A chapter of this book must be devoted to the man behind Germany’s downfall, namely Hitler. Who was he, this man who determined the fate of my father, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and the entire German people? The spectrum may perhaps be further enlarged and the question asked whether his appearance on the stage of world history also initiated a turn in the fate of the Soviet version of Marxism, which therewith lost its real political power base.
One would need to ask about the indications, that must have already been discernible in his youth, of the role that this man would play one day in world politics. It ought to be possible to depict the extraordinary development in his life, which should have been recognized as the preparatory phase for his later ascent. In the exceptional circumstances prevalent in the First World War, the calibre of the man should also have been apparent.
There is nothing to be ascertained that could until the end of the First World War have allowed any insight into the role Hitler was later to play. He was without doubt an exceptionally brave soldier and dispatch runner, and in early 1917, as a simple private, was decorated – which was a very rare occurrence – with the Iron Cross First Class. His regiment was fighting exclusively in the heavy defensive battles of the Western Front, where losses were very high. Nevertheless, to his superiors Hitler did not seem suited to be the leader of a group of even ten men, the position in general held by an NCO, but due to a lack of NCOs, privates were often entrusted with the leadership of a group. The great Führer, the leader who according to Goebbels’ propaganda was the ‘Greatest Military Commander of all Time’, with a following of millions, was not, despite an elevated distinction for a lowly soldier, deemed suitable to lead a group of ten men on the battlefield.
Every officer at the front knows – the same was valid for the Second World War – how frequently, due to heavy losses, a company commander was forced to appoint any man, even the youngest who seemed only partially qualified, to the position of leader, because nobody better suited was at hand any more. In my company I had tank commanders who were barely 18 and who – what’s more at great risk – handled their tanks like seasoned warriors.
The course of Hitler’s life until the outbreak of war – he was 25 in 1914 – is, except for his solitary nature, characterized by nothing that would have corresponded to his future role as Führer of the Reich. In his writing, he says that he was a great reader during that time, but what actor of the historical scene has been impelled by reading books to penetrate the mechanism of world history?
It must be made clear what a phenomenon Hitler presents. A man who despite earning high distinction in the heaviest of fighting is rejected as leader of a group – the smallest unit of an infantry formation – five years later initiates a putsch against the Reich’s government and, as a former private, alongside the celebrated General Ludendorff marches towards the Feldherrnhalle. Less than ten years later he is Chancellor of Germany, and in a very short space of time assumes the role of absolute ruler.
There exists a class photo from Hitler’s schooldays in Linz. He stands in the middle of five pupils in the top row, arms crossed over his chest. When one knows something of his subsequent life, a foretaste of the aspiration to power to come may be detected in the pose he struck. However, until the end of the First World War there is nothing externally apparent in this sense.
It could, in the case of a man whose great bravery cannot be denied, whatever aversion to his persona there may be, have been a bespoke challenge for him to take the combative events into his hands to prove himself as a ‘Führer’. German military training had the specific goal of developing individual initiative as far down as NCO, indeed down to the individual fighter. This lone fighter should have the capacity to adjust to every situation that presents itself and if necessary, within the framework of the order given, to be self-sufficient in dealing with it. The notion of ‘blind obedience’ derives from Early Christian monasticism, not from the Prussian-German army!
It is certain that the most stupid soldiers were not chosen as dispatch riders. It was expected that some helpful thought would be contributed in every situation that arose; it could be that the real meaning of messages or orders transmitted on occasion had to be interpreted. These soldiers had to be able to find their way under all circumstances, even when subjected to heavy gunfire. They therefore had to be especially well-tested soldiers. Often, however, they were soon made group leaders, by reason of the abilities demonstrated, so Hitler’s persistence in the role of lone fighter is puzzling. It is in situations of existential extreme danger that the charisma of someone born to be a leader is manifested. It was a charisma that Hitler had, as a speaker in the political arena, to the highest degree, and that he consciously utilized; it was this gift of rhetoric that was the basis for his political existence. It can obviously not have been out of fear that he did not earlier stand out as a leader of men.
What sort of personality transformation took place in Hitler following his release from military hospital at the end of the war following injury from a gas attack? This ‘ordinary soldier’ attaches himself to a handful of men from a small Munich suburb who want to change the conditions reigning in the Reich. In a very short space of time he places himself at the head of this so-called ‘Party’; in 1921 he was already its leader with full dictatorial powers. With the tenacity of a terrier, henceforth this man took on at the same time both organized international Marxism and the victorious powers of Versailles, armed with nothing but a visionary conviction that he was ‘right’ and a speedily evolving gift for public speaking. With the self-confidence and pertinacity of a prophet, Hitler hammered into his ever-growing droves of audiences the premises which were supposed to ‘rescue’ Germany. His speeches should not be dismissed as the clamouring of a demagogue. They may not be in today’s style, but in those days millions of people in Germany were carried away by them, as they seemed to proffer a way out of the Reich’s desperate situation in the face of clueless democratic parties and the overlordship of the victorious states. They brought Hitler to the leadership of the most powerful party within a few years. The rapidly deteriorating political and economic conditions provided him with a sounding board for his speeches.
An experience repeatedly recurring in life is that what is said is often not as important as how it is said. This is valid to a quite extraordinary degree for Hitler’s speeches. Their achievement can only be understood when taking into account the political situation in Germany at this point of time. Words were at Hitler’s disposal and, as he writes himself, he quickly mastered the emotionalism needed for public speaking. The personal traits that were most in evidence were his decisiveness and ability to communicate to his audiences. The passion of the tenor of his speech, that could on occasion – seen from today – border upon hysteria, was no mere acting. Those listening to him sensed it. What Hitler said was sincerely meant – at particular moments at any rate. Passion of such intensity is the attribute only of a person who has the inner certainty of the visionary, and is consequently so convincingly effective on his audience. We are today no longer accustomed to hearing speakers with that sort of charisma and power to convince.
Hitler must only at that point have discovered his exceptional talent as a public speaker. There is no doubt that it contributed decisively in his journey to power; his talent as an orator appears as a derivative of a visionary personality. Hitler was a rhetorician: this fact must be acknowledged. His gift had lifted him out of the shadow of a humble existence into the glitter of public life and politics. There is no doubt that he owed to it the first taste of success in his life. He sensed how his speeches gave him power over people; they followed along with him and in return provided him with the confidence in his public appearances that success bestows. In the 1920s he is said to have still called himself ‘the Drummer’. In Hitler’s sense, a speech signified the wish to convince, to induce the audience to accept the speaker’s point of view and react to it accordingly. That was his strategy for success.
The SA (Sturmabteilung) was the instrument appropriate to the times, in order – if necessary – to stand up in the face of Communist street terrorism. The best rhetoric is useless if the orator is chased off by Communist thugs. The SA was to make the platform secure for his voice to be heard. That was its primary task. After 30 June 1934 (known as ‘The Night of the Long Knives’, when the SA was forcibly disbanded), Hitler no longer assigned any motivating activity to this major organization of men ready to do their bit, who during the fighting days had fought the streets clear of the Communists for him. This was a lapse on the part of the state and party leader.
When Hitler came to politics he was a nobody and knew nothing – in the middle-class professional sense. He had nothing to lose, only to gain. He could therefore risk all, and so he did. He ran great risks time and again throughout his political career. To begin with he had to take risks, and was successful until he finally placed everything at stake by attacking the Soviet Union and foundered.
The fascination Hitler exerted on the masses and his intuition in regard to what the electorate’s concerns were, combined with a marked instinct for power, enabled him to traverse unscathed through all the leadership crises and intra-party attempted coups of the fighting days. He was nevertheless completely aware of the perilous position in which he constantly found himself. He was the leader of the party with dictatorial power, which was, however, not the outcome of an internal party consensus reached through a democratic process. Notwithstanding, dictators can be overthrown by a ‘Fronde’ (rebellion or uprising). To avert this was a decisive if often overlooked precept of his domestic – and above all his personal – policies, from the outset of the party’s fighting days up until his end in the rubble of Berlin.
On his course to power, he constantly had to renew his established position as Führer of the party. He owed it to his personality, his charisma, gift of oratory and tactical skill. To bind to himself figures such as Röhm and Strasser and have them under his control presumed a pronounced sense of power. Röhm had organized the SA for him, Strasser had constructed the Party’s organization. Both knew that Hitler was the ‘crowd puller’; it is possible, however, that both were also prepared to go their own way.
There is a personal observation I made during those days, of how strongly conscious he was of the interaction between his persona and his audience of the masses, how he registered their reactions and maybe felt confirmed by them. I heard a radio broadcast by Hitler – as far as I remember it was from Stuttgart. In this speech, to the sound of spontaneous and impressively loud approval from the audience, Hitler reinforced his renunciation of Alsace-Lorraine. Knowing Father’s efforts, which I have mentioned, I did not only take in this part of the speech with satisfaction but also noted the astonishingly vigorous agreement of the audience; it was, mind you, an organized mass event. Shortly after, Father – who had attended the event – told me that after the speech Hitler had said to him: ‘Did you notice how they [the audience] were with me?’ It is certain that it was this intercourse with the masses and consideration of their wishes and hopes that upon the outbreak of the war restrained Hitler from actually proclaiming ‘total war’,408 which for instance would have comprised women’s military service.409 In dealing with the masses he was basically a lifelong populist.
To what extent Hitler relied on his gift for public speech is proved by his intention in 1936 to go in person to the session of the League of Nations that had been convened in London following the restitution of full German sovereignty in the Rhineland. There, Germany was to ‘assume responsibility’. Hitler thought he should personally represent the German point of view. Had he carried it out it would have been a resounding failure, for, as Father ascertained, the condemnation of Germany was a foregone conclusion and it would have signified a grave loss of prestige for Hitler himself and for the Reich. As an orator, however, Hitler had confidence in the powers of conviction of his speeches, even before a body such as the League of Nations. At this point it should be noted again that it was Hitler’s intention – after he had come to power – to meet both the British (Baldwin) as well as the French (Daladier) heads of government. He hoped to be able to exercise his powers of persuasion in the sense of an arrangement with the West. Father also had difficulty in dissuading Hitler from initiating a ‘battle of words’ with Roosevelt in the spring of 1941.410 In his diary for 28 May 1941, Hewel notes:
‘Roosevelt speech. Weak, but dangerous propaganda-wise. The man must be restrained from always proceeding onward unpunished. Chief [Ribbentrop] to Führer. Long discussion on this subject. Führer would really like to speak, for no other reason than because he finds it fun.411
RAM [Reich Foreign Affairs Minister] fears it might degenerate into a war of words + that the Führer’s speech may not go down well in the USA. To pull to and fro.’
