Cheering crowds, which the Party never had any trouble in mobilizing, lined the streets as Hitler was driven in the afternoon to the Sportpalast. A rapturous reception awaited him in the cavernous hall.214 Goebbels compared it with the mass meetings in the run-up to power.215 The first part of Hitler’s speech was spent in blaming the war on Britain’s warmongering clique, backed by international Jewry.216 He went on to justify the attack on the Soviet Union as preventive. He said German precautions had been incomplete on only one thing: ‘We had no idea how gigantic the preparations of this enemy were against Germany and Europe, and how immense the danger was, how by a hair’s breadth we have escaped the annihilation not only of Germany, but of the whole of Europe.’ He described the threat as ‘a second Mongol storm of a new Gengis Khan’. But, he claimed, at last coming out with the words that his audience were anxious to hear: ‘I can say today that this enemy is already broken and will not rise up again.’217
He went on, to the delight of his audience, to pour scorn on British propaganda and heap praise both on the Wehrmacht and on the efforts of the home front. Almost every sentence towards the end was interrupted by storms of applause. Hitler, despite the lengthy break, had not lost his touch. The audience in the Sportpalast rose as one in an ecstatic ovation at the end.218 Hitler was thrilled with his reception. The mood, he said, was just as it had been in the ‘time of struggle’ before 1933. And the cheering of the ordinary Berliners in the streets had ‘not for a long time been so great and genuine’.219 But he was in a hurry to get away. He was driven straight back to the station. By 7p.m., a mere six hours after he had arrived, he was on his way back to his headquarters in East Prussia.220
Goebbels had been with Hitler on the way to the station as the latest news came in from the front. The advance was going even better than expected.221 The Führer had taken all factors into account, commented Goebbels. Realistically assessing all circumstances, he had reached the conclusion ‘that victory can no longer be taken from us’.222 Only the weather gave rise to concern. ‘If the weather stays as it is at present,’ the Propaganda Minister wrote, ‘then we might hope that our wishes will be fulfilled.’223
The Russian weather was, however, predictable. It would, all too soon, turn wet. Within weeks, the rains would give way to arctic conditions. However optimistic Hitler appeared to be, his military leaders knew they were up against time.224
The early stages of the advance could, nonetheless, scarcely have gone better. Halder purred, soon after its start, that Operation Typhoon was ‘making pleasing progress’ and pursuing ‘an absolutely classical course’.225 The German army had thrown seventy-eight divisions, comprising almost 2 million men, and nearly 2,000 tanks, supported by a large proportion of the Luftwaffe, against Marshal Timoshenko’s forces.226 Once more, the Wehrmacht seemed invincible. Once more, vast numbers of prisoners — 673,000 of them — fell into German hands, along with immeasurable amounts of booty, this time in the great encirclements of the double battle of Brjansk and Viaz’ma in the first half of October.227 It was hardly any wonder that the mood in the Führer Headquarters and among the military leadership was buoyant. Jodl thought the victory at Viaz’ma the most decisive day of the Russian war, comparable with Königgrätz.228 Quartermaster Eduard Wagner imagined the Soviet Union to be on the verge of collapse. In a letter to his wife on 5 October, he wrote: ‘At present the Moscow operation is under way. We have the impression that the last great collapse is imminent… Operational aims are set that would once have made one’s hair stand on end. Eastwards of Moscow! Then, I estimate, the war will be largely over and perhaps there will then indeed be the collapse of the system. That’ll take us on a good stretch in the war against England. Over and again, I’m amazed at the Führer’s military judgement. He is intervening this time, one could say decisively, in the course of the operations, and up to now he has always been right.’229
On the evening of 8 October, Hitler spoke of the decisive turn in the military situation over the previous three days. Werner Koeppen, Rosenberg’s liaison at Führer Headquarters, reported to his boss that ‘the Russian army can essentially be seen as annihilated’.230 Hitler’s view — he would soon have to revise it drastically — was that Bolshevism was heading for ruin through lack of tank defences.231 ‘The rapid collapse of Russia would have a disastrous impact on England,’ he asserted. Churchill had placed all his hopes in the Russian war-machine. ‘Now that too is past.’232
