychological errors of six years of rule in Poland showed how far he was from any such attitude. On his instructions the Government General of Poland established its capital at Cracow, the former residence of Polish kings. From many remarks I heard Hitler drop in the course of years there can be no doubt that he himself constantly urged the German military authorities and the Governor General to institute harsh measures. He ironically referred to the Governor as “Stanislaus,” and for years treated him with rude contempt because he tried to administer his territory temperately and to establish conditions of occupation suitable to the Polish racial character. The iron fist over Poland was Hitler’s hand, and the will that clenched that fist was the pitiless law of his nature.
An equally glaring example of Hitler’s lack of talent for statesmanship was his occupation of Norway and the crassness of his administration in that country. Norway had taken no part at all in the war. She was the innocent victim of alleged strategic necessity. If Hitler believed he had to occupy this northern land temporarily in order to safeguard the vital Baltic for the Reich, if he felt that necessity drove him to impose upon the Norwegians this monstrous sacrifice of their sovereignty, then he had every reason to make the occupation more tolerable to them by offering every possible concession in domestic affairs. Instead he appointed a Norwegian government that had virtually no backing by the people. He instituted the cruel system of hostages. The German civil administration committed economic crimes against the Nor wegians. Clearly, Hitler was in no way attempting to reconcile the Norwegians to the occupation. In spite of all of Hitler’s initial illusions, the Quisling government struck no roots in the country. It was inacceptable to the cosmopolitan spirit of the people. And the German civil administration under Terboven was a fundamental political blunder that made the Germans hated throughout the greater part of the Nordic world. The arrest of the best-known Norwegian bishops and of the students of Oslo University who staged patriotic demonstrations destroyed whatever sympathies for Germany still remained in the international academic world. These severities also lost Germany the sympathy of Norway’s Swedish brothers. Terboven’s actions were in the spirit of Hitler who had appointed him, who kept him at his post in spite of protests from German as well as Norwegian sources, and who constantly encouraged him on his visits to Berlin or the Führer’s headquarters.
Hitler’s mad foreign policy was equally catastrophic in Denmark. In contrast to Norway, the Danish government had remained in the country, so that at the beginning all remained calm. But in the course of time the same political blunders were committed there, producing the same reactions, until the country was ultimately in open rebellion.
Vacillating aims, half-measures, suspicion, and ambiguity—these were the characteristics of Hitler’s policies in Europe. The peoples of Europe saw in these policies a lack of sincerity. By Hitler’s own conduct the very foundation stones of the New Europe whose advocate he had been, crumbled as soon as they were laid. Hitler’s policy toward France is a striking example of that.
Theoretically Hitler intended to build the New Europe with the aid of the French people. To impose upon the whole French nation the burdens, tensions, insecurity, and humiliation of a five-year armistice and at the same time to expect the Pétain government to win the confidence of the country and the consent of the people to a revolutionary change in spiritual attitudes, was not policy—it was foolishness. No one with common sense could believe that pure and honest intentions lay behind such behavior. Hitler’s meeting with Pétain in Montoire was the moment for a resounding signal for peace. That meeting should have been the starting point for the creation of the “New Order”, which he supposedly intended to base upon equal rights for all and a harmony of interests. Peace concluded at this time, with a France whose honor and sovereignty were left unimpaired, might have opened the way for a general compromise and so averted the frightful bloodletting still to come. As I watched the aged Marshal of France step out of his automobile in front of the railroad station of that small French town and walk down the red-carpeted platform to Hitler’s salon car, I thought that he, too, may have had some such hope in mind. Certainly many Germans of foresight were hoping for such a settlement. When Pétain returned to his car, Hitler walked back with him. But as we soon learned this was only a political gesture on Hitler’s part. His sly smile was that of a victor who could not rise to the opportunity, who had missed his chance for a great, liberating political act.