It could be said this is not the behaviour of a ‘Yes-man’! Once again Hitler would have liked to transfer his recipe for success from the domestic fight to the diplomatic field, to the despair of his foreign minister, as can be read between the lines. As much as he believed in his capacity to persuade or to be convincing, and thereby be able to motivate, he also become impatient when he felt that the effect on his interlocutor he aspired to was lacking. Talks with Franco and Molotov are fateful examples.412
The Hitler of the so-called ‘fighting days’, that is up to 1933, may be called a party-political publicity expert of the first order. One need think only of the party colour, brown, which in its aesthetic ugliness cannot be overlooked as a shock colour; of the symbol, as simple as it was memorable, of the swastika and of the brilliant red of his flags which he himself had thought of. He was a very competent manipulator of propaganda, for his times of course, and under the prevailing circumstances, but with extraordinary success. Catchphrases such as ‘The Common Good comes before individual good’, Volksgemeinschaft (trans., ‘people’s community’; a form of racial soul uniting all Germans) or ‘Workers of the mind and of the fist’ were appealing and plausible. They could be adopted by anybody.
Naturally, Hitler was a demagogue. In ancient Athens the word meant ‘leader of the people’. The negative sense of the notion was given it in the nineteenth century by the ‘Reactionaries’, embodied by Metternich, thereby slandering the exponents of the middle class with liberal tendencies. Nowadays one says ‘populism’ and it means the same thing. The ‘People’s Führer’ naturally knew very well what people wanted to hear and to know, that is, ‘which side their bread is buttered on’. They needed a prospect for the future that would show how everything could get better in the end. Hitler had the necessary imagination to formulate visions. Think of his vision of the German people, as a nation of car drivers in vehicles affordable to everybody, for whom the most modern road network should be at their disposal. The statement repeatedly brought forward nowadays, that the motorways of the Reich were built for strategic reasons, is totally deceptive. Every armoured soldier knows the degree of attrition undergone by armoured vehicles of those days if they were exposed to a lengthy overland progress, and especially on concrete paved roads. Hitler should on the contrary be reproached for having devoted the Reich’s meagre resources to the ‘luxury’ of highways, etc. instead of a logical military build-up. When he came to power, Hitler proceeded to realize his vision of the car-driving German nation, which does not correspond to a lust for war. Besides, the VW-Kübelwagen made its first appearance in the army only in the course of the war with Russia. The Volkswagen industry was not conceived from the angle of armament technology – it might almost be said, inexplicably. The ‘Lance-Corporal’ Hitler had anyway expounded the vision of a future war conducted under extensive utilization of motorized troops in 1924 in his book Mein Kampf. It was not Hitler who invented the four-lane motorway, which was an idea dating back to the Weimar days, albeit it had then remained in a drawer due to lack of funds and determination, neither was it his original idea to use self-sufficiently operating pure-blooded motorized troops in a future war. He did, however, go on to institute both.413 He never lacked futuristic ideas: the difficulty always lay in realizing them.
Spontaneous actions, doubtless well prepared for and consistently carried out, were Hitler’s field. The subtle and thought-through – and planned – coordination of a modern state and government apparatus, on the other hand, was not. He often withdrew from that sort of laborious detailed work by means of monologues in a futuristically couched attitude; it was a serious handicap for the leadership of the German Reich in a foreign policy situation of extreme gravity. However, he eschewed delegating this task to a ‘chief of government’, a way that for instance Franco and de Gaulle chose to give themselves relief. He probably feared for his position of dominance since, being a completely unsystematic worker, he lacked any system capable of supplying an autonomously functioning government with methodical guidelines and regularly to oversee their implementation, so as to integrate himself into the systems necessary for it.
Expressing his visionary ideas, he could occasionally ‘talk himself into trouble’, in particular since often, even in close circles and at most significant events, no authorized minutes were kept of his utterances. Consequently, the misunderstood and frequently purposely misconstrued representations and interpretations of his statements were given every facilitation, of which the so-called Hossbach Memorandum is a particularly good example. This document occupies a key position in post-war historical writing under the inappropriate designation ‘Hoßbach-Protokoll’ and is central to the ‘evidence’ against Hitler in the sense that he had the intention of bringing things to the point of war. It is by Hitler’s military adjutant at that time, Friedrich Hossbach, dated to five days after a session of 5 November 1937 – attended by, besides Hitler and Hossbach, Göring, Blomberg, Neurath, Fritsch and Raeder. He did not compose it at the Reich Chancellery but at the War Ministry. There is no indication of when notes started to be taken, nor when they were finished. According to this, it is not a Protokoll (or official record) but a memorandum Note drawn up subsequently. It was not initialled by any of the participants in confirmation of its contents.
According to this ‘document’, Hitler is supposed to have declared to those present that the ‘Lebensraum’ necessary in the long term for obtaining the racial substance of the German people was to be achieved only by force. Following long-winded statements in the same sense, he is said to have been more concrete:
‘For the improvement of our … military position our first objective, in the event of our being embroiled in war, must be to overthrow Czechoslovakia and Austria simultaneously in order to remove the threat to our flank in any possible operation against the West.’
This is not the place to undertake a detailed analysis of the so-called Hossbach Memorandum; suffice it to ascertain that neither the original nor a copy of what Hossbach had written are extant. The American prosecution counsel at Nuremberg merely submitted the photocopy of a microfilm. The microfilm is also not to be found. On the other hand, diverse versions of the photocopy have been published, differing among themselves. None of the participants has unconditionally verified the wording of the text submitted at Nuremberg. A Colonel Count Kirchbach is said to have discovered the Hossbach memo in the winter of 1943/44 in the files of the General Staff. He had a copy made and handed it to a relative, Mr von Martin, who routed it to the British during the Nuremberg trials. Neither Kirchbach nor Martin have indisputably verified the text submitted at Nuremberg. They both describe themselves as sympathisers of the conspiracy, which is also to be gathered from the fact that they placed the memo at the disposal of the Allies.414
A further aspect should be considered, or at any rate mentioned. Hossbach was a confidant of Beck’s. It is known that Beck was opposed to Hitler’s policies, and less than half a year later, together with the state secretary in the Auswärtiges Amt, von Weizsäcker, made contact with the declared enemies of Germany, Winston Churchill and Robert Vansittart, to induce them to adopt a harsher stance toward the Reich, as already described, to prepare the ground for a military putsch. To carry out this planned putsch, the collaboration of at least a portion of those in command of the army was indispensable. Is the suspicion to be entirely dismissed that what Hossbach accentuated in his Note was in order to prejudice those in the army command against Hitler and his policy? It was after all high treason, also against the country, that the conspirators contemplated and later also put into effect. Could the Note which Hossbach drafted for Beck have perhaps been intended as an alibi and justification for such plans? Halder, Beck’s successor as Chief of the General Staff and close colleague, was ‘de-Nazified’ on the grounds that ‘Halder’s conduct in 1938 constituted consummated high treason’.
Irrespective of this, however, when studiously perused, the remarks Hitler would have made, according to Hossbach, in essence turn on the strategic problem of Czechoslovakia. Hitler probably saw Austria in the light of its German population’s great liking for him and his party as the lesser problem, insofar as it is not plausible that he will have meant that Austria would have to be ‘crushed’. Czechoslovakia, on the other hand, in view of her alliances with France and the Soviet Union (the Little Entente with Poland and Yugoslavia was also still in force), represented a grave threat to the Reich. A head of state is entitled to his due that in the narrowest circle of his military or foreign policy advisers he would express considerations of the possibilities of neutralizing such a danger or of taking a suitable opportunity to eliminate it. He would have exposed himself to weighty reproaches if he had neglected this.
Another important indication of the clearly minor significance of what was said – from Hitler’s point of view – is his reply to Hossbach’s attempt, as the latter repeatedly maintained, to persuade Hitler to take note of the Protocol (that had been handwritten from memory). Hitler refused to do so, referring to lack of time. The session will evidently have been convened, at Blomberg’s wish, to discuss and solve the problems of raw material supply to the separate units of the Wehrmacht. Lower-ranking experts waited in the antechamber. As far as can be made out, the session barely produced any factual solutions, nor in fact even in any organizational respect in the sense of establishing clear competencies, which was in any case not Hitler’s forte. Neither were deadlines for bringing about a specific state of armaments discussed.
Nevertheless, the situation of the foreign policy at the time of the session should not be left out. The Paris-Prague-Moscow military axis constituted a grave threat to the Reich. Britain’s stance, as far as could be ascertained, was not positive regarding the Reich (as Hitler’s ambassador in London, Ribbentrop, was to report a few weeks later). Poland was firmly proceeding with her policy of ethnic values, directed at de-Germanization under the protective cloak of the German-Polish pact of non-aggression, and – last but not least – the President of the United States, Roosevelt, in the so-called ‘Quarantine’ speech, had taken an unambiguous attitude toward Germany, with no current reason of foreign policy. One cannot fail to concede that the German head of government had sufficient grounds to cogitate upon the ‘thorn in the German side’, or else the ‘air force mother-ship’, as a French minister designated Czechoslovakia, based on her pact policy.
Perhaps Hitler somewhat gave his oratorical steed free rein so as to extricate himself from the burdensome task of having to reach clear decisions among rival heads of department; in this case evidently as to the distribution of raw materials necessary for the armament of individual departments. It was the sort of decision Hitler eschewed. It may be particularly valid in this case where one of his most trusted followers, that is to say Göring, was himself a lobbyist.
I have depicted in detail the grave state of difficulties as to foreign policy that Germany was in when Hitler came to power. To redress them and to consolidate the Reich’s position at the centre of Europe necessitated the collection of all resources in the broadest sense. Particularly essential was to motivate the leading groups in all sectors of public life. In the majority, these circles did not belong among Hitler’s proven following in the internal political fight for power. They therefore had to be won over and motivated. Hitler had to achieve the step up from party demagogue to statesman. He considered the National Socialist ‘Weltanschauung’ as the foundation for the motivation of all layers.
