On 8 and 9 January Hitler held lengthy discussions at the Berghof with Jodl, Keitel, Brauchitsch, and other army, navy, and Luftwaffe chiefs.1 He stated that ‘it’s not yet clear how Russia will respond to Germany’s planned action in Bulgaria. Russia needs Bulgaria for any move towards the Bosphorus. Britain is being kept going by its hope that the United States and Russia will intervene.’ Britain was trying ‘to get Russia to move against us.’ Stalin should be ‘seen as an ice-cold extortionist’, but also as a ‘smart guy; he won’t openly go against Germany, but we must assume that in tricky situations he will increasingly make difficulties for us’. Entry into the war by the United States and the Soviet Union would represent ‘a very serious challenge to our conduct of the war’; this danger had to be eliminated from the start. ‘Once the threat from Russia has been removed we can continue the war with England under quite manageable conditions; the collapse of Russia will be a great relief to Japan and an increased threat to the United States.’ Up until now, Hitler continued, he had always acted on the principle of destroying the most important enemy positions in order to be able to move on. ‘So we must now crush Russia.’2
During a two-day meeting with Mussolini in Salzburg and at the Berghof, which began on 19 January, Hitler tried to coordinate the military efforts of the two allies more closely or, to put it more precisely, to integrate Italy’s hitherto ‘parallel war’ into an overall war strategy determined by Germany.3 At the first meeting, Hitler held the floor as usual. To begin with, he dealt mainly with France and the position of the Axis powers in the Mediterranean. On the second day, he gave a comprehensive address to a larger group – apart from Mussolini, Ciano, and Ribbentrop, there were numerous German and Italian generals present – in which he went into military details. He described Russia as a serious threat to his future policies, as it pinned down substantial German military resources. ‘So long as Stalin is alive, there is probably no danger; he is clever and cautious. But when he is no longer there, the Jews, of whom there are a number in the second and third echelons of the regime, can once again rise to the top.’ As far as the situation in the West was concerned, Hitler stated that he would launch an attack on Britain only when ‘success was completely assured’, as, given the huge military resources involved, if such an operation failed, it could not be repeated.4 Mussolini left the meeting with the impression that Hitler had given up the idea of an invasion.5 The Italians learnt nothing about the preparations for the attack on the Soviet Union.
In January, Hitler also decided to have another go at persuading Franco to enter the war.6 Ribbentrop took on the task and the German ambassador in Madrid had repeated audiences with Franco, giving him a virtual ultimatum to do what had so long been expected of him. In a letter to the ‘dear Caudillo’ Hitler had bluntly threatened that Spain would ‘never be able to gain such good friends as it now has in Germany and Italy’.7 Franco evaded these peremptory demands, however, though without definitively refusing to enter the war.8
In the meantime, the army leadership remained distinctly sceptical about the prospect of war with the Soviet Union. In a note about a meeting with the commander-in-chief of the army on 28 January 1941 Halder recorded his own opinion of ‘Barbarossa’: ‘The purpose isn’t clear. We won’t strike at the English that way. It won’t significantly improve our economic potential. Risk in the West shouldn’t be underestimated.’ The collapse of Italy following the loss of its African colonies could not be ruled out, so that a new southern front might emerge.9 When meeting them at a lunch, Brauchitsch too expressed doubts about the overall political and military situation to Halder and the Army Group commanders, Leeb, Bock, Witzleben, and Rundstedt.
On 1 February, at a meeting with Hitler, Bock told him that, while they could no doubt defeat the Russians, it was questionable whether they would be able to force them to make peace. Hitler responded by saying ‘that if the occupation of the Ukraine and the fall of Moscow and Leningrad did not bring about peace’, then they would simply have to go on to Ekaterinburg (the Soviet city in the Urals).10 However, on 3 February, Halder gave a detailed outline of the military plans for Barbarossa and Marita (the operation against Yugoslavia and Greece) to Hitler, Brauchitsch, and other military chiefs at the Berghof without expressing any basic concerns. Hitler then approved Halder’s plans, emphasizing once more the significance of the thrusts towards the Baltic states and the Ukraine. This was where the war would be decided, he said, and not on the central front. The attack was still planned for the middle of May.11
At this meeting Hitler also decided to give the Italians in Libya more support than hitherto. He was influenced by the conquest of the port of Tobruk by British forces on 22 January. Since September, the British had taken 130,000 Italian prisoners, and there was a danger of Italy suffering a total defeat in North Africa.12 All German and Italian forces in North Africa – after initial hesitation, Hitler had sent a panzer unit of 8,000 men in January13 – were to be subordinated to a general command under German leadership. Hitler appointed General Erich Rommel, who had distinguished himself as an unconventional commander of a panzer division in the campaign in Western Europe, to head up this command.14
Hitler’s speech in the Sportpalast on 30 January 1941 to mark the anniversary of the ‘seizure of power’ revealed his far-reaching goals for the war against the Soviet Union. On the one hand, there was the ‘settling of accounts’ with Britain, whose political and economic elites he made the object of his mockery and scorn.15 On the other, the ‘Führer’ made it clear that the, in his view, close association between the conduct of the war and anti-Jewish policy was acquiring entirely new dimensions with the preparations for Barbarossa. Hitler referred to the ‘warning’ he had given exactly two years before ‘that, if the rest of the world were to be plunged into a general war, the whole of Jewry will have played out its role in Europe!’ Now he added, ‘they may now be laughing about it, just as they used to laugh at my prophecies. The coming months and years will show that here too I’ve been right’. ‘Nation after nation’ was becoming convinced by the ‘racial expertise’ of the Nazis, and he was convinced that this would help establish ‘the front against the international Jewish exploitation and corruption of nations’. However, Hitler erroneously gave the date of his previous ‘prophecy’ as 1 September 1939, in other words claiming it was issued during the Reichstag speech marking the outbreak of the Second World War. With this ‘error’, which was possibly deliberate, he was in effect underlining his association of the war with the violent persecution of the Jews.