The only consistency noticeable in Hitler’s unfortunate policy toward France was its distinctive rhythm of one step forward and two steps back. In the course of almost five years he destroyed by his own hand all elements making for fruitful collaboration. Soon after the meeting at Montoire he himself—not some subleader or administrator gone wild—ordered Bürckel and Wagner to tear down signs in French in Alsace and Lorraine. He himself ordered the expulsion of tens of thousands of Frenchmen from those areas—an act that inevitably mortally offended the feelings of all Frenchmen. It was he who instructed the commanders in France to answer every attack upon German soldiers by terroristic reprisals and the shooting of hostages many times the number of Germans killed. He issued these orders although he certainly knew the cruelty involved, and although he could learn from his regular reading of translations from the foreign press how these acts outraged the conscience of the world.
He had the bones of the Duke of Reichstadt, Napoleon’s son, brought from Vienna to Paris as a cheap gift to the French. But he personally always blocked Pétain’s return to the French capital—although establishment of the French government in Paris was a prerequisite for practical cooperation between Germany and France. He always distrusted the French politicians who were willing to shape the future of France on the basis of collaboration with Germany; in every step of theirs which was intended to engender confidence and peace he scented mischief and treachery. It was a typical trick of Hitler’s to reject those who approached him in a cooperative temper; then, when they in their disappointment took another road, he would point out how right he had been all along to be wary of them.
Hitler’s excessive partiality for Mussolini’s Italy was criminal folly, especially as it affected his policy toward France. He catered to Mussolini until it was too late, until the Allied invasion of French North Africa created changed conditions and forced him to violate the armistice he himself had dictated to France.
His policy toward France was not liked at all in Germany. Even Ribbentrop, whose diplomatic conduct was ordinarily tactless in the extreme, who invariably offended the sensibilities of other nations, often dissociated himself from Hitler’s policy in France. In all probability he tried to change Hitler’s mind, but Hitler remained unteachable, stubborn, inaccessible to reason. Once he had been defeated in the political theater by England’s strong stand, the statesman in him was snuffed out. Once he began seeking fame as a military commander, his gaze remained fixed upon the success of his arms and his faith in victory grounded solely in military power. He was no longer capable of solving political questions on a political basis.
That fact was demonstrated once more in Belgium and Holland throughout the entire occupation of those countries. He had promised these countries that he would restore their sovereignty as soon as possible after the victorious end of the campaign in France, when military necessity would no longer require occupation. He did not keep that promise. Instead, for five years he had Belgium and Holland administered by a Reich Commissioner and a military commander, with all the burdens and humiliations that such occupation meant for these nations. He held out to them no prospect of improvement in their conditions. Here again we are struck by the complete absence of any plan which would allow Belgian and Dutch people to live their own lives freely and independently. What, in Hitler’s concept of the New Europe, was this corner of the continent to look like? Hitler gave no answer.
His system of pacts with the Balkan states might have seemed, to a superficial observer, a grand endeavor to work out a general European commonwealth. But in truth there was no constructive idea behind these pacts. They were a screen hiding the fact that Hitler had no political program in the event of military victory. The Three Powers policy in Southeast Europe was a more or less routine affair arranged by the foreign office; Hitler himself was in the field and took only casual interest in it. At the ceremonies held in Berlin and Vienna to celebrate the signing of each pact great stress was laid upon the friendship and harmony of interests of the signatory states within the framework of an imaginary New Order in Europe. But all this was mere rhetoric. To Hitler the true significance of these pacts was that—in the cases of Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria—they provided for the right of transit for German troops. In the case of Yugoslavia, where this right was not included in the treaty, Hitler immediately took advantage of the fall of the Cvetkovic regime to assure his influence upon this country by invading it.
For the rest, Hitler’s actions in the Balkans can only be considered in connection with Mussolini’s previous attack upon Greece. Hitler had not been informed beforehand about Italy’s intentions in Greece and—as he often remarked to his aides—disapproved. He first learned about it via radio reports while he was in his special train on the way to Italy for a conference with Mussolini. When they met in Florence Mussolini greeted Hitler with the words, “I have decided to march against Greece in order to suppress once and for all this threat to Italy!”