It is difficult to define what exactly is to be understood by the oft-quoted National Socialist ‘Weltanschauung’, or conception of the world. I once asked a Gauleiter (second highest Nazi Party paramilitary rank, beneath the Reichsleiter) in an English internment camp this question. In some context he was talking about the ‘idea’ (of National Socialism), and I permitted myself the question as to just what was to be understood thereby. Slightly taken aback, at first he said I should have learned something about it at the ‘Napola’. This answer revealed something of how insecure he was. I said I did have some notion of what the so-called ‘idea of National Socialism’ was about, but that he as Gauleiter was after all much more competent in the field than I, a minor former troop officer. Then, a little put out, he tossed me the twin concept of ‘blood and soil’. My rather provocative reply that this would also entail comprehension of the world view of a black African tribe put an end to the discussion. This Gauleiter was an educated man who, in the highly unpleasant conditions in which we vegetated in the tight space of an English Nissen hut, was a thoroughly agreeable companion in fellow suffering. This negligible episode does, however, manifest how fuzzy were the notions held, even by those in high places of the Party, of what the ‘National Socialist world view’ actually was. In practice, National Socialism was a system upon which Hitler founded his one-man rule. The sole real component of a ‘world view’ in National Socialism was only the wretched racial theory with its inherent anti-Semitism.
In how confused a form perceptions were presented is demonstrated in the following episodes that I had occasion to experience. At Ilfeld, in class, the subject came under discussion when our excellent history teacher, Winkelmann, was giving justifications for Charlemagne’s harsh policy in regard to the Saxons. Our class had, however, classed Charlemagne as ‘the Saxon-killer’. In the end Winkelmann cunningly confuted us when in the next history class he brought along a speech Hitler had given at the Party Rally in 1935, in which Hitler defended the German Kaisers of the Middle Ages – clearly meaning Charlemagne – maintaining that in the sense of ‘Volkwerdung’ (becoming one people), by unavoidably harsh measures they forcibly coerced the diverse Germanic tribes into their empire. We were very taken aback, not knowing, of course, that Hitler had indeed quite frequently and energetically supported this opinion against differing opinions such as Himmler’s and Rosenberg’s.415 We were in fact convinced by our teacher’s argument that history could be judged only from within the time span in which events had taken place. Barely two years later, at the Waffen-SS military academy, when again there was a discussion about ‘Charlemagne the Saxon-killer’, I ‘made myself conspicuous’, as it was called in military speech, usually meaning that it had been striking a negative attitude.
At this Waffen-SS military academy in Braunschweig there was only a weekly class of three-quarters of an hour of what was called ‘world-view lessons’, since military training took precedence over all else. This short class was given by someone we disrespectfully called our ‘Worldview Sheikh’ because of his non-military function, although he had a rank and was therefore our superior. One day he touched upon the subject of ‘Charlemagne the Saxon-killer’. He may thereby have been following along the lines of the Himmlerian view of history, but I knew – from what was said at home – that the intent of the German government – Father’s at any rate – was to initiate a reconciliation with France, whereby the figure of Charlemagne was to be perceived as an element of bonding and integration.416 I countered our worldview teacher with the arguments that Winkelmann in Ilfeld had propounded. The teacher was quickly irritated and finally forbade me to speak, which as my military superior he had the right to do, but which annoyed me in my youthful – I was 19 – ‘know-all’ attitude.
Remembering our history teacher, during my next time away from the academy I procured myself Hitler’s said speech, which was of course easily done, and presented it to the worldview teacher at his next class. This naturally made something of a fool of him to the whole auditorium. Since his classes were very boring, there was an unmistakeable aura of Schadenfreude (gloating over another’s misfortune) in the audience.
Two days later I was summoned to report, in service dress, which meant with steel helmet and ‘buckled’ (i.e. with holster) to the training group commandant, who asked me, rather curtly, why I would ‘express opposition’ in the world-view class? I recounted the episode, to which he replied: ‘Why don’t you leave the man in peace!’ I think he even also used the expression ‘Worldview Sheikh’. Our training group commandant was an excellent seasoned veteran, who couldn’t care less about the so-called ‘world-view’. I followed his advice and kept my mouth shut from then on. The ‘worldview’ teacher was dismissed soon after, but certainly not because of this event. His successor was a highly cultivated man who lectured us on German history – it must be said, without too much ideology – and knew how to make it really come alive for us.
The starting premise of the Hitlerian concept was the consistent antagonism to Marxism in whatever form it presented itself. He countered it with Nationalism – which in those days was considered the fundament of their existence by all peoples and states in the world – extended with the addition of ‘Socialism’, for which he employed the notion of Volksgemeinschaft, which had nothing in common with the dogmatic socialism of Marxist theory, for all that undoubtedly there were ‘leftist’ trends in the NSDAP, which, however, were in no way organized in any form.
It is difficult to deny the sustainability of this starting point of his political battle for power, which he promised to attain by legal means. A ‘National Socialism’ was ideal for meeting with the approval of broader strata of the people, including the working class. Without wishing to be lost in definitions here, what was meant by ‘Socialism’ in National Socialism would today be expressed as ‘social’, to distinguish it from ‘Socialism’ in Marx’s sense. The Communist electorate – they numbered more than five million at the time of the Reich presidential elections of 1932 – voted for the Communists out of economic necessity. For them too, a ‘national Socialism’ was acceptable if under its policies their condition would be improved.
Hitler conceived this concept with the gift of a visionary. He had to provide this politically substantially insecure population – insecure from the angle of national identity – with a vision. The contrast of ‘national’ and ‘socialist’ (‘social’) was resolved by him in the concept of Volksgemeinschaft, where in essence each had his or her place for the good of the community (thereby also for their own good) from which to fulfil their function. At the national level he promised the restoration of Germany’s equality of rights and her defence capacity, and at the social level the resolution of the unemployment problem and the class war. The social components were to bring about the required coherence of the German people so as to put them in a position to sustain the fight for their equality of rights and to secure Germany’s ever-threatened Central European situation. The experience of the First World War, when, according to the perception current at the time, the ‘home front’ had been shattered, here played an undoubtedly decisive role. However, here also lie the roots of the repression which made an ever stronger appearance during the Third Reich, and above all during the war. Although it was supposed to maintain the population’s cohesion, in influential circles the effect was often counter-productive. A threat in the domestic sphere was added to the extremely perilous situation of the Reich in the domain of foreign politics, which has already been described, by the militant, very active German Communist Party, which, steered from Moscow, was to be regarded in the case of an emergency as definitely the extension of that imperial power.
It should additionally be noted that the social structure of the leading circles in Germany was not homogeneous. All social, religious and ideological trends were represented. However, for all groupings – with the exception of the extreme Left – the precepts ‘anti-Bolshevism’ and ‘equality of rights’ were a conceivable motivation for the Reich.
But Hitler the ideologist overburdened this generally acceptable common denominator for a national and social consensus with an ideology which he felt he had to impose upon the German people, in order – as he saw it – to extract them from the subversive influence of the ‘Jewish-determined Bolshevism’. This ideology of his made claims for its acceptance to an increasing degree, penetrating deep into the domain of the private life of each and everybody. As has been said, his Weltanschauung was based on his racial theory. In the ‘Germanic race’ – whatever he perceived thereby – Hitler saw the ‘positive’ components, possibly with intent to give the precarious mentality of his compatriots a somewhat more solid fundament. In his view, the ‘negative’ side was embodied by the ‘Jewish race’. By equating Bolshevism and Judaism, Hitler bridged his realistic and reasoned objective, which is to say to combat Marxism-Leninism, with his Utopian racial theory. He saw in Marxism, Jewry and Internationalization a menace to the pure-blooded and spiritual-mental substance of the German people, which he wanted to immunize against such influences. Father wrote that all his arguments, however cogent, that he propounded against Hitler’s conviction that there was a world-wide Jewish Eastern-Western conspiracy against the Reich were unable to rid Hitler of this perception. It is rare if not impossible to disabuse visionaries from their visions.
He saw every deviation from the lines of his ‘worldview’ as deriving from this fortress mentality which had understandably arisen following the First World War, under the dictates imposed by Versailles and the impression of an indefectible fencing-in of the Reich once disarmed. Hitler considered it an internal threat which was therefore also an external hazard. In his opinion, in the First World War it had eventually led to a diminishing readiness to fight and resulted in defeat. A fortress mentality always springs from a situation of crisis, consequently a position of weakness. That there was such a state of emergency may absolutely be conceded to Hitler and his government at the time of his taking power, when he had the Communist cadres ruthlessly smashed and their officials incarcerated. The Communists were the extended arm of an imperialist and aggressive power whom it was Hitler’s objective to fend off.
Few objections were raised throughout the country to the swift elimination of Communist organizations. The Weimar Republic had not succeeded in doing it; in the end, moreover, barely a tear was even shed over their party strife. After his accession to power there is no doubt that Hitler overstepped his constitutional prerogatives. Nevertheless, the Reichstag had voted for the Enabling Act in the majority, including the voices of Brüning, Theodor Heuss et al. A statesman would have utilized these emergency rights arising from a crisis situation with greater circumspection. The branding of Communism as the enemy could have served him as a base for attracting the diverse groupings of the common weal as a following and for uniting them. As has been said, all the social groups in Germany were prone to be won over to the cause against Bolshevism and pro the German claims for equal status – that is to say they were prepared to defend themselves against Soviet Bolshevism, with in the forefront those circles upon which Hitler had to base himself if his foreign policy were to accomplish German equal status. Even if these leading circles in the domains of the armed forces, administration, the economy and of science, not to mention the churches, did not adhere to Hitler’s following from the start, they regarded him – at least at first – as a preferable alternative to Communism. Hitler must have been aware that he depended upon these leading circles of the Reich. A loyal following from the establishment elite was an indispensable necessity. In view of the pressure of the lack of time under which Hitler stood, resulting from the compulsions of foreign policy which he had not triggered, a ‘substitution’ of the leading groups could not be thought of.
No statesman can bring his political concepts to fruition without a following of the leading groups that – to his mind – occupy the key positions. This is especially valid in critical situations. It is tempting to remember the Great Elector Frederick William and his successors, who gave a solid structure to the framework of their state with a clear conception. They may have established the throne’s authority like a ‘rocher de bronze’ (brazen rock), but at the same time they charged the nobility, at that time the class constituting the bearing infrastructure of the state, with carrying out their duties – and thus binding them to their following – by filling official and military posts exclusively with representatives from that class. Their financial base was secured. In return they had to serve the monarch faithfully and, if it came to it, be prepared to die for him. To be of service to their country was the prerogative as well as the obligation of the members of their caste. This bound them to the monarch, as did a similar way of life and the same view of life. They felt themselves obligated – as did their ruler – to the supreme overriding principle of the State, i.e. the common good. They identified with the state in the person of the monarch.