In fact, Hitler’s anti-Semitic tirade of 30 January 1941 represented, above all, a reference to the deportation of the Jews, which he had recently ordered and was now under way. At the beginning of November 1940, he had instructed that over 150,000 Poles and Jews were to be deported from the annexed eastern territories into the General Government.16 In view of the strong objections of Governor General Frank to further ‘resettlement’,17 Hitler had announced that ‘later on we’ll get rid of the Jews from this territory as well’.18 To start with, however, Frank had to accept more Jews. At the beginning of December, Hitler had given the Gauleiter, Schirach, the permission he had been requesting since autumn 1940 to begin deporting the Viennese Jews.19 During February and March 1941, 5,000 Jews were to be deported from Vienna to the General Government as the first stage in the planned removal of 60,000 Jews.20
However, in the meantime, the RSHA had begun to prepare a much more comprehensive project, which was intended to provide Frank with the ‘relief’ promised by Hitler in his November announcement. During the final weeks of 1940, Hitler had assigned Heydrich the task of working out an overall plan for the deportation of all Jews from the area controlled by Germany at the end of the war. Heydrich submitted this plan, which has not survived, to Hitler at the beginning of January 1941. It involved deporting to the conquered parts of the Soviet Union all the Jews living in the areas that would be dominated by Germany after the successful conclusion of Barbarossa.21 There are various indications that suggest the regime continued to pursue these ideas until the late summer of 1941.22 Given the various announcements by Hitler about ‘annihilating’ the Jews and the regime’s increasingly brutal Jewish policy, it is clear that, after the conclusion of the deportation programme, there was no plan to settle these people in the Soviet Union in adequate living conditions. Everything points to the fact that, at the beginning of 1941, the regime was preparing in the long term to annihilate the European Jews through forced deportation to the east. Hitler had no more of a clue about how this was to happen than did his ‘Jewish experts’.
Yugoslavia and Bulgaria had to be won for the Axis before the attack on Greece could take place. From December onwards, the Wehrmacht began to establish its own bases in Bulgaria,23 and the Bulgarian government gradually came round to dropping its objections to joining the Tripartite Pact.24 As a reward, Germany offered to secure Bulgaria access to the Aegean at the expense of Greece.25 On 13 February, Hitler issued orders for the Wehrmacht to march through the country, combined with instructions for the German troops to mount an ‘offensive in the direction of Istanbul’ in the event of the Turks beginning hostilities against Bulgaria in response to Germany’s intervention.26 However, this threat was minimized as a result of the Bulgarian–Turkish Non-Aggression Declaration of 17 November, signed under strong German pressure.27
After Bulgaria’s ceremonial accession to the Tripartite Pact on 1 March, Hitler took immediate action. The very next day, German troops marched into Bulgaria ‘to deal with measures taken by Britain in south-east Europe, of which we have become aware’ as the official German announcement put it.28 In the course of the accession celebrations on 1 March, Ribbentrop had given the Bulgarian Prime Minister a note confirming that ‘as part of the rearrangement of the borders in the Balkans, the Axis powers are prepared [to give] Bulgaria access to the Aegean’.29 That afternoon, during a meeting with Ciano and Ribbentrop concerning an official reception for the Bulgarian Prime Minister, Bogdan Filoff, Hitler had confirmed that ‘all the continental states would gradually be brought together to form an anti-English bloc’.30 The next goal was to bring Yugoslavia into the pact,31 and Germany was already working on it. On 14 November, at the Berghof, Hitler had informed the Yugoslav Prime Minister, Dragiša Cvetkovic´ and the Foreign Minister, Aleksandar Cincar-Markovic´, that the Soviet Union had promised Bulgaria ‘a generous grant of territory in Macedonia’ at the expense of Yugoslavia, ‘in order to provide it with access to the Aegean’. Yugoslavia must ‘in its own interest . . . take part in the new order envisaged by Germany and Italy by immediately joining the Tripartite Pact’.32 Hitler made the same demand of the Yugoslav Prince Regent, Paul, whom he received at the Berghof on 4 and 5 March. As a reward, Hitler promised Paul access to the Aegean at the expense of Greece, in fact the annexation of Saloniki, which Mussolini had agreed, on 22 November 1940, to give up. If Yugoslavia did not seize the chance, ‘then it would risk, in the end, finding a third power blocking its path to the Aegean’. He had, after all, already promised Bulgaria access to the Aegean.33
After a certain amount of hesitation, Yugoslavia finally agreed to join the Tripartite Pact on 25 March. Before the ceremony took place, Germany made a number of demands. Among other things, Ribbentrop made it clear to the pro-British prince regent that he might ‘not be there in six months’ time if he didn’t follow our advice’.34 Despite these attempts at intimidation, on the Prince Regent’s return to Belgrade, the Yugoslav government insisted on a number of guarantees: of the country’s territorial integrity; of the agreement not to call on Yugoslavia for military support; and of the promise to provide access to the Aegean through the granting of Saloniki, to all of which both Hitler and Mussolini agreed.35
Joining the Tripartite Pact was a highly contentious issue in Yugoslavia. Two days after the signing, the Cvetkovic´ government was overthrown by a military coup organized by pro-British officers. King Peter II, who was a minor, ascended the throne in place of the Prince Regent, Paul.36 At midday on 27 March, at a hurriedly convened meeting of the military leadership in the Reich Chancellery, which Ribbentrop also joined later, Hitler announced that he was determined ‘to crush Yugoslavia militarily and as a state with merciless severity’ in a ‘lightning operation’.37 Yugoslavia was an ‘uncertain factor’ for the attacks on Greece and the Soviet Union. In addition, however, to Hitler’s disappointment and anger at this sudden development, which he considered a blow to his prestige, and which posed a threat to his further military plans,38 he had an old and deep-seated hostility to Serbia and Slovenia. They had never been ‘pro-German’. As a result of the nationalities problem and the existence of ‘a camarilla of officers who were prone to carry out coups, their governments had never been secure’. However, in view of this new operation, the attack on the Soviet Union would have to be postponed by up to four weeks. Hitler gave his approval in principle to a plan for a Balkan campaign that Halder had hurriedly sketched, and Brauchitsch was able to reassure the ‘Führer’ that the attack on Greece could still go ahead on 1 April as intended.39
