Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

Hitler had been right in his speech: no revolution could be expected from within. Heydrich’s police-state ruled that out. But it was not only a matter of repression. Alongside the ruthlessness of the regime towards internal opponents stood the widespread basic consensus reaching across most of society behind much of what the regime had undertaken and, in particular, what were taken to be the remarkable achievements of Hitler himself. This was embodied in the extraordinary adulation of the Leader. Hitler enjoyed a level of popularity exceeded by no other political leader at the time. He was correct in saying that he had the German people — certainly an overwhelming majority of the German people — behind him. This had strengthened him inordinately in his conflicts with the army, and had weakened the resolve of oppositional groups on many occasions. By the end of 1939 his supremacy was assured. Elser’s bomb had merely brought a renewed demonstration of his popularity. Meanwhile, the internal opposition was resigned to being unable to act. The navy and Luftwaffe were behind Hitler. The army leadership would, whatever its reservations, fulfil its duty. The division of the generals, coupled with their pronounced sense of duty even when they held a course of action to be disastrous, was Hitler’s strength.

Nothing could stop the western offensive. Hitler was by now obsessed with ‘beating England’.²⁷⁹ It was purely a matter of when, not if, the attack on the West would take place. After further short-term postponements, the last of them in mid-January, on 16 January 1940 Hitler finally put it off until the spring.²⁸⁰

The war was set to continue, and to widen. Also set to escalate was the barbarism that was an intrinsic part of it. At home the killings in the asylums were mounting into a full-scale programme of mass murder. In Poland, the grandiose resettlement schemes presided over by Himmler and Heydrich were seeing the brutal uprooting and deportation of tens of thousands of Poles and Jews into the ‘dumping-ground’ of the General Government.²⁸¹ Not least, the centre-point of the ‘racial cleansing’ mania, the ‘removal’ of the Jews, was farther from solution than ever now that over 2 million Polish Jews had fallen into the hands of the Nazis. In December Goebbels reported to Hitler on his recent visit to Poland. The Führer, he recorded, listened carefully to his account and agreed with his views on the ‘Jewish and Polish question’. ‘The Jewish danger must be banished from us. But in a few generations it will reappear. There’s no panacea.’²⁸²

Evidently, no ‘complete solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem’ was yet in sight. The constant quest to find such a ‘panacea’ by Nazi underlings working directly or indirectly ‘towards the Führer’ would nevertheless ensure that, in the conquered and subjugated territories of the east, a ‘solution’ would gradually begin to emerge before long.