This was in no way self-evident. Earlier, in the Middle Ages, the lesser nobility was in general in antagonism to the superior in the form of the Landesfürsten (local princes). When the first of the Hohenzollern, the Burgrave of Nuremberg, was enfeoffed with the Margraviate of Brandenburg, when he headed north he took two culverins with him, huge cannon from which correspondingly large cannonballs were fired, capable of demolishing thick walls. The nobility of Brandenburg had not exactly been idle, waiting for their new prince. To begin with, he shot to pieces the castle of the lords von Quitzow in Friesack so as to earn himself respect. As a youth I have been in the Ratskeller (council’s cellar) of Königsberg in East Prussia, called ‘Das Blutgericht’ (blood court of justice) because it was the site where the Great Elector had five rebels hanged who stemmed from the East Prussian nobility, led by a Herr von Kalckstein. A descendant of his sat the Abitur exam at the same time as I in 1939. Of the Kalckstein who was hanged it is said that he sported a particularly aquiline nose; his descendant was interestingly enough blessed with a similar distinctive nose. He was as good a comrade as he was a rider. Sadly, he too was killed. My intention in mentioning these relations between leading groups and their sovereign is to pinpoint their significance. Hitler’s absolute powers corresponded, indeed surpassed, those of an absolute monarch in many ways, but that is precisely why he was dependent on a loyal leadership team.
But Hitler was not a statesman to follow in this tradition of the Prussian rulers, to have won the leading classes of the Reich over to share with him the commitment to the goals of foreign policy he had set, so as to join him on the fraught course he had to pursue. This was not – nota bene – to wring world domination, but instead a partially secure existence of the Reich in the centre of Europe. For this, the best prerequisites basically existed. The extraordinary crisis in which the Reich found itself when Hitler took over, namely the anxiety of being submerged by the Bolshevik flood, had prepared broadly based strata of society for a new beginning. This was worth setting one’s sights on.
A ‘Führer-Statesman’ would have had to acknowledge this as a task. A condition to fulfil it was to be able to gather together all forces on the goal he had targeted. But this Führer was a visionary who had constructed for himself a world image of anti-Marxism in which he believed that only through modification of the population’s Weltanschauung was the fight against ‘Bolshevik-Judaic’ internationalism to be waged. With a visionary’s impatience he tried to indoctrinate the German people into his way of thought, whereby he placed himself in manifold opposition to the established groups of society, whom he needed and who were perfectly ready to align themselves with his objectives in foreign policy. Because of this impatience, and caught in the above-mentioned fortress mentality, the imposition of his worldviews was helped with the pressure exerted by means of the secret police. This is what eventually led to an uncertainty as to legal rights which, in the form it took, is in the long run untenable in a cultivated State. The danger of being arrested without the possibility of recourse to one’s legal rights so as to be able to defend oneself brings about such an uncertainty as to legal rights which in the end leads to subversive activities.
Ultimately, the worst factor was the potential unpredictability of the dictator. Hitler’s word was law, and he expressly laid claim to the position. Whoever names himself ‘Supreme Court Lord of the German People’, and in his name alone enforces a series of executions without due process, can at any time make claim to such a right. To many adherents of just those leading circles of the Reich on which he was dependent, Hitler did not transmit the feeling of security always sought regarding their circumstances and conditions of life. An uncontrolled sole ruler is from the outset no guarantor of such security, unless he submits himself to binding rules of the game that can only be postulated on the basis of a state of law.
An occurrence showing a typical example of the dictator’s despotism was the totally incomprehensible dismissal of all members of the former princely houses of Germany from the Wehrmacht in 1941. True, the measure struck at a relatively small number of people. It was, however, they who in the sense of family tradition were prepared to commit entirely to Germany. The question then arose, what group of persons would be next in turn to submit to the dictator’s despotism? Actions against Jews were along the same lines. Nobody guaranteed this or the other grouping that after the victorious outcome of war they would not become undesirable because of some whim of the Führer’s, and submit to serious disadvantages.
In view of its intrinsic components as elements of a scale of values, the ‘race theory’ was not plausible and appeared as dogmatic arbitrariness. It was perfectly acknowledged that there were different races, and practising a racial policy was considered Utopian. Even in the bosom of the Waffen-SS there circulated the flippant remark about the strongly propagandized ‘Northern race’, according to which its main characteristics were the three great ‘Bs’: ‘blond, blue-eyed and bird-brained’! Both the super-powers of the United States and Russia could promote ideologies effectively attracting recruits the world over, but the National Socialist racial theory repulsed all non-Nordic races. Moreover, whoever takes race and its preservation as a motto for their declared political objectives should actually take the Jewish people as the model, as is repeatedly indicated in the Old Testament. The phenomenal sense of cohesion of these people is historically unique, but also constitutes the problem. The Judaic religious tradition, despite constant persecution, spanning more than 3,000 years is the oldest in the world still ‘living’.
As at the outset of the 1930s the State found itself in a situation of crisis in regard to the aggressive Communists, steered from Moscow, the German public comprehended the rigorous crackdown on the Communist Party and its operatives. Nevertheless, the events of 30 June 1934 (the aforementioned crackdown on the SA) which led to a series of executions with no due legal process were not conducive to affirming the confidence in Hitler’s rule by the very circles he needed for his battle in the cause of German equality status. Looking back, Hitler’s actions at this time looked ominous and, what is more, like unnecessary brutality. If Röhm or Schleicher had truly conspired with a foreign power, a trial in court would have been a great deal more convincing. They could besides at any time have been isolated by house arrest or incarceration. Churchill had the British Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley and his wife imprisoned for years, with no legal justification. The British system of government was in no way shattered by this illegal measure. The rescinding of constitutional personal rights is a risky undertaking because it suppresses the dissatisfaction and opposition obviously extant in every system of government under the surface, thus rendering it even more dangerous. This is especially valid when it affects strata of the community or the elite who hold responsible posts in the state’s structure.
It should not be thought these are mere theoretical considerations. On two crucial points German foreign policy was secretly thwarted from within, with dire consequences. Had it not been for the activities of the State Secretary in the Auswärtiges Amt, von Weizsäcker, the Chief of the army’s General Staff (Beck) and the Chief of Counterintelligence (Canaris) and their aides, who promised the British and Polish governments a military coup against Hitler if it came to war, an agreement with Poland would probably have been reached, based on the extraordinarily moderate German proposals.
At a later date, as has already been told, it was once again Weizsäcker and Canaris who deprived Hitler of the chance to turn with full force against England in the Mediterranean by dissuading Franco, behind the back of the Reich government, from placing himself on the side of Germany to take Gibraltar, whereby the British position in the Mediterranean would have been overturned, which would probably have led to Britain giving way and averted the fateful war with Russia. It is manifestly evident from the existing documents that it was only when it became unequivocally clear to Hitler that he could not count on Franco, thereby no longer keeping open the option of a decisive strike against Britain in the Mediterranean, that the definitive decision was taken to attack Russia pre-emptively. Both these acts by top officials of the Reich thwarted Hitler’s policies at critical instants and brought about the fateful developments, leading to losing the war to a catastrophic degree. They are the interventions which had the gravest repercussions of the so-called resistance against Hitler.
In those days there is no doubt that the Protestant and Catholic Churches counted among the weightiest institutions in Germany. One would think that it was not too hard to acquire them as a federated partner against atheist Bolshevism. The quarrels with the Churches were, however, not conducive to gaining friends in the world for the Reich regime. At the same time both Churches certainly did not want to end up under Bolshevik overlordship. On the other hand, they also did not know what to expect from Hitler, were the dictator to remain uncontested in his absolutism.
The relations between the Churches and the regime were thus often tense. The ideologist inherent in Hitler made totalitarian demands over the souls of the population under his leadership. In this way he plunged portions of the German people – once more those of the leading classes, albeit not only them – into conflicts of conscience. As a young company commander – I was 22 at that date – I had a notable experience. In 1943 we instituted the ‘Hitler Jugend’ Panzer Division. The crews were recruited from members of the Hitler Jugend already conscriptable who had come forward as volunteers. These men were given into the particular care of us young officers by Sepp Dietrich (who by this time was the commanding general of the ‘Leibstandarte’ (Bodyguard) Panzer Corps). In all aspects of training we had to play the part of educator and leader of young people, indeed to a certain degree assume the role of father.
One day, one of my officers pointed out to me a young soldier who did not seem to be taking part in the activities with the same cheerful willingness as his comrades. He originated from Upper Silesia and had a Polish name. I had a feeling about what was going on when the young man, who gave an impression of despondency, reported to me. He soon became confident, so that when I asked what was bothering him he confessed quite openly that it was that he could not go to Mass. From the conversation that ensued it emerged that although he had joined the Waffen-SS quite voluntarily, as had the entire class, and he did not wish to be the only one to stand back, that was in fact what he would have liked to do because he had always been told that the SS were inimical to the Church. His father had been killed. His mother had seen him off with the warning: ‘Preserve your faith!’ It was no trouble to obtain permission from my regimental commander to send the young soldier on a motorbike to the nearest church on Sundays. It may be noted it was a French church, for at the time we were at an army training camp in France. The commander was of the same opinion as I that the youth, who was about to undergo heavy spiritual trials in what was coming in the field, should be able to exercise his faith.
Is this example not representative of the dilemma of conscience of numerous Germans? On the one hand there was the Fatherland, that found itself in a life and death battle to survive, and on the other a regime that plunged many people into conflicts of conscience because of their faith. One of our parents’ best friends was Count Schönburg, ‘Ernstl’ as he was known. He was often and very welcome at our home as a student in the 1920s. We children were very fond of him. He was really almost one of the family. I remember well that in 1932, during the two rounds of election of the Reich’s president, he foretold that sooner or later there would be a major duel to the death between the Communists and National Socialists. He believed the National Socialists would win, because the Saxon workers – he was from Saxony – were shrewd, and in the majority in favour of Hitler; and they were generally in the know of the direction things were taking. At my age of 11 I was very impressed by his expectation of an intensification of the domestic situation in Germany.