As far as Greece was concerned, during the course of the month, Hitler had given way to the demands of the Luftwaffe and the navy and decided to occupy the mainland down to the Peloponnese (and possibly also the peninsula itself ). As this would require stronger forces, he had intervened in the planning for Barbarossa, removing the whole of the 12th Army from the southern sector of the invasion, and deploying it to the Balkans, where it was to remain. As a result, the southern flank of the German invasion of the Soviet Union was significantly weakened.40
On 27 March, in his Directive No. 25, Hitler announced his intention ‘to destroy the Yugoslav forces and to detach the southernmost part of Yugoslavia from the rest of the country, in order to use it as a base for the continuation of the German–Italian offensive against Greece’.41 On the same day, he summoned the ambassadors of Hungary and Romania to the Reich Chancellery to demand that their governments take part in the war against Yugoslavia.42 He offered both envoys the prospect of territorial gains.43 The following day ambassador Döme Sztójay returned, bringing with him Horthy’s agreement.44 During the next few days, the issue of military intervention provoked a government crisis in Budapest, culminating in the suicide of the Prime Minister, Pál Teleki. Under Teleki’s successor, Lászl Bárdossy, Hungary continued to support Germany, although with the stipulation that it could intervene only when the dissolution of Yugoslavia offered a pretext for doing so.45 Bulgaria decided not to join in the war.46
Meanwhile, Hitler wrote a letter to the Italian dictator informing him of the impending war with Yugoslavia.47 He also requested the ‘Duce’ to halt his offensive in Albania, which he agreed to do.48 Mussolini also acknowledged that Hitler would assume supreme command of the coming operations himself. The ‘Führer’ managed this by communicating his ‘proposals and wishes’ in personal letters to Mussolini and Horthy, thereby ‘taking account of the Allies’ sensitivities’.49 Ciano and Ribbentrop decided to ignore the Yugoslav foreign minister’s statement that Belgrade continued to recognize the international treaties it had signed, including the Tripartite Pact.50
Hitler set the date for the attack on Yugoslavia as 6 April 1941. On 5 April, the day before the attack, the Soviet Union concluded a friendship and non-aggression pact with the new Simovic´ government in Yugoslavia.51 Late in the evening, Hitler summoned Goebbels, who noted: ‘He estimates the whole operation will take about 2 months. I think it’ll be shorter.’ Goebbels went on: ‘The war against the Serbian arsonists will be fought without mercy. The Führer is expecting a sniper war with a lot of casualties.’52
On the first day of the war the Luftwaffe bombed Belgrade, causing heavy losses among the civilian population, despite the fact that the Yugoslav government had declared the capital to be an ‘open city’, in other words that it would not be defended. Hitler’s decision to bomb the city nonetheless reflected his desire for retribution for Yugoslavia’s ‘betrayal’. It was no accident that the code word for the bombing of Belgrade was ‘Tribunal’. However, he did ban air raids on Athens. Indeed, Hitler became quite sentimental about the Greeks. Goebbels noted that the ‘Führer’ admired the courage of the Greeks and regretted having to fight them: ‘Perhaps there’s still something of the ancient Hellenes in them.’53 For Hitler the Balkan war was, above all, an anti-Serbian war of revenge, with old Austrian resentments playing a not unimportant part. The following day he told Goebbels the Serbs ‘had always been troublemakers. Now we must go in for the kill’. In contrast to the failed diplomatic methods of the Habsburg Monarchy they had to ‘sort things out in a big way’.54
The campaign made rapid progress. From 6 April onwards, the 12th Army advanced through Bulgaria towards northern Greece; the 2nd Army, along with a separate panzer unit, attacked Yugoslavia from Carinthia, Styria, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. As planned, the Wehrmacht was supported by Italian and Hungarian forces. By 10 April Zagreb had already been captured.55 Hitler left Berlin and established his headquarters in a special train south of Vienna Neustadt, near a tunnel that could offer protection in the event of air raids.56 On 12 April, he was already issuing ‘Provisional Directives for the Partitioning of Yugoslavia’. The parts of Slovenia that had originally belonged to Austria were assigned to Carinthia and Styria.57 Croatia became an ‘independent state’ with a puppet regime. On 14 April, Anton Pavelic´, the leader of the secret nationalist organization, Ustacha, who had hitherto been living in exile in Italy, took over the government as ‘head of state’ (Poglavnik).58 A military administration was established in Serbia, while the other Yugoslav territories were divided up between Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria.59
However, the war was not yet over. In response to the Yugoslav request for an armistice, the German leadership demanded unconditional surrender. On 13 April, the day German troops entered Belgrade, Hitler issued Directive No. 27, ordering the ‘annihilation’ of the Yugoslav armed forces, which had already been largely defeated.60 After almost all Yugoslav requests for concessions had been rejected, the surrender was completed on 17 April.61
The war in Greece went on for a few more days. The Greeks concentrated on holding their positions against the Italians in Albania, and were prepared to surrender only when the German troops were in their rear. On 21 April, evidently in response to a request from the Greeks, Hitler ordered the armistice to be conducted by the 12th Army without the participation of their Italian allies. However, as Mussolini protested, a second armistice was arranged on 23 April and this time the Italians took part.62 On 25 April, Hitler signed his directive for Operation Mercury, the conquest of the Greek island of Crete, where British troops had established bases.63 The attack eventually began on 20 May, carried out by paratroopers and glider forces. The military engagements, which involved heavy losses, continued until 2 June, leading to the evacuation of the British forces and the complete occupation of the island by German troops.64
In the meantime, German forces were making significant progress in North Africa. Following Hitler’s decision to bolster the almost hopeless Italian positions in North Africa, in February German troops under General Rommel arrived in Libya. Rommel moved against the British forces in Cyrenaica, pushing them back eastwards and conquering Benghazi, and, by the middle of April, he was outside Tobruk.65 This advance was made possible not least because of the transfer of British forces to Greece.
