Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

Hitler showed no interest in the details of economic difficulties pouring in from every part of the Reich. He was sensitive, as he had been in the mid 1930s, to the impact on morale, refusing in 1938 to entertain any rise in food prices.¹⁹ But he had become increasingly preoccupied with foreign policy. Domestic issues were largely pushed to one side. Decisions were left untaken; much business was postponed or neglected; access to him was difficult. Even Lammers, in the absence of cabinet meetings now the sole link with the various government ministers, had been forced to plead with the Führer’s chief adjutant, Wilhelm Brückner, on 21 October 1938 for a brief audience with Hitler to discuss urgent business since, because of the demands of foreign policy, he had managed only one short meeting with him since 4 September.²⁰ The reports of the ‘Trustees of Labour’ (Treuhänder der Arbeit) had normally been passed to Lammers and often brought directly to Hitler’s attention in 1937. But in 1938–9, as the labour crisis became acute, Hitler was verbally informed of the content, emphasizing the seriousness of the mounting labour problems, on only one occasion (at the meeting with Lammers in early September 1938) and most of the reports, regarded as highly repetitive, were by now not even reaching Lammers.²¹

With regard to agriculture, Hitler’s disinterest was even more marked. He simply refused to accede to Darré’s repeated requests for an audience and did not respond to the Agriculture Minister’s bombardment of the Reich Chancellery with memoranda about the critical situation. Only in October 1940 was Hitler finally persuaded to comment on the intense bitterness in the farming community about the labour shortage. He replied that their complaints would be attended to after the war.²²

This reflected a key feature of Hitler’s thinking: war as panacea. Whatever the difficulties, they would be — and could only be — resolved by war. He was certainly alert to the dangers of a collapse in his popularity, and the likely domestic crisis which would then occur.²³ The fears of a repeat of 1918 were never far away.²⁴ He even seemed to sense that his own massive popularity had shaky foundations. ‘Since I’ve been politically active, and especially since I’ve been leading the Reich,’ he told his audience of newspaper editors in November 1938, ‘I have had only successes… What would then happen if we were some time to experience failure? That, too, could happen, gentlemen.’²⁵ But he was speaking here of the ‘intellectual strata’, for whom he felt in any case nothing but contempt. If he took cognizance at all of the reports of poor mood among industrial workers and farmers, they must merely have confirmed his view that he had been correct all along: only war and expansion could provide the answer to Germany’s problems.