It must have been in 1935/36 when Father asked ‘Ernstl’ Schönburg – who was a Catholic – to make contact with Catholic circles in England so as to strive for a German-English rapprochement through them. I remember all too well my father’s dismay as he related to Mother that ‘Ernstl’ could not see his way to a cooperation, in view of the tense relationship of the regime with the Catholic Church. Father’s opinion – his sole reason for supporting Hitler – was that foreign policy had absolute precedence, even over incompatibilities in domestic policy, for in the end the very existence of the common weal depended on it. Irrespective of this, however, Schönburg became a reserve officer, and on the first day of the Polish campaign he was killed, falling for his country of whose regime he did not approve. Father was extraordinarily strongly affected by his death. Schönburg’s fate is indicative of the horns of the dilemma which many Germans faced: on the one side the latent peril threatening the Reich in its Central European situation, and on the other a regime against which, for the most diverse reasons, there were great reservations. Ten first cousins of my wife were killed. They were all practising Evangelical Christians and rejected Hitler’s regime.
Father proposed to Hitler to enable the Catholic Church to have access to occupied Russia. I can recall Mother’s depiction exactly, because it was then the relations of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches first became clear to me, when she said: ‘That was the centuries-old dream of the Catholic Church.’ It need not be said that Father’s urging had no results, although Hitler did at least direct that the churches closed under Stalin in the Ukraine should be reopened.
A further group – the word ‘caste’ could well be employed here – that was by nature of particular significance for Hitler and his policy was represented by the army leadership as a body. The loyalty of the armed forces is always of especial importance for a dictatorship, as they have the technical potential to overthrow a dictator. It fell to the generals to execute rearmament as speedily as possible so as to keep the risk phase as short as possible. The group was descended from the former imperial army. They were in a real sense conservative circles. They had succeeded in maintaining the soldiering tradition of the German army beyond the collapse of 1918 and through the confusions of the Weimar Republic. It is a particular tradition in soldiery that if called for one gave one’s life for the fatherland, which has to remain the mental basis of an army if it is to fulfil its mission to protect the country from exterior aggression.
The officers of the former imperial German army in the ‘Reichswehr’, as it was called during the Weimar era, had formed an army of cadres which laid the foundations without which the later swift rearmament that was affected under Hitler would not have been possible. The time factor played a truly decisive role in by whom and in what form rearmament should be achieved. Overriding Röhm’s concept of building up a militia force to incorporate the SA, Hitler made the logically correct decision to opt for the Conservative body of generals and their officer corps which they had stamped with their special characteristics. It was only thus that a build-up of the army could be realized in a relatively brief time span and the ‘risk phase’ be kept short-lived. Hitler had to weigh the pros and cons of such a decision and bear the consequences thereof. There was, however, a reverse side to the coin of military virtues that the ‘imperial’ officers had preserved. ‘Ancients’ who were no longer suitable for a modern army given its special character by the Volksgemeinschaft would be defended and kept in place at least partially with arrogance and high-handedness.
It was indubitable that a basic feature of the German army was an attitude of reserve in regard to innovations, most evident when they were of a technical nature. Schlieffen, the General Staff chief, had wrestled about this with the War Ministry before the First World War in order to turn the heavy artillery into a field troop. Grandfather used to tell the story of the imperial general who had come out against the introduction of the machine gun because the unified image of the columns on the march could thereby be spoilt. Not unreasonably, after the reintroduction of general conscription in 1935, the formal uniform of the soldiers was mocked as the ‘Kaiser-Wilhelm-Memorial Frock’. From my personal experience the camouflage jacket and steel helmet cover, with which every Waffen-SS soldier was equipped, had advantages for the soldier in the field that could be seen at a glance. Many German troops fell victim to the wearing of the – admittedly grey – steel helmet, which gleamed in the sun’s rays. The camouflage jacket also provided some protection from rain and humidity. They were not introduced to the army, even during the war. Nowadays they are a sine qua non for the German Bundeswehr (Federal Defence), as well as for armies all around the world.
Returning to Hitler’s relationship with the army high command, the ‘risk phase’ inherent in every rearmament in view of strongly armed neighbours has been exhaustively depicted. In 1938 this dangerous gap had not yet been bridged. It may be said that even the Polish war was not entered into with the proper armament. The doubts of the army command to dare to risk a war at this time are to a certain degree understandable from the military-professional point of view. However, from the angle of foreign policy it was the time factor that played the decisive role. Hitler had no choice but to render the position of the Reich in Central Europe as strong as possible as quickly as possible before potential opponents had progressed so far in their political and military preparations that they could counter the Reich, since his concept of close cooperation with both the Western powers had come to nothing. At the same time, the necessary psychological – in other words propaganda – preparations that figured prominently in the democracies should not be forgotten. The awareness of the British as to the possibility of a war with Germany had, as I have described above, progressed considerably from 1937 to 1938. Much more serious was the corresponding influence exerted on public opinion in the United States by Roosevelt, conducted intensively and systematically.
I state definitely, from what I knew at the time, that Hitler did not want a military confrontation or war over the Sudetenland issue, for what would he have gained from it? This is why he had bluffed and made a show of strength. To the outside he had played the game skilfully, with, I may add, the help of his Foreign Minister who rescued the Godesberg Conference for him (for which Hitler had emotionally thanked him). The question may, however, be asked whether Hitler had exerted the necessary effort to convince the army leadership so as to ensure their identifying with his decisions as to foreign policy.
It must not be forgotten that in 1938 the German military chiefs had experienced defeat during the First World War. The Reich had entered the First World War with the world’s best army – and had lost. Now a figure unfamiliar to them and to their thought process may have been contemplating a similar confrontation with an instrument – the Wehrmacht – that had not yet reached the standard, either materially nor of training, that according to their strict criteria the generals considered essential to be in a position to carry through such a policy. The defeat of 1918 still stuck in the craw of the old imperial officers. With a certain justification they attributed the fault for losing the war to the foreign policy of the Imperial Reich. The German military was deliberately ignoring the crucial failure of its leadership in the Battle of the Marne in 1914. That loss had already heralded the loss of the war. At this point, time was running out for the ‘Central Powers’. In such a situation, to conceive and conduct the Battle of Verdun as ‘attrition strategy’ may be designated a second seriously mistaken decision of the German military leaders in the First World War. I am not about to recapitulate their military problems in 1914-18, but merely demonstrate to what extent the attitude of the generals toward Hitler’s foreign policy was influenced by their experience of the First World War. It is a well-known adage of history that most generals always prepare for the last war,417 and that in any case it is never the fault of the military if a war is lost.
I have already mentioned that in 1925 Hitler had written in Mein Kampf that in modern warfare motorization would be of the greatest significance.418 In the course of the rearmament, he carried out the creation of operationally deployable tank units. Amongst the officers of the Reichswehr he found forward-thinking supporters of the theory for surmounting the gruelling attrition-warfare of the First World War by utilizing major motorized units. He will no doubt have met with resistance on the part of Fritsch and Beck,419 as well as from some of the generals; it was certainly discussed at our home in those days. The operational deployment of independent motorized and armoured units not dependent on infantry did come under discussion by experts, but they counted rather as outsiders and no armed power had until then been able to make up their mind about such units being employed.
As far as the European states were concerned, Hitler’s motivation by anti-Bolshevism could have constituted an inducement to a broad-based support of the Reich’s policies, had they guaranteed the security of a self-determined existence following a defensive action against the Bolshevik peril. A generous European Charter in this sense was no longer to be wrung from Hitler, although it became apparent during the war with Russia that all available European forces would have been necessary to resist the Soviet power underpinned by the Anglo-Saxons.
Hewel wrote on 13 October 1941: ‘RAM (Reich Foreign Minister) to the F [Führer]. First thoughts about a European manifestation.’
There is a note of my father’s, saying:420
‘Berlin, 21 March 1943
‘Subject: European Confederation
‘I am of the opinion that, as already proposed to the Führer in my previous minutes, we should at the earliest possible date, as soon as we have scored a significant military success, proclaim the European Confederation in quite a specific form …
‘The states immediately concerned would be Germany, Italy, France, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, Greece and Spain(?). If the Führer should intend to create independent states in the parts of Europe occupied by us, these would be added to the list …
‘The establishment of a European Confederation would have the following political advantages:
1)It would dispel the fear of our friends and allies that they might all be placed under German Gauleiters as soon as peace is concluded.
2)Neutrals would be reassured that they would not be incorporated into Germany at the end of the war.
3)Italy would be relieved of their fear that powerful Germany wish to drive her into a corner.
4)If the Führer decides to set up a number of more or less independent states in certain occupied territories, which of course would remain completely in our power, it would come as a considerable reassurance to those territories and induce them to muster their forces to help us in the war.
[Points 5–7 relate to the effects of propaganda in Britain, the United States and Russia.]
8)In France and the occupied territories in general it would make all the difference to these countries’ war effort in the personal and material spheres.’
At the time Father wrote this Note, Kharkov had been retaken in the counteroffensive against the advancing Russians. A military success was at hand. But a ‘European Commonwealth of Nations’, according to Father’s concept, was nevertheless not acceptable to Hitler. On the contrary, a year later Hitler reacted in exactly the opposite way, when for the French north-western départements and Belgium he let a civilian administration take the place of the previous military administration, which inevitably sparked major fears. It is said Laval addressed Hitler in these terms:421
‘You want to win the war so as to establish Europe, but you should establish Europe so as to win the war!’
For 24 November 1941, Hewel’s diary contains the entry: ‘Führer not pleased with RAM’s speech.’ This was the speech to the European heads of state on the occasion of the extension of the Anti-Comintern Pact. My father, as Foreign Minister, could do nothing further. He had alas been proven right in his fears of an assault on the Soviet Union.
When already within the Reich the constitutional rights had been restricted or even abrogated, it could hardly be expected of the European peoples that they would entrust their fate into the hands of the Reich and its Führer. The deportations of Jews from the occupied countries drastically presented for the European populations a picture of the danger of a later arbitrary rule by Berlin. However, it has to be stated here that the activities engaged in by high-placed officials and officers and their accomplices are indefensible. They could – possibly risking their lives – have eliminated Hitler. Not that the activities of the conspiracy in any way absolve Hitler. To employ modern terms once again, a ‘manager’ must thoroughly know the instrument with which he conducts his policy or his business – above all in its personnel components. This leads me to point out a further weak spot in Hitler’s regime of serious, not to say fatal, consequences: Hitler had absolutely no governmental, or in contemporary terms management system other perhaps than – if it may be called a ‘system’ – the Ancient Roman principle divide et impera (divide and rule), on which basis any potential endangerment of his personal position of power was a priori excluded.