On 28 April, Hitler made a triumphal entry into Berlin. On the same day, he met the German ambassador, Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg, who had just arrived from Moscow, in the Reich Chancellery. Schulenburg attempted in vain to allay Hitler’s deep-seated mistrust of Soviet policy. He assured him that the Soviet agreement with Yugoslavia was not directed against Germany. Moreover, there was no indication that the Soviet Union had been behind the putsch in Belgrade, or that the Soviets were seeking a rapprochement with Britain. Hitler evidently resented being contradicted, for he abruptly ended the meeting.66 Two days later, on 30 April, Halder briefed Hitler about the state of the preparations for Barbarossa. It was on this occasion that the date of the attack was fixed for 22 June.67 On 4 May, Hitler gave a report to the Reichstag on the Balkan campaign. ‘The German Wehrmacht’, he told them, ‘will always intervene, whenever and wherever required’.68
In the middle of the preparations for the war in the Balkans, Hitler had tried to secure Germany’s position in the impending war with the Soviet Union by reaching a strategic agreement with his ally, Japan. A unique opportunity was provided by the visit of the Japanese Foreign Minister, Matsuoka Yosuke, who arrived in Berlin at the end of March, having already held talks in Moscow.69 As he had already made clear in his Directive No. 24 of 5 March, Hitler wanted to ‘get [Japan] to take action in the Far East as soon as possible’, in order to pin down British forces and to get the United States to focus on the Pacific. He was, however, determined to keep the Barbarossa operation secret from the Japanese, thereby considerably limiting his room for negotiation.70
During his first meeting with Matsuoka on 1 April, referring to Germany’s relationship with the Soviet Union, Hitler stated that, although, ‘as was well-known [the Reich] had made a treaty’, ‘more important than this was the fact that, if necessary, it had 160–180 divisions ready to defend itself against Russia’, although he did not believe it would come to a war. Matsuoka was surprised by this statement, since the Japanese leadership assumed that Germany was still working to construct a ‘continental bloc’ including the Soviet Union. However, for Japan the stabilization of its relationship with the Soviet Union was the decisive prerequisite for its plans to expand in South-East Asia.
Hitler pressed his guest, arguing that there would probably never be a more favourable opportunity for the Tripartite powers to act together: Britain was pinned down by the war in Europe; America was only just beginning to rearm; and the Soviet Union could not take the initiative because of the German forces on its western frontier; Japan was the strongest power in East Asia, and there were no conflicts of interest between Germany and Japan. However, Matsuoka remained reserved. They would attack Singapore sooner or later, but at the moment he could not ‘make any commitment on behalf of Japan’.
Ribbentrop, who met Matsuoka on a number of occasions during these days, was much more direct, trying to convince his Japanese colleague that Japan’s next step ought to be ‘a quick attack on Singapore’. Ribbentrop even went so far as to make the highly disingenuous claim that the conquest of Singapore would ‘perhaps be the best way of keeping America out of the war because the United States would hardly dare risk sending its fleet into Japanese waters’. The argument was only too transparent. For German policy in Europe was banking precisely on America becoming entangled in a conflict in East Asia.71 And the Japanese guest was by no means prepared to accept the argument that the impending confrontation between Germany and the Soviet Union would leave Japan with a free hand in East Asia. Matsuoka even asked Ribbentrop ‘whether the Führer had ever contemplated a Russian–Japanese–German alliance’. Ribbentrop denied this and ‘described a closer cooperation with Russia as an absolute impossibility, as the cultures of the armies and of the two populations were completely contrary to one another’.72
As Matsuoka was intending to continue his talks in Moscow on his way back to Tokyo, Ribbentrop advised him ‘not to get in too deep with the Russians’. Indeed, he went considerably further: ‘If Russia were ever to attack Japan, Germany would immediately fight’. Hitler had already given the same ‘guarantee’ a few days earlier when talking to Oshima Hiroshi, the Japanese ambassador in Berlin.73 Thus Japan could ‘move southwards towards Singapore without any fear of possible complications with Russia’. Ribbentrop believed, however, that ‘Russia would not get involved in any military entanglements’. He went to the absolute limit of what Hitler had permitted to be mentioned about Barbarossa when adding that ‘in any event, he wanted to point out to Matsuoka that a conflict with Russia was at least within the bounds of possibility’.74 Interpreter Schmidt noted that in the course of the talks the German negotiators ‘referred increasingly openly to the impending conflict with the Soviet Union, without, however, ever actually spelling it out in so many words’.75
On 4 April, Hitler had another conversation with Matsuoka, who in the meantime had been in Rome. He emphasized ‘that if Japan got into a conflict with the United States, Germany would immediately take appropriate action’.76 Germany’s declaration that, if Japan became involved in a war with the United States or the Soviet Union it would immediately intervene, naturally implied that, in the event of a Soviet–German war, Japan would be expected to open a front against the Soviet Union. Matsuoka quickly made clear what he thought of this assumption. On his way back to Japan, he successfully pressed Moscow to agree a Japanese–Russian pact of neutrality, which was signed on 13 April, and was to remain in force throughout the whole of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union. Germany’s attempt to incorporate the attack on the Soviet Union into a global war was thus doomed from the start.
A few weeks later, on 10 May, the ‘Führer’s’ deputy, Rudolf Hess, climbed into a fighter plane, which he had had placed at his disposal for test flights. Taking off from the airfield at the Messerschmidt works in Augsburg, he flew along a carefully prepared route over the North Sea, landing late in the evening by parachute on the estate of the Duke of Hamilton in Scotland. The two men had been acquaintances since the 1936 Olympic Games. According to his own account, Hess was pursuing a peace mission and aiming to advance it by establishing direct contact with Britain’s aristocracy. In this, however, he failed, as he was immediately arrested.