After his military victory in the Balkans, Hitler attacked the difficult problems of this storm-center of Europe with the same ignorance, amateurishness, and lack of success that he had displayed everywhere else on the continent. He would take up the idea of the first person who suggested a solution to some administrative problem which happened to accord with his own mentality and follow it through in the most liberal fashion. In the course of years he assigned mutually contradictory powers to ambassadors, special envoys, army commanders, police commissioners, and so on, in the Balkans. This confusion, combined with Italian ambitions in the area, created absolute chaos. One diplomatic expert characterized the situation in these words: “In the Balkans twenty-five German authorities are operating alongside of and against one another, all assigned overriding powers by Hitler. Opposed to them is only a single authority: Tito.”
It is revealing of the internal hollowness of Hitler’s entire system of pacts in the Balkan states that the whole thing collapsed like a house of cards the moment his military power was shaken.
During the period between the Balkan and the Russian campaigns there came the flight of Rudolf Hess to England. It was widely considered a serious peace overture on the part of Hitler. But Hess’s flight was just as much of a surprise for Hitler as it was a sensation for the German people and the rest of the world.
At the time Hitler was at Berchtesgaden. The morning following the night Hess parachuted down over northern England, Hess’s personal adjutant came to Hitler’s house in the Berghof to deliver an urgent letter from Hess. He had to wait until noon before Hitler would see him. As Hitler read the letter he was overcome by tremendous agitation which in a few minutes spread through the ordinarily quiet Sunday atmosphere of the house, though none of the others present had any idea of the reason for Hitler’s excitement. Hitler sent for Hess’s staff chief, Martin Bormann, had the bearer of the letter put under arrest, then sent for Göring, Ribbentrop, and Keitel, who were in the vicinity. There followed hours of conferences which continued until late in the afternoon and were suspended only because a reception for Darlan, the French admiral, happened to be scheduled for that afternoon.
In the course of the day the general outlines of what had taken place gradually trickled out of the conference room. In his letter to Hitler, Hess had described his intention and explained the motives for his action. A few days later an adjutant showed me the letter. The greater part of it—a fact that seemed very odd to me—was devoted to a precise description of the technical aspects of the flight, which he had attempted without success once before. Hess emphasized that his intention did not arise from cowardice or weakness, nor should it be interpreted as an escape, since it required more courage to undertake this dangerous air venture than to remain in Germany.
Only after all this preliminary did Hess come to the political essence of his plan. His goal, he said, was to establish contact between England and Germany by getting in touch personally with certain distinguished men in England whom he knew. In the interests of both nations, he maintained, such contact was necessary; a serious attempt must be made to end the war by negotiation. He pointed out that in a recent conversation with Hitler he had convinced himself, by asking a pointblank question, that at the bottom of his heart Hitler still desired an Anglo-German understanding. He had not said a word to Hitler about his intention of flying to England because he knew the Führer would have forbidden it. Since he had been born and brought up in an English environment [Alexandria, Egypt], he considered himself the right sort of man for this mission. He would emphasize in England that his action must not be interpreted as a sign of German weakness; on the contrary, he would lay stress upon the military invincibility of his country and point out that Germany did not have to ask for peace.
After reading this letter Hitler knew where Hess had set out for, but he did not know whether he had arrived. In order to obtain professional advice on Hess’s chances, Hitler sent for Air General Ernst Udet. Udet thought it highly improbable that an amateur pilot flying a single-motored Messerschmitt 109 would be able to reach a particular destination after a long night flight. He thought it more likely that Hess had crashed either over the North Sea or over England, or while attempting a landing in the dark. In view of this opinion Hitler decided to withhold any statement in order to await a possible announcement by the British. But when no such report came from England by the next day, Hitler decided after all to make the announcement himself; Ribbentrop argued that it would be wiser for the German version to be presented to the world first, for the sake of Germany’s own allies.