All the powerful figures in history have had to preoccupy themselves intensively with the problems: how to govern the construct over which I rule, and by what system can I keep the decisive instruments of authority in my hands and receive the necessary information, correct and at the right time? The exceptional problems of administration of the far-flung empire of Charlemagne under the circumstances of communication of the day may be held up as an example, along with the administrative problems of the Roman Empire. Caesar, Augustus and Diocletian, to mention but a few, were in their time highly efficient organizers and administration experts who, in the technical circumstances of the day, had the huge empire firmly in their grip. In the case of Augustus in particular, it is noteworthy to see with what clever caution and skill he got the senatorial ‘elite’ into his hands, thus avoiding Caesar’s fate.
If one may credit Hitler with not being personally responsible for Germany’s foreign policy problems, that he had found them before him so that in quite extraordinarily difficult circumstances his policies had to grapple with them, the question arises whether he dealt with the problems underpinned by taut organization, efficient mobilization of all resources and a comprehensive integral plan. Did Hitler at all times – as the fundament for his decisions – have an overview of the Reich’s material situation? Did he issue unequivocally specific guidelines and set objectives? Had he constantly verified the execution of the guidelines given and the attainment of the set goals, and if necessary intervened? Did he reach his decisions following in-depth consultation with the competent persons responsible and stipulated clear responsibilities? The questions have to be answered in the negative. Hitler did not have any systematically established planning set up for the Reich’s total resources, nor indeed any system at all, by which he might have regularly checked on the realization of a target plan against the existing status quo. There was no armaments plan (nor, correspondingly, any war plan).422 A comprehensive plan, placing priorities or taking the Reich’s potential in resources of personnel and material and the necessities of foreign policy into consideration, was lacking.
If Hitler neglected to set up integrated planning for all possibilities and necessities so as to utilize the limited resources of the Reich for armament to best advantage, that may among other things constitute proof that he evidently did not reckon with any military conflict, let alone that he purposely intended to bring one on. In any case the situation the Reich was in was exceptionally perilous, since both the USA and Soviet Russia were to be counted among its opponents. Hitler’s entire concept of architectural and social luxuries such as Party buildings, motorways, the redesigning of Berlin, the KDF (‘Strength through Joy’) leisure organization, ships, etc. would have fallen victim to planning for the war which, if it had in the end been unavoidable, would have utilized all the resources for armament.423
In this context the universally held premise, that Hitler eliminated unemployment solely by means of armament, is also a cliché. Only laymen who have no idea of the organizational, staffing and material problems in an expansion of the armed forces could uphold it. Anybody minimally instructed in political economics knows that armament is not a requirement for kick-starting an economy.424 When rearmament was introduced in 1935 by resuming general military service, there were hardly any unemployed left in Germany. Nevertheless, the motorway network project was stopped only in 1943.
The Wehrmacht embarked on the Polish war with inadequate stocks of munitions. Imagine the allegedly ‘war-mongering monster’ Hitler entering the war without reserve munitions. He solved the problem in a manner typical of him, by appointing one more person to be in charge. In this instance he straight away established a new ministry. Just before the commencement of operations in 1940, Fritz Todt – the motorway builder – was appointed Reich Minister for Armament and Ammunition; probably a wise decision. Todt did not, however, have the plenipotentiary powers conceded much too late to his successor Speer under the pressure of necessity.
Hitler once said to Father: ‘You know, Ribbentrop, my brain starts working when difficulties arise or obstacles are in my way.’ This revealing statement shows how reluctantly Hitler allowed himself to be involved in a systematic handling of problems. But planning always means systematic work beforehand and is a sine qua non in a modern political system. Hitler did not do his homework on this. He had no system for it.
In this context, Hewel’s diary, already often quoted, is once again most illuminating. At times Hewel comments – during the war with Russia – on the sort of subjects in general upon which Hitler lectured or gave vent to lengthy criticism. We may well ask ourselves when he found the time to deal with the enormous workload with which he had burdened himself by concentrating all decision-making upon his person, without having set up a system that would have made it possible for him to do so. In the last year of the war he complained about this, saying he had been betrayed and lied to – a disqualifying admission for any top man, whatever the level. The man at the top should not permit being betrayed and lied to – not that this observation constitutes any excuse for liars and traitors.
It was a characteristic of Hitler’s style of governance that he never convened sessions (of the Cabinet for instance) in which current problems of government could be discussed in depth, decisions be taken or departmental activities coordinated. Father was appointed Foreign Minister at the beginning of 1938. I have already mentioned that he took part in no session of the Reich Cabinet, because none was convened. Hitler preferred a tête à tête. Naturally, this ‘system’ caused great losses due to friction, animosity resulting in rivalry amongst the leading figures, institutions and organizations, which frequently precluded any objective decision-making. Hitler seemed to think such a strategy guaranteed his leading role; it is indisputable that he could thus play the staff one against the other if it seemed opportune to do so.
Hitler was no great coordinator, which is one of the most important duties of someone at the top; neither did he entrust the task to anyone else. Already before the war a joke circulated in government circles, in which the activities of the ministries, the highest Reich authorities and the party organizations were said to be ‘NS-Kampfspiele’ (National Socialist fighting games; these were actually sports events that took place in Nuremberg on the occasion of Reich Party Day). Hitler’s Führer State was no monolithic block such as National Socialist propaganda liked to portray it. Most probably the losses due to friction in Hitler’s dictatorship were no less than in the scorned democracies. Earlier in the Reich the sectionalism of the German Länder (an administrative subdivision, often called a ‘state’ in English) was spoken of. During the Third Reich one could well speak of the sectionalism of the organizations, institutions and authorities or, respectively, of their representatives.
The Hitlerian system of leadership is outlined in a statement by General Walter von Reichenau, who was not one of Hitler’s opponents but who nonetheless accurately assessed the ‘Führer State’:
‘The power is embodied in a single person – that is the reality! And when overnight something occurs to this personage or is skillfully suggested to him, there is nothing to prevent him from broadcasting it the next morning as a binding injunction. Whoever sits with him by the fireplace, irrespective of who it is, has more influence than any minister of state, let alone any of us of the military.’425
This could have been written by Father. He too had to fight, on a daily basis, to maintain his influence; he had ‘to be there’! Reichenau was right: what do the so-called historians of today know about these realities which, as Reichenau had already quite correctly observed, ‘stick to the records and memoranda, thereby as a rule masking the circumstances under which Hitler’s qualified advisers had to try to obtain the decisions, in their view the right and necessary ones’?
A phenomenon of history stood at the head of the Reich. He did not, however, fulfill the step from the extraordinary propagandist of his visions to the organizing, integrative and motivating statesman who from now on, in the raw reality of foreign policy and doing the necessary detailed work, had to bring all the spiritual, intellectual and material forces of the population to concentrate on the goal of achieving a consolidated and secure position in the centre of Europe.
Did he have to pick a quarrel ideologically with everyone, instead of concentrating all anti-Bolshevik forces against the single goal, which was to fend off Marxism-Bolshevism? The answer has to be ‘no’. Hitler did not comprehend the need to integrate all anti-Bolshevik forces, winning them over as his ‘followers’. There were certainly many of the ‘old school’ mentality among them, stoutly reactionary as Reichenau calls them, who had not comprehended that Hitler’s Volksgemeinschaft as they perceived it was the lesser evil than a Bolshevik takeover of power, which for these circles, as well as for numberless others, would certainly mean the gibbet. There is no doubt that conservative elements had often not understood the times and brought great blame onto their head. Indicative of what constitutes a motive for ‘resistance’ is Halder’s statement:
‘I may remind that the origin of what we call resistance is to be traced back to the conservative fundamental attitude of the officer corps.’ 426
The question may first of all be asked: resistance against what, whom and where? It may be pointed out that the generals made no resistance to Hitler’s error in deciding to go to war against the Soviet Union, above all Halder, the Chief of Staff.
Hitler had proved he was right – contrary to most of the experts -- in two important military issues. He had enforced the institution of independently operating large motorized units and had decided against the High Command of the Army in choosing the ‘Manstein Plan’, which was what led to the sensational success in the West. At this point a glance will be directed at Hitler’s policies in regard to personnel. That Hitler must be given credit for having immediately recognized the advantage of the element of surprise of the ‘Manstein Plan’ employing a Sichelschitt (sickle cut), as opposed to the Army Command, makes it incomprehensible that he did not equally make full use of the designer of the plan by keeping him close by, in whatever post that may have been. While Manstein’s plan was being applied, its designer was left back in Germany restructuring an army corps, and what is more (to the author’s knowledge) a horse-drawn and not a motorized one. I refer to Hitler’s words as uttered in the Bunker in February 1945 to Father and me: ‘This Manstein is at his best operating with armies.’ Had Hitler intuitively seen Manstein’s strategic abilities and been afraid to have a rival close to him? Why did Hitler not later promote Manstein to Commander-in-Chief East of the Russian theatre of war? In the First World War the post was filled by the Hindenburg/ Ludendorff team. This solution guaranteed a unified and relatively ‘front-line’ assessment of the situation and the planning of corresponding coordinated measures. Could Hitler have feared that a Commander-in-Chief East might have been able to force him to make decisions against his will? In view of the lack of trust reigning in the relationship between Hitler and the whole body of generals, this is a perfectly reasonable presumption.
The question must again be asked: did Hitler sufficiently preoccupy himself with his military leaders so as to include them in the fresh possibilities which in his opinion – which was shown to be right – would present themselves for operationally deployed armoured battalions? Did he take the time and the trouble to get to know his ‘Pappenheimers’ – that is his generals – as to their qualifications and attitude and to test them by letting them talk, while on the other hand motivating them and letting them take part in the trains of thought and necessities of foreign policies?
It would have been important to convince them of the inescapability of his policy, because he could not wait for completion of rearmament. Did he convince the majority of his military leaders that he had to take the risky path, without a war, in order to establish a Central European bloc ready to defend itself, and which would maintain its hold between the world powers of the United States and Soviet Russia? Was the great demagogue able to enter into the soul of these officers – most of them ultra conservatives, to the extent that one may confidently label them as ‘reactionary’ in those days – and adjust to their mentality so as to convince them and win them over or to separate himself from the incorrigibles? In his memoirs, Keitel, head of the Armed Forces High Command, maintains that in March 1941 Hitler had closed his address to those destined to be in command of the Russian campaign with the words: ‘I do not require the generals to understand me but I demand that they obey my orders.’427 If these were thus formulated, they throw an awkward light on the relationship between Hitler and his generals. There can be no question of any ‘motivation’ in view of a military engagement about which Hitler thought that, if it did not succeed, all would anyhow be lost, let alone of a relationship of trust.