The German leadership, which was initially unaware of Hess’s arrest, was in total shock. On 12 May, Hitler announced on the radio that Hess, ‘whom he had banned from flying on account of a progressive illness he had been suffering from for years’, had nevertheless undertaken a flight. ‘A confused letter he left behind showed signs of mental derangement, which has given rise to fears that Party comrade Hess had been suffering from delusions.’ It was to be feared that Hess ‘had crashed, or had met with an accident’.77 ‘The Führer’, noted Goebbels, ‘is totally shattered’. ‘What a spectacle for the world; the second man in line after the Führer mentally deranged. Appalling and inconceivable.’78 The press was instructed ‘not to give [the matter] undue prominence beyond the need to inform people of the basic facts’.79
Hitler had everybody arrested or interrogated who was in any way connected with the flight: adjutants, secretaries, engineers, and Professor Karl Haushofer, who was a friend of Hess, and Haushofer’s son, Albrecht. In addition, Bormann, Hess’s chief of staff, and Goebbels began a large-scale campaign against astrologers, fortune-tellers, faith healers, occultists, and other alternative ‘teachings’, as it was assumed that Hess, who was very interested in such abstruse ideas, had been encouraged to act by people who belonged to these circles. Bormann could refer to Hitler, who had long been trying to reason Hess out of his ‘superstition’.80 On 12 May, Hitler abolished the position of Deputy Führer, renaming Hess’s previous office the Party Chancellery, appointing Bormann to head it, and, at the end of the month, making him a Reich Minister.81 Unlike Hess, however, he was not named as Hitler’s second successor after Göring. Instead, Göring was named as his sole deputy, responsible for carrying out Hitler’s functions in the event that he was prevented from doing so.82
On 13 March, however, when the BBC announced that Hess was in British hands, Hitler had to issue another statement. Hess, he said, seemed ‘to have been deluded in thinking that, by approaching English acquaintances, he could somehow still manage to bring about an understanding between Germany and England’. Moreover, Hess, who had been suffering for some years from health problems, had recently ‘increasingly sought help from various mesmerists, astrologers etc.’, and might have been negatively influenced by such people. It was also conceivable that ‘Hess was lured into a trap by the British’. It was possible that the ‘idealist’ Hess had come to imagine that, by making a personal sacrifice, he would be able to prevent the British Empire’s downfall.83 A few days later, Goebbels ordered German propaganda to cease referring to the affair.84
The motives that prompted Hess to fly to England are still unclear. A peace mission undertaken on Hitler’s behalf can most probably be ruled out. He was unable to provide the British authorities with any kind of authority to negotiate, nor did he have any proposals for an Anglo–German peace that went beyond Hitler’s vague ‘appeal to reason’ of 19 July 1940. Moreover, Hitler’s statements of 12 and 13 May declaring that Hess was mad put paid to his role as a potential negotiator. Hess does seem, however, to have regarded himself as a peace emissary, acting on Hitler’s behalf, even if without his specific authorization. He was motivated by the idea that, by making contact with members of the aristocracy, he could bring about a change in Britain’s attitude before Germany became involved in a two-front war by attacking the Soviet Union. It appears that the Deputy Führer’s flight to Britain was a solo effort, which can only be understood against the background of his growing isolation within the Reich leadership.85
Hitler’s decision to launch a war against the Soviet Union had originally been taken in the summer of 1940. The attack was intended to resolve the dilemma into which Hitler, notwithstanding his brilliant victory in the West, had manoeuvered himself. In spite of all his attempts, Britain had neither been defeated nor compelled to agree a peace in accordance with his wishes. It possessed its own overseas resources with which to fight the war as well as those of the United States. Germany had to assume that the United States would enter the war and would do so just when German pressure on Britain was increasing. Hitler’s Soviet ally was waiting in the rear of the Reich, and Germany had to maintain a substantial military force to compensate for Russia’s growing military power. In short, time was working against Hitler’s Reich.
Thus Hitler had come to believe that a war against Russia would cut the Gordian knot. After victory over the Soviet Union, he would be in a position to concentrate all his forces on Britain, while Japan would be free from a threat to its rear and enabled to pin down American forces in East Asia. After toying during the final months of 1940 with alternatives to a war against the Soviet Union in the shape of an ‘anti-British continental bloc’, by the end of 1940 his decision to fight a war in the East was irrevocable.
As the practical preparations for the attack began, in addition to military and strategic considerations, he became increasingly concerned with ideological goals. Since the beginning of the 1920s, he had been preoccupied with gaining ‘living space’ in the East, and we have seen that during the 1930s he had toyed with a project for the Ukraine. The space to be conquered had to be settled, economically exploited, and controlled. In accordance with his ideological premises, this had to occur on the basis of a racially determined hierarchy. The precondition for this was the destruction of the Soviet system and the violent elimination of the alleged Jewish leadership cadre in the Soviet Union. This would result in the destruction of the core of international ‘Jewish Bolshevism’, Hitler’s main bogeyman since the end of the First World War.
From March 1941 onwards, Hitler made a series of decisions that were largely responsible for ensuring that the war against the Soviet Union acquired the character of a war of racial conquest and extermination. His role is documented in numerous statements, hints, and orders, which generally did not meet with reservations or opposition from the military, but rather, during the coming weeks and months, were faithfully turned into orders. To begin with, on 3 March, Hitler ordered Jodl, the chief of the Wehrmacht leadership staff, to revise the OKW draft directives for the occupation administration in the territories that were to be conquered. Hitler’s new directive stated: ‘The forthcoming campaign is more than just an armed conflict; it will lead to a confrontation between two ideologies. Given the extent of the area involved, bringing this war to an end will require more than defeating the enemy’s armed forces. . . . The Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia, as the people’s “oppressor” up to now, must be eliminated.’86 A week before, the head of the OKW armaments office, General Thomas, had already heard of a comment made by Hitler and relayed by Göring that ‘first of all, the Bolshevik leaders’ had to be ‘finished off quickly’.87
In accordance with Hitler’s directives of 3 March, on the 13 March Jodl issued the ‘Guidelines for the Special Areas relating to Barbarossa’, in which he stated: ‘The Führer has given the Reichsführer SS special tasks within the zone of army operations to prepare for its political administration, tasks deriving from the necessity of finally resolving the conflict between two opposing political systems. In carrying out these tasks the Reichsführer SS will be acting independently and on his own responsibility’.88 What was envisaged by these ‘special tasks’ is clear from Jodl’s instructions for finalizing the guidelines of 3 March. Referring to the directives given him by Hitler, they emphasized the need ‘immediately to neutralize all Bolshevik chiefs and commissars’.89
