Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

While Matsuoka was in Berlin, preparations for ‘Marita’ were already furiously taking shape. Within little over a week they were ready. ‘Operation Marita’ was now set to begin at 5.20a.m. on Sunday morning, 6 April. The tension in the Propaganda Ministry and other agencies of the regime was feverish. Goebbels had already devised, with Hitler’s approval, the radio fanfares for the Balkan campaign, taken from the opening of ‘Prinz Eugen’.¹³⁶ At 1a.m., feeling the tension himself and about to snatch a few hours’ sleep, he was summoned to the Führer. Hitler outlined the attack. He reckoned the campaign could take two months. Goebbels thought less. Hitler referred to the Friendship Treaty which the Soviet Union had signed with Yugoslavia only the day before.¹³⁷ He had no fear of Russia. He had taken sufficient precautions. If Russia wanted to attack, then the sooner the better. If Germany were not to act now, the whole of the Balkans and Turkey would be inflamed. That had to be prevented. The war against the Serbs would be carried out ‘without mercy’.

The time seemed to drag. Goebbels drank tea with Hitler and, as a diversion, they talked about matters other than the war. Hitler turned to one of his favourite topics: making Linz into a cultural capital greater than Vienna. Goebbels said he would help as far as possible, in the first instance by setting up film studios there.¹³⁸ Another hour passed. Then 5.20a.m. came. The attack had started. Hitler felt he could now go to bed.¹³⁹

Shortly afterwards, Goebbels read out on the radio the proclamation Hitler had dictated.¹⁴⁰ By then, hundreds of Luftwaffe bombers were turning Belgrade into a heap of smoking ruins. Hitler justified the action to the German people as retaliation against a ‘Serbian criminal clique’ in Belgrade which, in the pay of the British Secret Service, was attempting, as in 1914, to spread the war in the Balkans. The German troops would end their action once the ‘Belgrade conspirators’ had been overthrown and the last British soldiers had been forced out of the region.¹⁴¹ What could, of course, not be revealed was that the invasion of Yugoslavia would, in at least one important respect, be a trial-run for ‘Barbarossa’. Hitler had spoken privately about the campaign being ‘merciless (ohne Gnade)’.¹⁴² On 2 April, Chief of Staff General Halder — presumably acceding to a request from Heydrich — added two new target-groups alongside ‘Emigrants, Saboteurs, Terrorists’ to be dealt with by the Security Police and SD in the Balkan campaign: Communists and Jews.¹⁴³

With the campaign in its early stages, Hitler left Berlin on the evening of 10 April, en route for his improvised field headquarters. These were located in his Special Train Amerika, stationed at the entrance to a tunnel beneath the Alps on a single-track section of the line from Vienna to Graz, in a wooded area near Mönichkirchen. The Wehrmacht Operational Staff, apart from Hitler’s closest advisers, were accommodated in a nearby inn. The tunnel was to offer protection in the event of danger from the air.¹⁴⁴ The day before he left Berlin, Hitler had experienced the worst British air-raid yet over the Reich capital. Some of the historic buildings on Unter den Linden — including the State Opera House, the University, the State Library, and the Crown Prince’s Palace — were damaged. Hitler was furious with Göring at the failure of the Luftwaffe. He immediately commissioned Speer with the rebuilding of the Opera House.¹⁴⁵

Hitler remained in his secluded, heavily guarded field headquarters for a fortnight. He was visited there by King Boris of Bulgaria, Admiral Horthy, the regent of Hungary, and Count Ciano — vultures gathering at the corpse of Yugoslavia.¹⁴⁶ His fifty-second birthday on 20 April was bizarrely celebrated with a concert in front of the Special Train, after Göring had eulogized the Führer’s genius as a military commander, and Hitler had shaken the hand of each of his armed forces’ chiefs.¹⁴⁷ While there Hitler heard the news of the capitulation of both Yugoslavia and Greece.¹⁴⁸

After overcoming some early tenacious resistance, the dual campaign against Yugoslavia and Greece had made unexpectedly rapid progress.¹⁴⁹ In fact, German operational planning had grossly overestimated the weak enemy forces. Of the twenty-nine German divisions engaged in the Balkans, only ten were in action for more than six days.¹⁵⁰ On 10 April Zagreb was reached, and an independent Croatian State proclaimed, resting on the slaughterous anti-Serb Ustasha Movement. Two days later Belgrade was reached. On 17 April the Yugoslav army surrendered unconditionally. Around 344,000 men entered German captivity. Losses on the victors’ side were a mere 151 dead with 392 wounded and fifteen missing.¹⁵¹