Hitler had already stated his conviction that Hess was not motivated by treason, but by an obsessional idea which had been further intensified by his association with soothsayers and groups of dabblers in the supernatural. He therefore dictated the report stating that Hess had not been in full possession of his mental faculties. Today I see clearly—although at the time I could not guess this—that Hitler laid special stress on Hess’s insanity in order to prevent the British from crediting anything Hess might say about Hitler’s intention to attack Russia. Hess was one of the few who knew about this plan, and Hitler feared he might have betrayed it.
The evening of that same day the British communiqué confirmed the fact that Hess had landed in England.
Two days later Hitler assembled the Party leaders at his home on the Obersalzberg to brief them on the Hess case. He took occasion to mention that cases of mental illness had already occurred in the Hess family. In this connection it is politically significant and a typical example of Hitler’s secrecy about his own intentions that he did not so much as hint at the possibility of an imminent military clash with Russia. Yet this meeting in the middle of May was the last conference of Party leaders before the beginning of the campaign against Russia.
At the beginning of March 1941 one of my aides informed me that rumors were circulating among the war correspondents to the effect that some action against Russia was in the air. I was shocked to hear this and convinced that the reports were erroneous. I promptly branded such dangerous rumormongering as a political crime designed to undermine German-Russian relations, which had been put on a satisfactory footing by the pact. Sternly, I forbade all my colleagues to pass on such rumors. I thought such talk the wild fancy of political madmen, if not deliberate political sabotage. My feelings about this were all the stronger because I kept constantly in mind the importance of good German-Russian relations. I recalled the incident at Berchtesgaden in August 1939 when Hitler received the telephone call from Ribbentrop in Moscow reporting the conclusion of the Russo-German economic pact. Hitler, who was dining at the time, jumped up from the table exclaiming, “We’ve won!” I recalled also Hitler’s convincing explanations of the nonaggression and consultation pact which was concluded between Germany and Russia at the end of September 1939, during Ribbentrop’s second visit to Moscow. At the time Hitler praised Stalin as an “extraordinarily realistic and constructive statesman.” He spoke of how pleased he was to be able to resume the Bismarckian tradition of friendship with Russia, declared that henceforth the peril of a two-front war was banished forever, and hailed the common interests between Germany and Russia as a tie fraught with blessings. That tie had existed throughout history, he said, and had been broken during the past world war only as the result of intrigues by other countries. Goebbels was accordingly given directives for revising our propaganda; the line was to be that the differences in ideologies and domestic systems would not affect Russo-German relationships. Recalling all this, I remembered also the formal correctness of Russo-German relations in the past eighteen months. To be sure, during that time Russia had pushed forward her western border as the result of her winter’s war against Finland, her actions against the Baltic States and the repossession of Bessarabia. But the published communiqués on Molotov’s visit to Berlin in November 1940 seemed to me to indicate no lessening in mutual harmony.
Later, in the spring of 1941, rumors of an alleged impending clash between Germany and Russia began appearing in the international press also. Most Germans, including myself, saw such talk as stemming from the customary and indispensable military precautions being taken by the German High Command to guard against a supposed concentration of Russian troops on the Russian western frontier. But the flood of rumors continued to influence public opinion; all sorts of wildly contradictory suppositions were put forward, none of them backed by facts. The atmosphere was one of extreme confusion. The arrest of an official in the Propaganda Ministry created an international sensation. At a diplomatic tea given by a foreign embassy this official, allegedly having drunk too much of something other than tea, had dropped hints of an imminent clash between Russia and Germany. Hitler, urged on by Ribbentrop, gave orders for severe punishment of the man. At the time I attributed this severity to his fear that the spreading of such rumors would damage German-Russian relations.