On 17 March, Hitler made himself equally clear in a meeting with Halder and the Quartermaster General, Wagner: ‘The intelligentsia installed by Stalin will have to be liquidated. The Russian Empire’s leadership apparatus must be destroyed. We shall have to use force of the most brutal kind in Greater Russia.’90 On 30 March Halder noted very similar key points made by Hitler at a meeting with generals: ‘Clash of two ideologies. Devastating assessment of Bolshevism, equivalent of social delinquency. Communism is a huge threat for the future. We must get away from the idea of comradeship among soldiers. The communist is from first to last no comrade. This is a war of annihilation. If we don’t see it in these terms, we may beat the enemy, but in 30 years’ time we shall again be facing the communist enemy. We’re not waging war to preserve the enemy. . . . Battle against Russia: annihilation of Bolshevist commissars and of the communist intelligentsia. . . . The struggle must be fought against the poison of disintegration. This isn’t a matter for military courts. . . . Commissars and GPU people are criminals and must be dealt with as such. . . . This struggle will be very different from the fight in the West. In the East being harsh today means being mild in the future.’ At the same time, Hitler indicated, at least in outline, how he envisaged reorganizing the area he was planning to conquer: ‘Northern Russia will go to Finland. Protectorates for the Baltic states, Ukraine, White Russia. . . . The new states must be socialist states, but without their own intelligentsias.’91
Hitler’s statement that military justice would not apply in Russia was quickly put into writing. The ‘Edict on the Application of the Law and on Special Measures carried out by the Army’ was initially drafted by the OKH, tightened by the OKW, and finally signed off by Hitler on 13 May. It ordered that criminal offences perpetrated by members of the Wehrmacht against civilians would no longer be automatically subject to disciplinary measures, but only in exceptional cases. In the case of offences committed by enemy civilians, the Wehrmacht’s judicial system should not become involved at all; instead, punishment should be carried out by the troops on the spot. Localities where the Wehrmacht had been attacked ‘in an insidious and underhand manner’ should be subject to ‘collective measures’ if ‘circumstances [prevent] the rapid identification of the individual perpetrators’.92
In tandem with the edict on military justice and in accordance with Hitler’s requirement of 30 March (‘annihilation of Bolshevist commissars and the communist intelligentsia’), by the beginning of May the OKH had prepared guidelines for the systematic murder of political functionaries of the Communist Party. When Rosenberg opposed the murder of all the functionaries on the grounds that it would complicate the administration of the occupied territories, the OKH sought a Führer decision. The result was contained in the ‘Guidelines for the Treatment of Soviet Commissars’ signed by the chief of the OKW, Keitel, on 6 June, which took account of Rosenberg’s concerns. Commissars in the Red Army were ‘to be finished off’ by the troops; civilian commissars who opposed the troops were to be ‘dealt with’ in accordance with the Edict on Military Justice; the fate of those who were not guilty of any hostile act would be decided after the establishment of the occupation regime. On the question of ‘guilty or not guilty’ ‘the impression a person makes . . . must be considered more important than the facts, which may prove impossible to verify’.93 The ‘Guidelines for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia’ of 19 May, demanding ‘ruthless and energetic measures against Bolshevist agitators, irregulars, saboteurs, Jews’, and the ‘total elimination of all forms of resistance’, clearly indicate Hitler’s radical views on the way to conduct the war in the East. The guidelines were distributed in sealed envelopes down to battalion level and were to be given to the troops ‘on the arrival of the order to attack’.94
A week before the start of the invasion, Hitler reiterated his general views on the war in the East at a meeting of the commanders of the army groups and armies. In his statement to the Nuremberg Tribunal Keitel mentioned the key points, which are familiar from Hitler’s previous remarks: it was a struggle between two conflicting ideologies, so that the traditional form of warfare governed by military justice had to be abandoned and all types of resistance be dealt with ruthlessly.95 In addition, during the months preceding Barbarossa, a ‘division of labour’ was established between the army and the SS. This was in response to the guidelines of 13 March, which had been substantially altered at Hitler’s request. The execution of civilians not involved in combat operations was, to a large extent, to be left to the SS murder squads. For this purpose the Army High Command and the Reichsführer SS came to an agreement, contained in the OKH order of 18 April 1941, to deploy ‘special commandos of the Security Police and SD within the area of operations’, which were to perform ‘their tasks under their own responsibility’.96 They were entitled, ‘within the remit of their assignment, to carry out executive measures involving the civilian population’. This formula ensured that, unlike during the war with Poland, the SS special commandos were no longer subordinate to the OKW, and, although supported by the military, could operate independently of it.
On 21 May, Himmler announced that ‘to implement the special orders that I have received from the Führer’ (he was using the formula from the edict of 13 March) I intend to appoint Higher SS and Police Leaders in the territories that are to be conquered’, to whom Einsatzgruppen [task forces], order police battalions, and units of the Waffen SS would be subordinated. ‘They will carry out tasks specifically assigned to me.’97 During the following months, these units received unequivocal orders, involving the murder of a vaguely defined Jewish leadership cadre in the Soviet Union, as well as communist functionaries and all those who appeared in the least suspect.98
As we have seen, by the end of 1940, Hitler’s plan to establish a base in North-West Africa and to cut off the Mediterranean from the west by occupying Gibraltar had failed, after he had been unable to achieve the necessary agreement of Spain or Vichy France. However, in 1941, alongside the preparations for Barbarossa, the German government began to consider how they could exploit the expected rapid military success in the East in order to weaken Britain’s position in the Mediterranean (though not only there). For they now understood that an invasion of Britain during this year was as unrealistic as it had been in the previous one, and a naval blockade would not prove decisive.99
At the end of February, Hitler once again gave orders for the conquest of Gibraltar; the final plan was ready on 10 March. The attack was to be carried out in October (in other words after Barbarossa) with troops brought over from the East.100 At the beginning of May, he also ordered ‘Operation Isabella’, a German counter measure against a possible British invasion of Spain and Portugal, which was to be undertaken by the German occupation forces in France.101 However, Hitler had even more far-reaching ideas: in February, he ordered the OKW ‘to prepare a study covering an advance from Afghanistan into India’ after Barbarossa.102 In response to these initiatives, at the beginning of April, Halder produced a plan, according to which, after Barbarossa, the army would be reduced to 136 divisions, of which only thirty-six would remain in the East as an army of occupation, a further eight in Scandinavia, thirty in the West, and six in the Balkans. In addition, seven would be assigned for an operational group in Spanish Morocco, eight for the advance in North Africa–Egypt, seventeen for the Afghanistan operation, and, assuming Turkey entered the war, fourteen for Anatolia, in order to intervene in the Near East from here as well.103 The remaining ten, of which no details were given, were evidently intended as a reserve. They believed they had already secured a partner for their Afghanistan project in the Afghan economics minister, Abdul Majid Khan, who was sympathetic to the Nazi regime and was staying in Germany during the spring and early summer, allegedly for medical treatment. In May he declared that he was willing to collaborate with the Axis by supporting a partisan war across the Indian frontier. But, under the impression of the debacle suffered by the Axis in Iraq, to which we shall soon return, he quickly distanced himself from the plan.104