The statesman was obliged to take the conservative attitude of certain social classes into consideration if he could not dispense with the cooperation of such groups. Stalin could permit himself to cut off the heads of the Red Army at a stroke: he did it in the literal sense too! Hitler, on the contrary, could not even allow himself to get them bodily out of the way. Had Hitler correctly recognized that ‘the circles which I needed for the rebuilding did not rally to me in the days of fighting’, as it is said he once put it to Frau von Below? Now that he had become the all-powerful Führer of the Reich he had to mobilize everything to win them over, since he left them in their traditional leading posts in the army and administration, which – in view of the foreign policy-related time pressure – he was obliged to do. Everything had to be avoided that would have further alienated these circles. However, visionaries and prophets can never see anything but ‘enemies’ or ‘friends’ of their convictions. This may have been valid for Hitler too, making it difficult to build a basis of mutual trust with those circles who were not his ideological followers, if not actually precluding it. It was not for nothing that in the circles that took a negative view of the regime, an ‘inner emigration into the army’ was spoken of. It demonstrates the attitude of portions of the high-ranking officer corps toward the regime. The inconsequentiality of in effect subtracting the Wehrmacht from monitoring measures shows naivety on the one hand, while on the other that Hitler’s assessment of the officer corps was positive in that he could not imagine a conspiracy as was then actually plotted. This prohibition of monitoring measures had as a consequence that the treasonable machinations that the Counterintelligence as well as the army General Staff were embroiled in since 1938 could not be prevented. They became known to the Reich leadership only out of investigations after the bomb plot of 20 July 1944. Among other things this led to the execution of Canaris and Oster. What happened before and during the war in this regard can only be guessed at, insofar as it has not been published. One need think only of Canaris’s deputy, General Oster, who kept the Dutch military attaché, Sas, informed of the dates determined for the planned offensive in the West, thereby explicitly accepting responsibility for high German losses. To this day, ‘Werther’428 has not been entirely exonerated; apparently all German military planning during the Russian war was made known through him to the Soviet High Command.
Until then the army command had expressed misgivings over all of Hitler’s foreign policy and military decisions. To quote Father, when general military service was announced, the army had reservations concerning thirty-six divisions that would not be acceptable to the signatory powers of the Versailles Treaty. Once the fact was accepted as such, they were suddenly not enough. I remember well how Father was laughing when he told us this. I have already mentioned Fritsch’s qualms about a speedy arms build-up, now a necessity because of the dictates of foreign policy, as well as the tensions between Hitler and the army leadership during the Sudeten crisis. At that time the army had already planned a coup d’état. The generals also had substantial objections to the offensive in the West. It was only Russia that the army believed it could overthrow in only a few weeks! It is possible that here again memories of the First World War played a role.
Should the origins for the reticent, indeed negative, stance of conservative officers toward Hitler and his regime quoted by Halder not also to a certain extent be sought in the Volksgemeinschaft he propagandized, from which they felt a greater threat to their personal sphere of life than from Hitler’s foreign policy? Should the exclusion from the field of decision-making in foreign policy have had priority over reservations in regard to foreign policy of a fundamental sort? Can it be denied that on the part of some the inducement was merely a reactionary attitude that led to the rejection of the ‘Lance Corporal’ and his Volksgemeinschaft? Kleist-Schmenzin, the scion of the old Prussian aristocracy conspiring with Churchill and Vansittart, expressed his pride in his rank by saying: ‘The aristocracy has to insist on their noble ways cultivated over centuries, the feeling of lordship, the absolute conviction of being at the top, superior to others.’429
That other ‘Little Corporal’, Bonaparte, knew his generals well. In the circumstances of his days he was able to ‘make’ his generals himself. He could seek them out and groom them. Hitler, the ‘Bohemian Lance Corporal’, did not have this possibility, or at least only conditionally, in view of the predicaments of foreign policy; all the more reason for him to have occupied himself with them so as to be able to know them well and judge them. It is certain that the curtailment of citizens’ rights was a weighty argument against his regime. But did not many conservatives tend toward an authoritarian rule, even if it stood under their own decisive influence?
There is no question that the German army disposed of the oldest and most efficient management system. I have already briefly mentioned the German leadership system, based on the fundamental knowledge that the highest effectiveness of deployed troops could be attained only if each soldier in his place, in the sense of the assignment of his unit, could also be capable of acting independently if required. The ‘emptiness of the battlefield’430 – as opposed to troops deployed en masse in the nineteenth century – demanded and imposed this contributory thinking down to the lowest rank of simple soldier. The German military system of leadership, applied from the commanders to the last grenadier, provided the most efficient framework at its disposal, in order to make sure – even under the most difficult circumstances – of the optimum deployment of the troops, which also meant with the minimum of losses. The basic troop regulations (H.Dv 300 – German Field Service Regulations) for units of the German Wehrmacht contains the noteworthy phrase: ‘In a difficult situation it may be preferable to do something wrong than to do nothing.’ The basic precepts of the German military code were an encouragement to the commanders of German troops of all ranks to act on their own initiative and independently.
Those in high places in politics and the economy wisely keep out of the details and restrict themselves to instituting the main issues. They oversee the progress made and retain a controlling hand. This practice keeps the man at the top out of questions of detail and protects him from being overburdened, without nevertheless relieving him from overall responsibility. In the course of time, doubtless due to having misunderstood the leader principle, Hitler took precisely the contrary road. Instead of instituting a responsible government under his leadership to execute current tasks, whom he could summon to make accountable and with whose help he might, if the need arose, have found a scapegoat, he dismissed an ever-increasing number of scapegoats and, instead of filling the many posts anew, took the reins into his own hands. In the end he even undertook the command of an army group in the distant Caucasus. It is self-evident that he could not efficiently discharge any of these functions.
De Gaulle and Franco structured their regimes, to say nothing of Stalin, who, as undisputed and absolute potentate of the Soviet Union, until 1941 was but Secretary General of the Party and occupied no fixed governmental position. As Party Secretary General he represented the highest supervisory authority; nothing more was needed, strong personality that he was, to secure his absolute power in the Soviet empire. Hitler solved problems by appointing ‘special commissioners’, who were most often directly answerable to him, frequently as ‘Supreme Reich Authorities’; they acted on the authority of the famous (or infamous) ‘Führer’s Orders’ without them having been introduced into a properly structured framework of organization and control. Their activities were consequently not coordinated nor subject to constant controls.
A further dramatic example of Hitler’s dispositions of his staff is represented in the person of Göring. In peacetime he was saddled with functions and offices no god-like person could have carried out efficiently. Both the most important duties he was entrusted with were more than full-time jobs in themselves: as commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe he bore the responsibility for creating a powerful air force in no time, and as the authority for the ‘four-year plan’ he had to make sure of the entire provision of raw materials for the Reich and the distribution thereof. It was foreseeable that both functions would moreover lead to considerable clashes of interests, as has already been shown. The aerial Battle of Britain fought in the late summer of 1940 was a warning signal and ought to have induced Hitler to preoccupy himself in depth in the evolution of the Luftwaffe and its command. At the latest following the first heavy air raids by the Allies, conclusions as to personnel should have been drawn.
If in regard to Hitler, from the angle of his style of government and personnel politics a continuity may be spoken of, this could be found in his adhesion to persons whom he believed to be loyally devoted to him, and also in his multitrack strategies for all sectors in order not to allow anyone to accumulate too much power. The prevention of groupings that may potentially have forced him to make decisions not in agreement with his concept seems to have been the fundamental principle of his ‘system’ of governance. It was a ‘system’ that, to his mind without doubt, was ‘successful’ until the end. Regrettably, it also constituted one of the decisive facets of Hitler’s personality structure that contributed to the disaster into which he plunged Germany.
The time span of Hitler’s governance may be divided into two. The first phase comprises the years from 1933 to the end of 1940. From 1941 on, a progressive alteration of his personality is observable. As Father said: ‘The Führer [became] ever more rigid in his concepts.’ Was the Hitler of 1942 – let alone of the later war years – the same man he was in the years to 1940? In the winter of 1939/40 it was Hitler who ordered the execution of the Manstein Plan for the campaign in the West, contrary to an ill-humoured Chief of General Staff. In 1943 Unternehmen Zitadelle was instituted with such lack of imagination that any cadet of some standard could have expected the German offensive against the obvious focal points. Could a Hitler who in 1940 had made the crucial decision to shift the build-up of the concentrated point of main effort (schwerpunkt) to the centre of the offensive front in the West still be compared to he who in 1942 splintered the forces of his army by ordering a simultaneous offensive on the Volga and in the direction of the Caucasus, finally becoming bogged down at Stalingrad, thereby offering the Russians an opportunity to strike a devastating counter-blow?
Two further decisions by Hitler should be mentioned, as illustrating examples of what can only be described as growing irrationality. One of these was to conceive the Me 262 jet fighter, already extant in principle, as a bomber aircraft, and another the institution of the so-called ‘Luftwaffe Field Divisions’ in which Luftwaffe ground personnel no longer needed were to be deployed for ground combat. The latter decision is possibly to be attributed to Hitler’s increasing mistrust of the army, to which it was undesirable to extradite Göring’s ‘National Socialist’ Luftwaffen-soldiers (divide et impera?). From the military point of view this institution of the Luftwaffe Field Divisions was an absurdity. The officers, NCOs and crews were totally inexperienced in warfare, nowhere close to being sufficiently trained and often not even commanded by experienced officers, which signified that the posts of command were also filled with Luftwaffe officers. These divisions were shattered when they were involved in heavy fighting. If these Luftwaffe forces had been distributed among the seasoned divisions of the army (which was general practice until the beginning of 1943) they could certainly have turned into efficient fighters. I have good grounds for what I say. Following the retaking of Kharkov, the armoured ‘Leibstandarte’ Division was assigned as replacements 6,000 men who had been ‘combed out’ from the Luftwaffe ground personnel. These men did not volunteer for the Waffen-SS, they were simply transferred to us. The armoured regiment took in 600 men, NCOs and lower ranks. I was charged, together with some of our experienced armoured staff, to train these Luftwaffe soldiers in a few weeks into an armoured force ready for action. Looking back, I can state that this goal was achieved. As during Unternehmen Zitadelle I was again in command of a company, which like the other companies had been staffed with ‘Luftwaffe people’, I am qualified to judge the outcome. They did their duty just as faithfully and efficiently as the troops who had volunteered for the Waffen-SS. Incidentally, to this day they are still maligned – like all Waffen-SS soldiers.