After a conference with Rumanian Premier Antonescu in Munich around the middle of June, Hitler returned to Berlin. I was struck by the atmosphere of doubt and tension that now gripped international and political circles in Berlin, as if they were affected by the contagion of the foreign press. But in spite of the thickening rumors I still believed, on the basis of all that Hitler had said in speeches and private statements, that Germany would never undertake aggressive action against Russia. Not until the night of June 21-22 did I realize the frightful truth. Even then the words were not spoken; up to the very eve of the invasion the few persons who were in the know dutifully kept the secret. But the unusual bustle in the Chancellery that evening, all the coming and going and the excitement in every face, made it impossible to doubt any longer that some tremendous action against Russia was in progress. At four o’clock in the morning I received a telephone call requesting me to take part in a press conference of the German and foreign press at the Foreign Office. Ribbentrop, I was informed, would then issue an important government statement. At the same time it was announced that Goebbels would speak over the radio at six o’clock in the morning. The incredible had happened. At dawn Hitler launched the attack on Russia.
With his invasion of Russia Hitler had attained the climax of his intoxication with power, the ultimate phase of his political delirium and the highest peak of his self-devouring, demonic possession. He imagined that his preventive war against Russia would enable him to subjugate this land of infinite space within a few months, thereby becoming master of the continent. Running amok against all reason, he believed he could throw overboard all the laws of political logic and all the lessons of history. Here the fateful dichotomy of his dark nature emerged into the light, was revealed in its true form. Hitler was playing a double game of truly sinister proportions. Impelled by his conviction of carrying out a supreme racial mission, he saw glimmering before him the chance to secure his nation for the entire future against any possibility of a threat from the East. For this he was ready to practice an incredible deceit. His megalomania had overcome the political good sense he had formerly possessed.
In the very hour that German troops marched forward at his command from the Baltic to the Black Sea, Hitler was overcome by his first gloomy premonitions. He listened to the official proclamation of the Russian campaign and to a newly-composed arrangement of fanfares (based on Franz Liszt’s “Prelude”) which was to precede radio announcements of the expected victories. Then, I was told, about three o’clock in the morning he remarked to some of his intimates, “I feel as if I have opened a door into a dark, unseen room—without knowing what lies behind the door.”
The same troubled atmosphere prevailed during Ribbentrop’s press conference at the Foreign Office, which I attended about five o’clock in the morning. The journalists present were sleepy-eyed and depressed. Hitler must have sensed this mood, for a few days afterwards he remarked to me that the press had not supported his assault upon Russia in a sufficiently effective and convincing manner. But then new intoxicating reports of military victories banished Hitler’s anxious premonitions and put to flight his doubts.
The advancing German armies occupied vast territories in the East—the Baltic states, White Russia, and the Ukraine. And once again Hitler showed that he knew no better methods of administering conquered territories than those that had already failed in the rest of Europe. How could he have succeeded, given his absolute contempt for the feelings of others and for the ways of life of other peoples? Whatever his motives, he had brought war upon a country of 180 million people. In Russian eyes he would therefore remain forever an usurper and foreigner, even had he had the desire to give them an ideal form of government. But he had neither the desire nor the ability to do so.
He established a Ministry for the East to rule this broad land by red tape and conferences, without any reference to its traditions or its national needs. In the country itself, meanwhile, Reich commissioners who felt themselves independent reigned more or less harshly. Once again Hitler was demonstrating his ruinous lack of understanding of foreign races; his administrative decisions for Russia were political dilettantism of the worst sort. The force behind the Eastern policy of suffocating and oppressing a foreign people was Hitler himself. He personally wanted the government to be exactly what the Russians felt it to be. The strongest exponent of such a policy was Reich Commissioner Koch, and Hitler himself constantly backed Koch in spite of criticisms. Instead of checking the man, he held him up to others as a fine example of uncompromising hardness. Hitler himself remained deaf to all advice; in his arrogance he declared that he understood the mentality of the East better than those who thought to counsel him.
And yet, in the end Hitler was defeated in Russia, not only by the great spaces, but by the spirit of the people. When the German fronts reeled and broke under the reviving power of Russia’s will to live, which Hitler had so gravely underestimated, the German armies found no support in their rear. Behind their lines were only partisans who hated the Germans with all their hearts.