Hitler, however, had by no means given up the idea of deploying German forces to Afghanistan. After defeating the Soviet Union, he reckoned there would be plenty of willing partners in this region.105 His aim was not, of course, the ‘liberation’ of India, but rather to threaten the British position in India, forcing Britain to make peace on his terms. The Indian nationalist leader, Subhas Chandra Bose, who had fled to Berlin, requested Hitler to issue a proclamation in favour of a ‘Free India’. Although the ‘Führer’ had approved it in the spring, he was not in the end prepared to issue it.106
Rommel’s successful offensive and the German campaign in south-east Europe also had an impact on the Arab world. In April, King Farouk of Egypt approached Hitler directly with a message that he was ‘at one with his people in looking forward to seeing the German troops victorious in Egypt as soon as possible and as liberators from the intolerably brutal English yoke’. Hitler’s reply was non-committal: Germany wanted the ‘independence of Egypt and of the whole of the Arab world’. 107 In Iraq, from which Britain had transferred troops to Libya and Crete, there was a change in the balance of power in favour of the Axis. The former prime minister of Iraq, Raschid Ali al-Gailani, who had been overthrown at the end of January 1941, managed to regain power through a coup at the beginning of April. Hitler now got state secretary von Weizsäcker to reply to a letter which had been sent to him in January by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini. The Grand Mufti was one of the central figures in anti-British resistance in the Arab world and was now living in Baghdad. Hitler promised in general terms to provide the assistance requested by Husseini for their common struggle with the ‘English and the Jews’, assuring him that he recognized the Arab states’ struggle for independence.108 Much encouraged by Hitler’s support, in April Gailani resisted British pressure to allow the permanent stationing of substantial British forces in Iraq. This prompted a military confrontation at the beginning of May, as Britain was determined to eliminate this nascent Axis outpost. The German attempts to support the Iraqis by sending a few aircraft and weapons, in particular from Syria, which was under a French mandate, could not prevent Britain from bringing the whole country under its control by the end of the month.109 Hitler had made it clear in his directive that the Iraq operation could have, at best, symbolic significance: ‘whether and how’ the British position in the Near East could be eliminated would only become apparent after Barbarossa.110
The weapons deliveries from Syria, which was under the control of Vichy France, had been made possible only after lengthy negotiations with Admiral Darlan, who had been Deputy Prime Minister since February. Darlan hoped that this concession (together with the sale of a large number of lorries to the German forces in North Africa) would re-establish direct contact with the German leadership, thereby improving Franco–German relations, which had been frozen since the end of 1940.111 In fact, his concession did indeed secure him an invitation to Berchtesgaden. On 11 May, at the Berghof, Hitler agreed limited military cooperation with Darlan.112 In the subsequent negotiations between the two countries’ military authorities, French support for Iraq from Syria was confirmed and the prospect was raised of granting the use of the port of Bizerta in Tunisia for supplying the German forces in North Africa and the use of Dakar in Senegal for German naval operations in the Atlantic.113 However, the agreement did not come into force because Germany was unwilling to respond to the French request for a peace agreement. Here too Hitler was working on the assumption that, after the impending victory over the Soviet Union, his position vis-à-vis France would have radically changed to his advantage. The support given to Iraq by the French mandate administration in Syria prompted Britain to attack Syria with the help of Free French troops and, despite resistance from Vichy forces, they managed to occupy it by the middle of July.114 This demonstrated to Vichy France only too clearly that cooperating with the Axis carried a high risk.
The post-Barbarossa planning and, in particular, the idea of continuing to ‘besiege’ Britain by cutting off its access to the Mediterranean once again increased the importance of the navy in Germany’s overall conduct of the war. In his address to the generals on 30 March Hitler had announced that, after Barbarossa, the programme of constructing capital ships would be renewed. The naval leadership did its best to emphasize the value of a high seas fleet. Since the autumn of 1940, the navy had begun using not only U-boats to attack merchant shipping, but also capital ships. The first were the cruisers ‘Hipper’ and ‘Scheer’; they were followed in February by the battleships ‘Scharnhorst’ and ‘Gneisenau’; and then, in May, the largest German battleship, the ‘Bismarck’, arrived in the North Atlantic.115 Its sister ship, the ‘Tirpitz’, which had come into service a few months before, was intended to perform the same role.116 Raeder told Hitler on 22 May that the naval high command considered that the use of Dakar would significantly enhance the conduct of naval warfare in the Atlantic. Hitler also approved Raeder’s proposal to support the Spanish navy in building up their defences on the Canary Islands, so that they could be held ‘at all times against the English and Americans’. When Hitler raised the possibility of occupying the Azores, Raeder told him that, even if they deployed the whole of the navy, they would still be unable to hold them. Nevertheless, Hitler stuck to the idea of using the islands, from autumn 1941 onwards, as a base ‘for attacking the United States with long-range bombers’.117
It was, in fact, becoming increasingly clear that Germany would soon be confronted by an Anglo-American alliance and a strategic partnership between the two countries. The Lend-Lease law of 11 March gave the American President the power to supply Britain with considerably increased amounts of armaments. In response, Hitler extended the area of operations round the British Isles as far as Iceland.118 The United States responded by sequestering all German ships in American ports and declaring the Atlantic west of 30 degrees longitude to be a security zone, subject to regular American patrols. On 20 April, Hitler ordered the navy to abide by this American move affecting the North Atlantic.119 During these critical months before Barbarossa, he wanted at all costs to avoid an American entry into the war as a result of incidents on the high seas, an attitude he stuck to during the first months of the war in the East.120 In any case, the sinking of the ‘Bismarck’ by the Royal Navy on 27 May and the destruction of the floating German supply bases in the Atlantic by the British produced a change in Germany’s conduct of naval warfare. The naval high command had to abandon its idea of fighting a war in the Atlantic with capital ships.121