I do not know the details of what had been the determinant moment for Hitler wanting to make a bomber out of the Me 262. I do, however, still remember very well how when I visited Father at his headquarters in East Prussia in the summer of 1944, he told me about it – half in despair and half resignedly – when I briefed him about the overwhelming air superiority of the Allies on the invasion front. I myself, although deep in the hinterland, had been severely wounded by a strafing enemy aircraft just before the outset of the invasion. My father said: ‘The Führer wants to turn the jet fighter into a bomber aircraft!’ We were now deprived of both protection from Allied carpet bombing and support from the air in ground combat. Both decisions are rationally inexplicable.
To this day the state of Hitler’s health in the various phases of his government is still the subject of much speculation. I can only contribute from my own point of view what I have already reported as to his physical and mental deterioration. The role played by his personal physician, Morell, is still disputed. While on leave – she was a Red Cross nurse – my sister Bettina was cured of blood-poisoning by Professor Eppinger in Vienna. Eppinger was an internist of international renown. He was once called to Moscow to examine Stalin because of heart trouble. When Tsar Boris of Bulgaria fell gravely ill in 1944, Eppinger was consulted. He confirmed the suspicion entertained from the German side that Boris – considered a great friend of Germany’s – had been poisoned. In Berlin at the time it was not excluded that members of the Italian royal family – Boris was married to a daughter of the Italian king – may have had a hand in the affair.
Mother used the occasion to ask Eppinger if he would be able to send one of his physicians to East Prussia to give my father a thorough examination. As a consequence, assistant consultant Dr Lainer turned up at Father’s headquarters. I was on convalescent leave in August 1944, and met this cheerful Austrian, making friends with him in the short time we spent together. He had paid a visit to Morell in East Prussia and, as Lainer put it, ‘had a quick look in Morell’s medical bag’; they had spoken openly about which medication the latter would ‘inject the Führer with’. Lainer had then pointed out to Mother that at the time the effects of these medicines had not been tested at all, and that the Führer’s medicinal treatment was irresponsible. It should also be recounted that my wife’s first husband had before the war been a patient of Morell’s for many years. According to her husband’s assessment, Morell was a declared opponent of Hitler and it had always been expected – my wife had married him in 1943 – that Morell would finally succeed in rendering Hitler ‘harmless’. But even if Morell had purposely handled Hitler wrongly, that does not constitute any exoneration of Hitler as to his historical responsibility. History does not accept illness as an excuse for erroneous decisions or for having brought about catastrophes. As Grandfather Ribbentrop used to say: ‘Whoever does not know by the age of 40 what is good for his health is beyond being helped by any doctor!’
The roots of these failures were erroneous decisions and catastrophes. What reactions are triggered of the ‘greatest general of all time’ by the insight into the extremely precarious situation the war had sunk to in the winter of 1941-42? Does he gather the leading personalities around him from the military, political and financial sectors so as to mobilize all the strength of the Reich and its sphere of influence henceforth in a considered and efficient manner? Does he inspire in his staff of leaders the necessary trust in his cause so as from all sides to unleash the necessary great efforts that have to be generated for survival? Does he include the populations of Europe in the struggle against the Soviet Union – which must in any event be called a defensive battle – by giving them a clear guarantee of their national status after the war? Anything but! Hitler proceeds in the diametrically opposite direction. He dismisses his most seasoned military commanders because they took decisions in the field, having better knowledge of the situation, that were contrary to his will. Among them was Guderian, one of the creators of the German armoured corps and who – against the resistance of his superiors – had brought the ‘Manstein Plan’ to its overwhelming success.431
Instead of unburdening himself personally and concentrating entirely on the highest political and military leadership, Hitler additionally takes on the supreme command of the army and finally also of an army group, which was, according to the principles of command of the German army, a ‘cardinal sin’. Never, ever, would for instance a battalion commander have at the same time been in command of a company of his battalion; he would have instead entrusted the command of the company to an NCO – which incidentally was often enough the case in war. At the banquet, mentioned before, given by Mussolini in honour of Hitler and the German delegation on the occasion of the state visit to Italy in 1938 (when Mother, who in this case was the ‘First Lady’ of Germany, was seated next to Mussolini), both heads of state among other subjects discussed the respective organization of their supreme military commands. Upon her return, Mother had said that Hitler’s formulations had not been convincing, adding that: ‘He himself seemed, however, none too pleased with his solution!’ This intuitive observation on the part of a woman who may unquestionably be seen as ‘favourably inclined’ toward Hitler at that time, and who had no clue as to military organization, is illuminating.
Hitler’s weaknesses, which were analysed above, now began to take effect ever more fatefully. Hitler interferes ever more in details; nevertheless, he is ever less successful. His failure as political and military ‘Führer’ brings the radical ideologist in him into the arena. Only then is the ‘Jewish star’ introduced and deportations begun. Hitler balks at every one of the peace feelers that his Foreign Minister repeatedly proposes. All he now does is flail around, insofar as he still can. He is now painting his negative image to an ever-increasing degree, which nowadays so often obscures the view of the coerciveness which his – that is to say Germany’s – policies were exposed to at the outset of his taking over the government.
It must have been quite early on – in my opinion at the latest in November 1941 – that the realization dawned on Hitler that the attack on Russia was a crucial mistake. The crisis on the Eastern Front at the onset of winter, the spontaneous entries in Hewel’s diary about the ambience in the Führer’s headquarters in December 1941, the impulsive cry on receipt of the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor (‘Germany is saved now!’; when Mother told me about it she put her hand over her mouth again, a gesture that signified her horror) – all these indices testify to the profound shock that the obviously erroneous estimation of Russia strength, and of the environmental conditions under which the German army had to wage the war in Russia, caused to Hitler. He appeared less and less in public, already not at all at mass gatherings – with the cogent argument of not wanting to expose his audiences to a possible air attack – but he also did not see the troops at the front any more. Only once, in January 1943, did he do so, flying for a brief visit to see Manstein in the southern sector, an occasion when it must be admitted that from his point of view he was quite right to mistrust his officers. They conspired against his life and found a suitable opportunity to load brandy bottles full of explosives into his airplane, that only by chance did not explode.
Militarily again and again he staked all on a single throw. In 1943 Unternehmen Zitadelle burned out the armoured divisions only recently refurbished, that were then bitterly lacking in countering the 1943 Soviet summer offensive. The Ardennes Offensive (Battle of the Bulge) in December 1944, in view of the ratio of forces and the situation of supplies, was an irresponsible gamble. As regimental adjutant of the armoured regiment of the right-wing division I had a detailed insight into the preparations, and as battalion commander experienced at first-hand the hopeless inferiority in men and matériel – not least the lack of air support – that to my mind from the outset did not give the offensive the slightest chance. Even the early successes that could be achieved by surprise in the southern attack area did not make any difference. The fact that this operation was executed in the West, in view of the concurrent march on Berlin of the Red Army for the final offensive, in massively superior numbers, underlines how unreal Hitler’s perceptions of the operative goals were.
The German people, let this here be firmly stated, were the main victims of the Hitler regime. From the beginning of the 1930s, slowly and with reservations – before 1933 he had never obtained an absolute majority – they had preferred him to the Communists, and therefore to Bolshevism. In view of the failure of the Weimar Republic and the Treaty of Versailles, the German people no longer had a third alternative. The much-abused German people had thereby reached a decision of historical dimensions, if one pictures what consequences a Bolshevik Germany would have had for Europe and the world.
In this way a calamity for Germany is indissolubly linked to Hitler, comparable only to the Thirty Years’ War. A true statesman ought to seek every means of averting such a fate as struck the German people. To say it clearly and explicitly, Hitler cannot be forgiven, let alone rehabilitated. Whether the taboo applied today in Germany to his personage is of benefit in the sense of a historical ‘coming-to-terms’ may with good reason be doubted.
However, the sober, historical conclusion from Hitler’s twelve-year domination is the ascertainment that to cede absolute and uncontrolled power to only one person simply represents too great a risk. An exchange with controlling bodies in whatever form is essential in order to avoid erroneous decisions or indeed despotism, not to mention the possible effects of health problems. The political acumen of Rome is a source of admiration in that they were aware of the institution of ‘dictator’ as an efficient way of dealing with existence-threatening situations. This office was entrusted to the dictator by Rome for one year only, not least because it was known that once a sole ruler is established it is extraordinarily difficult to get rid of him. It should at the same time not be overlooked that in Rome this institution was the creation of a more or less homogeneous leading class, against which, at least in Republican Rome, a dictator did not have the slightest chance. Think of Caesar’s fate! The so-called Third Reich did not have a homogeneous leading class which could at an earlier stage have forced Hitler to abandon or at least to modify his policies. And yet, if like Hegel one sees in historical figures the instruments of the world’s Spirit that utilizes them for its purposes, which remain concealed from us, it was Hitler who forced Bolshevism with its imprint of Stalin to enter the arena. Stalin could do naught else but ‘fetch the chestnuts out of the fire’ for the great Western power, the United States. That is, however, precisely what Stalin wanted to avoid.
I allow myself a chuckle and concede in my mind, slightly arrogantly, when German historians such as for instance Andreas Hillgruber speak of Hitler’s Stufenplan (stage-by-stage plan) to achieve world domination, thereby making a fairy story out of the most recent German past, to say nothing of the ridiculous ‘puppetries’ of their contemporary successors. In those days I was aware from the beginning of the fatal weakness of the German position. It is the only premise from which to understand Hitler’s policies.
From a certain point on, Hitler offered the Germans an alternative to Bolshevism as a solution to the overwhelming problems with which Germany was faced. That was his role in the history of the world. The ‘vortex of combined circumstances’, to quote once again from Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed, is what brought him to power. As I see it, the taboo under which Hitler is put today is incomprehensible. Hitler is, again according to his self-conception, responsible for a disaster that struck the people of Germany. This is absolutely factually ascertainable and permits no grotesque exaggerations nor mistaken or indeed ridiculous accounts that furthermore are often apt to be harmful to the interests of the country and to blur Hitler’s responsibilities.