Hitler remained worried about a number of aspects of the OKH’s planning. He was concerned that the army leadership was underestimating the dangers from Soviet strikes at the German flanks from the Pripet Marsh, and called in February for a detailed study to allow him to draw his own conclusions.15 In mid-March, he contradicted the General Staff’s conclusions, asserting — rightly, as things turned out — that the Pripet Marsh was no hindrance to army movement. He also thought the existing plan would leave the German forces overstretched, and too dependent upon what he regarded as the dubious strength of the Romanian, Hungarian, and Slovak divisions — the last of these dismissed merely on the grounds that they were Slavs — on the southern front. He ordered, therefore, the alteration from a two-pronged advance of Army Group South to a single thrust towards Kiev and down the Dnieper. Finally, he repeated his insistence that the crucial objective had to be to secure Leningrad and the Baltic, not push on to Moscow which, at a meeting with his military leaders on 17 March, he declared was ‘completely immaterial’
While the preparations for the great offensive were taking shape, however, Hitler was preoccupied with the dangerous situation that Mussolini’s ill-conceived invasion of Greece the previous October had produced in the Balkans, and with remedying the consequence of Italian military incompetence in North Africa.
He did everything possible to avoid discomfiting Mussolini when the Italian dictator, embarrassed by the military setbacks in Albania and North Africa (where greatly outnumbered British troops had early in the month captured the Italian stronghold of Bardia), arrived at a small railway station near Salzburg, on 19 January for two days of talks at the Berghof.
Hitler and his military leaders were waiting on the platform in the snow.18 The talks began without delay. There was no hint of a mention of Italian military reversals. Discussion focused mainly on the Balkans, and on a renewed attempt, through personal persuasion by the Duce, to bring about Spanish intervention in the war and agreement to a German assault on Gibraltar.19 Reporting to Ciano on his private talks, Mussolini said ‘he found a very anti-Russian Hitler, loyal to us, and not too definite on what he intends to do in the future against Great Britain’. A landing was ruled out. The difficulty of such an operation contained an unacceptable risk of failure, after which Britain ‘would know that Germany holds only an empty pistol’.20
On the afternoon of 20 January, Hitler spoke for about two hours in the presence of military experts on the approaching German intervention in Greece. ‘He dealt with the question primarily from a technical point of view,’ Ciano recorded, ‘relating it to the general political situation. I must admit that he does this with unusual mastery. Our military experts are impressed.’21 Though the ‘very anti-Russian Hitler’ that Mussolini saw pointed to the future dangers from the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death, when the Jews, at present pushed out of the leadership, could take over again, and when Russian air-power could destroy the Romanian oil-fields, he gave not the slightest inkling that at that very time he was preparing to attack in the East.22 As usual, the Italians would be kept in the dark until the last minute.
Mussolini returned from the talks ‘elated’ (as Ciano remarked) ‘as he always is after a meeting with Hitler’.23 It was as well the Duce left when he did. Had he stayed two days longer his growing sense of inferiority towards his senior Axis partner would have been sharpened still further by the disastrous news for his Fascist regime that now Tobruk had fallen to the British.24
Popular contempt in Germany for the Italian war effort was matched by the growing disdain of the Nazi leaders for their Fascist counterparts.25 ‘Mussolini has lost a great deal of prestige,’ remarked Goebbels towards the end of January 1941, seeing the Duce’s position weakened through the military debacle in North Africa.26 Whatever the doubts, and his own criticisms of the Italians, Hitler had no option but to stick with his Axis partner.27