In his Directive No. 32 of 11 June Hitler once again clearly set out his goals for the period after the eastern campaign.122 He was working on the assumption that, after the Soviet Union had been destroyed, Germany and Italy would no longer face a significant threat from hostile land forces on the continent of Europe. Thus, the army could be significantly reduced to the benefit of the navy and Luftwaffe. The increase in ‘Franco–German cooperation’ would enable the Atlantic coast of North and West Africa to be protected against ‘Anglo-Saxon attacks’; in other words, the possible threat from the United States was already being taken account of. Thus, in the first place, the British positions in the Mediterranean and in the Near East could already be eliminated in the autumn of 1941 or during the following winter by a ‘concentric attack’ from three directions: first, through a continuation of the German–Italian attack from Libya towards Egypt, through a second offensive via Bulgaria and Turkey towards Suez, as well as ‘in certain circumstances a further offensive through Transcaucasia and Iran towards Iraq’. Secondly, after victory in the East, it would be easy to overcome Spanish resistance to a military operation in Gibraltar. Afterwards, German forces would have to go over to Spanish Morocco, whereas they would leave the defence of the Atlantic coast of North-West Africa and the elimination of the British and Free French bases in West Africa to the French. The German navy and Luftwaffe would then use the French bases on the West African coast and contemplate occupying the islands in the Atlantic. Thirdly, the ‘siege of England’ would continue. An invasion of the island should be prepared in order to ‘provoke and complete . . . England’s collapse, which is already under way’.123
The directive makes it clear that the conquest of an empire providing living space in the East, regarded by most scholars as the ‘core’ of Hitler’s policy, did not represent his final goal. From his point of view, it was only the prerequisite for a continuation of the war against Britain and its possessions on three continents. By occupying the western and eastern entries to the Mediterranean, by establishing bases in North-West Africa and on the Arabian peninsula, as well as by having the option of attacking India, the Axis powers would have been in a position militarily to seal off continental Europe, initially from Britain (although it was hoped that Britain would soon be forced to make peace), and then from the United States. Protected from the possibility of intervention by outside powers, the Axis powers could then reorder the whole of the continent, including British possessions in North Africa and the Near East, and possibly Central Asia as well. That was the vision that Hitler was pursuing in 1941.
Had Hitler actually defeated the Soviet Union in 1941, these goals might well have been feasible. What was megalomaniacal was not so much the idea of establishing Wehrmacht bases as far away as Senegal, the Azores, Iraq, or Afghanistan, but rather the notion that the Soviet Union could be defeated in a matter of a few months.
During the final weeks before Barbarossa, Hitler evidently sought to secure the loyalty of his allies, although he was very reticent about informing them of his plans for the war. On 2 June, he once again met Mussolini at the Brenner. To Mussolini’s annoyance,124 the meeting, which was also attended by Ribbentrop, was arranged by Hitler at extremely short notice. The ‘Führer’ expatiated on every conceivable military and political aspect of the war, but, on the subject of his intentions vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, according to the interpreter, Schmidt, he did not ‘utter a single syllable’; on the contrary, the aim of the meeting was, not least, to divert attention from his war plans.125 He also appears to have left the Croatian head of state, Pavelic´, whom he met at the Berghof on 6 June, in the dark about the impending war.126 At this point Croatia’s entry into the Tripartite Pact had already been agreed and was completed in Venice on 15 June.127
On 7 June, Hitler received King Boris of Bulgaria at the Berghof in the presence of Ribbentrop,128 and, on 12 June at the Führer building in Munich he met the Romanian head of state, General Antonescu, whom he informed of his plan to attack the Soviet Union, although without revealing the details.129 He justified it on the grounds that, by maintaining large troop concentrations on their common border, Stalin was pinning down large Wehrmacht units, preventing them from being used to win the war. While he considered a direct attack by the Soviet Union on Germany unlikely, he would be obliged to intervene in the much more probable event of a Soviet attack on Finland or Romania. The treaty the Soviet Union had made with Yugoslavia in April underlined the Soviet leadership’s anti-German attitude. He could no longer tolerate the risk of an attack, and so had determined to engage in military action. Tempted by Hitler’s offer of the prospect of territorial ‘compensation’, Antonescu declared that, in the event of a military conflict, Romania would be willing to fight alongside Germany from the very first day. A few days later, on 18 June, Hitler informed Antonescu that the behaviour of the Soviet Union, ‘above all its preparations to attack, which are being stepped up daily, will compel me shortly to commit the German Wehrmacht in order to remove this threat to Europe once and for all’.130
On 14 June, eight days before the planned attack, he held a final military briefing.131 On the following day, he summoned his Propaganda Minister to the Reich Chancellery in order to spell out to him in detail his reasons for the war with the Soviet Union, which he reckoned would last for four months. According to Hitler, Moscow wanted ‘to keep out of the war until Europe was exhausted and had bled to death. Then Stalin would act, bolshevize Europe, and come into his own.’ But, looked at from a global perspective, it was also necessary to expand the war: ‘Tokyo would never get involved in a war with the United States so long as Russia is still a presence in its rear. So this is another reason why Russia must be eliminated.’ Russia ‘would attack us if we became weak, and then we would be faced with a two-front war, which we shall avoid with this preventive action. It’s only then that our rear will be secure.’
Thus, Hitler described the attack on the Soviet Union as a ‘preventive action’, not because he felt threatened by an immediate attack from this quarter, but because he was afraid that, at a later date, Stalin could exploit Germany’s potential weakness after a lengthy war in the West. This threat had to be prevented. Finally, the Soviet Union had to be attacked, in order, as Hitler put it, ‘to free up people’. So long as the Soviet Union existed, Germany would be compelled to maintain 150 divisions, whose personnel ‘are urgently needed for our war economy’, in order to carry out the ‘armaments, U-boat, and aircraft programmes, so that the United States can no longer threaten us’. Hitler was reiterating that in his view the successful continuation of the war against Britain and its empire depended on the defeat of the Soviet Union, as, with the European continent dominated by Germany and sealed off from intervention by the United States, Britain would be deprived of any hope of successfully defending itself. ‘If Russia were defeated, then we could demobilize whole cohorts and build, rearm, and prepare. Only then can we begin a major Luftwaffe offensive against England. An invasion is, in any case, barely feasible. And that means we need to find other means of achieving victory.’ Finally, Hitler reached the core of his argument: it did not matter ‘whether we are in the right or in the wrong, we have to win. . . . We’ve in any case got so much to answer for, that we really must win, otherwise our whole nation, and we at the head of it, would be wiped out, with all that we hold dear.’132