He spent part of the next days sightseeing. Max Amann (head of the Party’s publishing concerns) and Ernst Schmidt, two comrades from the First World War, joined his regular entourage for a nostalgic tour of the battlefields in Flanders, revisiting the places where they had been stationed.98 Then, on 28 June, before most Parisians were awake, Hitler paid his one and only visit to the occupied French capital.99 It lasted no more than three hours. And its purpose was cultural, not military. Accompanied by the architects Hermann Giesler and Albert Speer, and his favourite sculptor, Arno Breker, Hitler landed at Le Bourget airport at, for him, the extraordinarily early hour of half-past five in the morning. The whistlestop sightseeing tour began at L’Opéra. All the lights were ablaze, as if for an evening gala performance, as the three large Mercedes pulled up. A white-haired French guide, deferential but reserved, took the small group through the empty building. Hitler was thrilled by its beauty. He had doubtless been reading up on the descriptions of the opera house during wakeful hours on the previous nights, and delighted in showing off his detailed knowledge. The guide refused the 50-Mark tip that Hitler had his adjutant attempt to proffer.100 The tourists moved on. They drove past La Madeleine, whose classical form impressed Hitler, up the Champs Elysées, stopped at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier below the Arc de Triomphe, viewed the Eiffel Tower, and looked in silence on the tomb of Napoleon in Les Invalides. Hitler admired the dimensions of the Panthéon, but found its interior (as he later recalled) ‘a terrible disappointment’,101 and seemed indifferent to the medieval wonders of Paris, like the Sainte Chapelle. The tour ended, curiously, at the nineteenth-century testament to Catholic piety, the church of Sacré-Coeur. With a last look over the city from the heights of Montmartre, Hitler was gone. By mid-morning he was back in his field headquarters. Seeing Paris, he told Speer, had been the dream of his life.102 But to Goebbels, he said he had found a lot of Paris very disappointing.103 He had considered destroying it. However, he remarked, according to Speer, ‘when we’re finished in Berlin, Paris will only be a shadow. Why should we destroy it?’104
On 2 July Goebbels visited the new Führer Headquarters in the Black Forest to discuss arrangements for Hitler’s triumphal return to Berlin and plans for a Reichstag speech directed at another ‘peace offer’ to Britain. The return was scheduled for the 6th, a Saturday, the speech for the Monday following. The speech would be generously framed, a last chance for England. He was doubtful that it would be well received. Churchill, he knew, would not accept the bait. But he had some hopes, though not strong, in others who were known to be making overtures aimed at peace. If London did not accept the terms, Goebbels noted menacingly, then it had only itself to blame for the consequences. ‘They will be terrible,’ he added.105
The reception awaiting Hitler in Berlin when his train pulled into the Anhalter-Bahnhof at three o’clock on 6 July was astonishing. It surpassed even the homecomings after the great pre-war triumphs like the Anschluß. Many in the crowds had been standing for six hours, as the dull morning gave way to the brilliant sunshine of the afternoon. The streets were strewn with flowers all the way from the station to the Reich Chancellery. Hundreds of thousands cheered themselves hoarse. Hitler, lauded by Keitel as ‘the greatest warlord of all time’, was called out time after time on to the balcony to soak up the wild adulation of the masses.106 ‘If an increase in feeling for Adolf Hitler is still possible, it had become reality with the day of the return to Berlin,’ commented one report from the provinces.107 In the face of such ‘greatness’, ran another, ‘all pettiness and grumbling are silenced’.108 Even opponents of the regime found it hard to resist the victory mood. Workers in the armaments factories pressed to be allowed to join the army. People thought final victory was around the corner. Only Britain stood in the way. For perhaps the only time during the Third Reich there was genuine war-fever among the population. Incited by incessant propaganda, hatred of Britain was now widespread. People were now thirsting to see the high-and-mighty long-standing rival finally brought to its knees.109 But mingling with the aggression were still feelings of fear and anxiety.110 Whether triumphalist, or fearful, the wish to bring the war to a speedy end was almost universal.