What political outcome did Hitler imagine the Russian adventure could possibly have? That will always remain an enigma. The only idea he ever expressed—that was at the height of his military triumphs in the East—was the vague hope that perhaps Stalin would realize the hopelessness of further resistance, would abandon large parts of European Russia to Germany, and would content himself with building up the strength of his country in Asia. What wild wishful thinking!
Another striking example of the terrible world-wide effects of Hitler the soldier’s governing the decisions of Hitler the statesman may be seen in the circumstances surrounding the declaration of war against the United States.
From the beginning of the war in Europe Hitler had, for reasons of practical good sense, taken pains to avoid giving the United States a strong pretext for entering the war. From the experience of the First World War he had a vivid conception of what the participation of that country, with its mighty potentials in men and materials, would mean for the prospects of Germany. He feared the arsenal of armaments, the political and moral power of America, and wanted to spare the German people America’s throwing her full weight into the scales of war against Germany. But he also had a wholly exaggerated estimate of Japan’s military strength. The thought of having Japan for an ally overshadowed all considerations of political rationale. The powerobsession of the soldier in Hitler thrust aside all his statesman’s caution and he involved the German people in the war with America.
Hitler often told of his enthusiasm as a boy when he read newspaper stories and saw pictures of the Russo-Japanese war. He had admired the Japanese victories at Port Arthur and Tsushima. Ever since that time, an excessive admiration for the strict discipline and soldierly spirit of the Japanese had remained with him. It had become an established part of his thinking. Having made a cult of the island kingdom, Hitler disregarded the advice of specialists on East Asia and sacrificed Germany’s amicable relations with China. In the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936 he, together with Italy, drew Germany close to Japan. These ties were developed into an alliance in the Three Powers Pact of the fall of 1940. Finally Hitler personally pledged himself to declare war on the United States if Japan and America became involved in an armed conflict.
That Japan would first strike the United States at Pearl Harbor was, however, something Hitler never suspected. I believe I have good evidence for this statement. On that dull Sunday afternoon of December 7 or 8 I was at Hitler’s headquarters, which at the time was located in a forest in East Prussia, near Rastenburg. In my small office I was the first to receive the Reuters report on Pearl Harbor. I promptly went to Hitler’s bunker and sent in word that I was bringing an extremely important message. That very day Hitler had received depressing reports from Russia. He received me with an unfriendly question; he obviously feared more bad news. When I made haste to read the flash, his look of surprise was unmistakable. His face cleared; his expression became one of extreme excitement and he asked quickly, “Is this report correct?” I said it definitely was, for a minute before, while I was waiting in his anteroom, I had received a telephone message from my office to the effect that confirmation from another source had come in. Hitler snatched the sheet of paper from my hand, strode out of the room, and walked unaccompanied, without cap or coat, the hundred yards to the bunker of the Chief of the High Command of the Armed Forces. He was the first to bring the news there.
I do not doubt that Japan’s entry into the war was completely unexpected by him. He had hoped for it, but not counted on it. However, the Japanese action automatically brought in its train Germany’s declaration of war against the United States. Once again in a question of fateful importance for the German nation Hitler had acted alone, made the decision alone. In his overestimation of Japan Hitler committed a blunder similar to his sacrifice of German interests in France to Mussolini’s Italy.
In his political role Hitler was a figure out of the past, not the future. He was enamored of medieval conceptions of heroism and lordly behavior, and the power-political outlook of the German Imperial Age. He dwelt in history; the future was closed to his mind. He had no grasp of political evolution and the spiritual progress of man. Therefore he was without any vision of a new Europe such as others had who were capable of looking into the future. He used to say that even he had been somewhat infected by democratic notions, but in fact he had no feeling whatsoever for the great binding ideas that unite nations; these were utterly alien to his mind. By main force he united the nations of Europe and in so doing laid the foundations for a future commonwealth of the European peoples. But he also raised a host of new problems; and in the solution of these problems he never took the slightest interest.
