In all, during the calamitous month of January the fighting in Libya had seen some 130,000 Italians captured by the British.28 The likelihood of a complete rout for the Italians in North Africa had to be faced. By
Hitler’s hopes of a vital strategic gain in the Mediterranean — notably affecting the situation in North Africa — by the acquisition of Gibraltar were, however, to be dashed again by the obstinacy of General Franco. Already at the end of January, Hitler had been informed by Jodl that ‘Operation Felix’ — the planned assault on Gibraltar — would have to be shelved, since the earliest it could now take place would be in mid-April. The troops and weapons would by then be needed for ‘Barbarossa’, at that time scheduled for a possible start only a month later.30 Hitler still hoped that Mussolini, at his meeting on 12 February with Franco, might persuade the Caudillo to enter the war. The day before the meeting, Hitler sent Franco a personal letter, exhorting him to join forces with the Axis powers and to recognize ‘that in such difficult times not so much wise foresight as a bold heart can rescue the nations’.31 Franco was unimpressed. He repeated Spanish demands on Morocco, as well as Gibraltar. And he put forward in addition, as a price for Spain’s entering the war at some indeterminate date, such extortionate demands for grain supplies — saying the 100,000 tons already promised by the Germans were sufficient for only twenty days — that there was no possibility they would be met.32 Spain, as before, had to be left out of the equation.
Hitler confirmed the ‘dreadful conditions’ in Spain which Goebbels reported to him the day after his big speech in the Sportpalast on 30 January 1941, to mark the eighth anniversary of his appointment as Chancellor.33 The Propaganda Minister found Hitler in high spirits, confident that Germany held the strategic initiative, convinced of victory, revitalized as always by the wild enthusiasm — like a drug to him — of the vast crowd of raucous admirers packed into the Sportpalast. ‘I’ve seldom seen him like this in recent times,’ Goebbels remarked.34 ‘The Führer always impresses me afresh,’ he added. ‘He is a true Leader, an inexhaustible giver of strength.’35
In his speech, Hitler had concentrated almost exclusively on attacking Britain. He did not devote a single syllable to Russia; nor did he mention the Soviet Union again in any public speech before 22 June 1941, the day of the invasion.36 When speaking to Goebbels the following day, however, Hitler did refer to a report on Russia compiled on the basis of seven years’ experience of the country by the son of the former prominent KPD member Ernst Torgler. ‘Horrible!’ commented Goebbels (presumably echoing Hitler’s sentiments in recording the gist of their conversation). ‘Everything confirmed what we suspected, believed, and also said.’ Goebbels reinforced such impressions on the basis of a report on the situation in Moscow which he himself had received from a leading figure in his Ministry.37
One other aspect of Hitler’s speech on 30 January was noteworthy. For the first time since the beginning of the war, he reiterated his threat ‘that, if the rest of the world should be plunged into a general war through Jewry, the whole of Jewry will have played out its role in Europe!’ ‘They can still laugh today about it,’ he added, menacingly, ‘just like they used to laugh at my prophecies. The coming months and years will prove that here, too, I’ve seen things correctly.’38 Hitler had made this threat, in similar tones, in his Reichstag speech of 30 January 1939. In repeating it now, he claimed to recall making his ‘prophecy’ in his speech to the Reichstag at the outbreak of war. But, in fact, he had not mentioned the Jews in his Reichstag speech on 1 September, the day of the invasion of Poland. He would make the same mistake in dating on several other occasions in the following two years.39 It was an indication, subconscious or more probably intentional, that he directly associated the war with the destruction of the Jews.
Why did he repeat the threat at this juncture? There was no obvious contextual need for it. He had referred earlier in the speech to ‘a certain Jewish-international capitalist clique’, but otherwise had not played the antisemitic tune.40 Probably the repeated ‘prophecy’ as intended, as was the original in January 1939, as a threat to what Hitler always regarded as a Jewish-run ‘plutocracy’ in Britain and the USA. It was a repeat of the blackmail ploy that he held the Jews in his power as hostages.
