Hitler himself was occasionally caught in the line of fire of criticism. One popular joke doing the rounds at the time had Heß summoned before Churchill. The British Prime Minister, bulldog expression on his face, cigar in his mouth, was supposed to have said: ‘So you’re the madman are you?’ ‘Oh, no,’ Heß replied, ‘only his Deputy.’206 But, generally, the contrast between the scarcely diluted contempt for the Party functionaries and the massive popularity of Hitler himself, embodying all that was seen to be positive in National Socialism, was stark. Much sympathy was voiced for the Führer who now had this, on top of all his other worries, to contend with. As ever, it was presumed that, while he was working tirelessly on behalf of the nation, he was kept in the dark, let down, or betrayed by some of his most trusted chieftains.207
This key element of the ‘Führer myth’ was one that Hitler himself played to when, on 13 May, he addressed a rapidly arranged meeting of the Reichsleiter and Gauleiter at the Berghof. There was an air of tension when Göring and Bormann, both grim-faced, entered the hall before Hitler made his appearance. Bormann read out Heß’s final letter to Hitler. The feeling of shock and anger among those listening was palpable. Then Hitler came into the room. Much as in the last great crisis within the Party leadership, in December 1932, he played masterfully on the theme of loyalty and betrayal.208 Heß had betrayed him, he stated. He appealed to the loyalty of his most trusted ‘old fighters’. He declared that Heß had acted without his knowledge, was mentally ill, and had put the Reich in an impossible position with regard to its Axis partners. He had sent Ribbentrop to Rome to placate the Duce. He stressed once more Heß’s long-standing odd behaviour (his dealings with astrologists and the like). He castigated the former Deputy Führer’s opposition to his own orders in continuing to practise flying. Heß, he said, had arranged for a specially adapted Messerschmitt to be fitted out, and had had regular weather charts for the North Sea sent to him for months. A few days before Heß’s defection, he went on, the Deputy Führer had come to see him and asked him pointedly whether he still stood to the programme of cooperation with England that he had laid out in
When he had finished speaking, Hitler leaned against the big table near the window. According to one account, he was ‘in tears and looked ten years older’.209 ‘I have never seen the Führer so deeply shocked,’ Hans Frank told a gathering of his subordinates in the General Government a few days later.210 As he stood near the window, gradually all the sixty or seventy persons present rose from their chairs and gathered round him in a semicircle. No one spoke a word.211 Then Göring provided an effusive statement of the devotion of all present. The intense anger was reserved only for Heß.212 The ‘core’ following had once more rallied around their Leader, as in the ‘time of struggle’, at a moment of crisis. The regime had suffered a massive jolt; but the Party leadership, its backbone, was still holding together.
At least one of those present, Gauleiter Ernst Wilhelm Bohle of the
All who saw Hitler in the days after the news of Heß’s defection broke registered his profound shock, dismay, and anger at what he saw as betrayal. This has sometimes been interpreted, as it was also by a number of contemporaries, as clever acting on Hitler’s part, concealing a plot which only he and Heß knew about.215 Hitler was indeed capable, as we have noted on more than one occasion, of putting on a theatrical performance. But if this was acting, it was of Hollywood-Oscar calibre.