Again and again in the course of the years earnest-minded Germans and non-Germans urged him to proclaim his conception of Europe, at last to provide the nations of the continent with a “European Charter” which would point new ways for future development. Year in and year out he refused to do anything of the sort. When he was requested at least to announce certain principles and concessions, he would also refuse, giving a reason that sounded very strange in the light of his customary political amorality: “I am no politician; rather, I have a historic mission to fulfill.” What he meant by this was that he would not make political promises which he would later be unable to keep because of the demands of his so-called historic mission.
Wherein lay this historic mission, in his mind? What distant goal hovered before his eyes since he had gone to war, since he had smashed all the old forms of society and was necessarily confronted with the question of establishing new ones? Beyond the general expression of his determination to lead the German people to victory, he never offered a concrete definition of his mission. What he really had in mind can only be judged in retrospect by his actions.
It has been said that Hitler strove to dominate the world. I do not believe that his goal was that unlimited, for all the elementary force of his will to power. How could a man who had never been outside of Central Europe, who had no knowledge of foreign lands and overseas territories, who was not even ambitious for colonies, who altogether lacked anything resembling a cosmopolitan horizon—how could such a man conquer a world of which he had no conception? His field of vision was too narrow for such a goal. More within his mental sphere was the concept of an imperial Germany as the supreme arbiter in Europe. He did not want to be the creator of a new Europe in an age of united nations; rather his dream was to be master of an old, isolated, conservative continent. Militarily he would be the protector, politically the governor, economically the administrator of a Continental Lebensraum; in opposition to all tendencies toward progressive, universal cooperation, he would maintain Europe in a state of limited, narrow-minded isolation from the rest of the world.
This, I believe, was the goal he had in mind after he had begun his struggle against the Old Order in Europe. These were the perspectives that guided his actions during the war. But he kept them concealed. When he spoke, it was always of justice, peace, and the welfare of the nations. Anyone listening to him—the German people, many of them sincerely striving to find a constructive conception, and numerous non-German Europeans who hopefully and trustfully looked to him for leadership—could not but believe that he intended to solve the European problem on the basis of equal rights for the cooperating nations. How could they assume that he who stood for such progressive ideas on the domestic scene, in order to consolidate his rule within his own country, could harbor such reactionary ideas with regard to relations among the countries of Europe?
And so he deceived everyone—the German people and all the others who, believing in his good will and in his idealistic intentions, were therefore willing to shape the destinies of their own nations by collaborating with him. His dual nature deceived them all and plunged them into misfortune.
As the war went on and took its unhappy course, the German people themselves gradually realized that Hitler was anything but a great statesman. Not for him the solution a farsighted and realistic statesman would have chosen under any circumstances—to attempt to end the war before it was too late by a passable compromise peace, or at least to save his people the last horrors by capitulating. Up to the very last minute he remained a gambler determined to have everything or nothing.
During all the years, when he certainly must have known that nemesis was approaching, he nourished himself on false hopes and remained completely passive in foreign policy. His sole political activity consisted in empty polemics. His sole political vision was the wish-dream that the coalition of his enemies would fall apart, although reason should have told him that the alliance would last at least until the total military defeat of Germany. In order to support this unrealistic hypothesis, which was the sum and substance of his statesman’s wisdom during the last year of the war, he constantly attributed exaggerated importance to the most trivial diplomatic reports and the most insignificant items in the foreign press. These he constantly put forward as proofs of his mad theory.
To this one hope he clung to the last days of his life. As a last desperate and naive gesture he even stripped the western front along the Elbe of troops, the idea being that this would bring about a situation which would make his enemies quarrel among themselves at the last moment.
Thus Hitler as a statesman lacked truly great stature. As a political man he did not see beyond his nation—and supra-national vision is the mark of the true great statesman, for it alone opens the way for progress for humanity. While Hitler conquered great spaces as a soldier, as a politician he remained pent up in his nationalistic narrowness. His limited mind could not control those spaces. Where he should have been creative on the international plane, where he should have harmonized and shaped constructively the relationships among the nations of Europe, he instead acted in terms of a wild supernationalism that led inevitably to grim disaster.