Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

The end of what had been a troubled month for Hitler brought further gloom to the Berghof with the news on 27 May of the loss of the powerful battleship Bismarck, sunk in the Atlantic after a fierce battle with British warships and planes. Some 2,300 sailors went down with the ship.²³⁴ Hitler did not brood on the human loss. His fury was directed at the naval leadership for unnecessarily exposing the vessel to enemy attack — a huge risk, he had thought, for potentially little gain.²³⁵

Meanwhile, the ideological preparations for ‘Barbarossa’ were now rapidly taking concrete shape. Hitler needed to do nothing more in this regard. He had laid down the guidelines in March. These sufficed, we saw earlier, for the High Commands of the Wehrmacht and the Army to convert them in May and early June into the series of orders to liquidate the Soviet Political Commissars and offer a ‘shooting licence’²³⁶ against the Russian civilian population outside the jurisdiction of military courts for German soldiers.²³⁷ It was during May, too, that Heydrich assembled the four Einsatzgruppen (‘task groups’) which would accompany the army into the Soviet Union. Each of the Einsatzgruppen comprised between 600 and 1,000 men (drawn largely from varying branches of the police organization, augmented by the Waffen-SS) and was divided into four or five Einsatzkommandos (‘task forces’) or Sonderkommandos (‘special forces’).²³⁸ The middle-ranking commanders for the most part had an educated background. Highly qualified academics, civil servants, lawyers, a Protestant pastor, and even an opera singer, were among them.²³⁹ The top leadership was drawn almost exclusively from the Security Police and SD.²⁴⁰ Like the leaders of the Reich Security Head Office, they were in the main well-educated men, of the generation, just too young to have fought in the First World War, that had sucked in völkisch ideals in German universities during the 1920s.²⁴¹ During the second half of May, the 3,000 or so men selected for the Einsatzgruppen gathered in Pretzsch, north-east of Leipzig, where the Border Police School served as their base for the ideological training that would last until the launch of ‘Barbarossa’.²⁴² Heydrich addressed them on a number of occasions. He avoided narrow precision in describing their target-groups when they entered the Soviet Union. But his meaning was, nevertheless, plain. He mentioned that Jewry was the source of Bolshevism in the East and had to be eradicated in accordance with the Führer’s aims. And he told them that Communist functionaries and activists, Jews, Gypsies, saboteurs, and agents endangered the security of the troops and were to be executed forthwith.²⁴³ By 22 June the genocidal whirlwind was ready to blow.

‘Operation Barbarossa rolls on further,’ recorded Goebbels in his diary on 31 May. ‘Now the first big wave of camouflage goes into action. The entire state and military apparatus is being mobilized. Only a few people are informed about the true background.’ Apart from Goebbels and Ribbentrop, ministers of government departments were kept in the dark. Goebbels’s own ministry had to play up the theme of invasion of Britain. Fourteen army divisions were to be moved westwards to give some semblance of reality to the charade.²⁴⁴

As part of the subterfuge that action was to be expected in the West while preparations for ‘Barbarossa’ were moving into top gear, Hitler hurriedly arranged another meeting with Mussolini on the Brenner Pass for 2 June.²⁴⁵ It was little wonder that the Duce could not understand the reason for the hastily devised talks.²⁴⁶ Hitler’s closest Axis partner was unwittingly playing his part in an elaborate game of bluff.

Hitler did not mention a word of ‘Barbarossa’ to his Italian friends. He claimed on the return journey to have dropped a hint.²⁴⁷ But, if so, it completely passed Mussolini by. The two dictators talked alone for almost two hours, before being joined by their Foreign Ministers. Hitler had wept, Mussolini reported, when he spoke about Heß.²⁴⁸ If so, he was weeping about the political damage the former Deputy Führer had done. There were no personal lamentations for the loss of one of his most loyal devotees over so many years.²⁴⁹ Ciano and Ribbentrop were meanwhile reviewing relations with a number of countries and the general state of the war. ‘Rumours in circulation on the beginning of operations against Russia in the near future,’ remarked Ribbentrop, ‘are to be considered devoid of foundation, at least excessively premature.’ He conveyed the impression that the German build-up of troops was solely in response to the Soviet military concentration on the German frontier, and that any action by the Reich would only follow an attempted attack by the Red Army.²⁵⁰