Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

In his lengthy talk with Hitler on 23 September, Goebbels took the opportunity to describe the state of morale within Germany. Hitler, remarked the Propaganda Minister, was well aware of the ‘serious psychological test (Belastungsprobe)’ to which the German people had been subjected over the past weeks. After the notable slide in morale, Goebbels pressed Hitler, who had not appeared in public since the start of the Russian campaign and had last spoken to the German people on 4 May, following the victorious Balkan campaign, to come to Berlin to address the nation. Hitler agreed that the time was ripe, and asked Goebbels to prepare a mass meeting to open the Winter Aid campaign at the end of the following week.²⁰⁴ The date of the speech was fixed for 3 October. Even on the day before, Goebbels had a struggle with Führer Headquarters to establish that Hitler would, indeed, be coming to Berlin to speak in the Sportpalast. Only in the evening did Hitler finally confirm his appearance. Goebbels was now at last able to make the preparations. That day, 2 October, ‘Operation Typhoon’, the great offensive against Moscow, had been launched.²⁰⁵ The early news from the front was good. The scene for the speech could not have been better, thought Goebbels. He hoped the Führer would be in good form. ‘The impression of his address in Germany and in the entire world will then, after a six-month period of silence, be an immense one.’²⁰⁶

In his proclamation to the soldiers on the Eastern Front at the start of ‘Operation Typhoon’, Hitler described Bolshevism as essentially similar to the worst kind of capitalism in the poverty it produced, stressing that ‘the bearers of this system are also in both cases the same: Jews and only Jews!’²⁰⁷ Now was the last push before winter to deliver the enemy ‘the deadly thrust’.²⁰⁸ Similar sentiments were to dominate his address to the nation.

Around 1p.m. next day, Hitler’s train pulled into Berlin. Goebbels was immediately summoned to the Reich Chancellery. He found Hitler looking well and full of optimism. In the privacy of Hitler’s room, he was given an overview of the situation at the front. The advance was proceeding better than expected. Big successes were being attained. ‘The Führer is convinced,’ commented Goebbels, ‘that if the weather stays moderately favourable the Soviet army will be essentially smashed within fourteen days.’²⁰⁹ Through the proclamation, every soldier knew what was at stake: annihilating the Bolshevik army before the onset of winter; or getting stuck half-way and having to put off the decision until the following year. Hitler was of the opinion that the worst of the war would be over if the attack succeeded: ‘for what will we gain in new armaments and economic potential from the industrial areas lying before us! We have already conquered so many sources of oil that the oil which the Soviet Union had promised to us on the basis of earlier economic treaties now flows to us from our own production.’²¹⁰ The USA were in no position to affect the course of the war. Once Germany had the decisive Russian agricultural and industrial areas in its possession, ‘we will be fairly independent and can cut off the English imports through our U-Boats and Luftwaffe’.²¹¹ Hitler was in no mood for compromises. He thought it necessary to come to a clear decision with Britain, since otherwise the ‘bloody showdown would have to be repeated in a few years’. He did not think it likely that Stalin would capitulate, though he could not rule it out.²¹² He also thought the ‘London plutocracy’ would continue to wage tough resistance. But his view was ‘that everything that happens is on the whole the product of fate’. It was good, in retrospect, that none of the peace feelers since 1939 involving Poland, France, and Britain had come to anything. ‘The most cardinal problems would then have still remained unsolved, and would doubtless sooner or later have again led to war. Another military force besides ours must never exist in Europe.’²¹³