Hitler’s ability to put a positive gloss even on a major setback allowed him even to see the onset of the bad weather in the east in the autumn as an advantage. Had the rainy weather not arrived when it did, he said, German troops would have pushed so far forward that the supplies problem could not have been solved. This showed ‘how good fate is to us and how it prevents us through its own intervention from mistakes which without that we would doubtless have made’.332 He acknowledged how necessary it had been to call off the offensive in order to give time for the exhausted troops to recuperate. And he admitted that there were at present no sufficient weapons to counter the heavy Russian panzers. Where they kept producing them from was a mystery, but ‘currently the most serious concern of the front’. ‘The Bolsheviks,’ he went on, ‘are for the most part comparable with animals; but animals, too, are sometimes unyielding
The following day, Hitler was at least somewhat more realistic. He conceded that the situation in the east was ‘at the moment not very good’, and agreed with Goebbels’s wishes to prepare the people for unavoidable setbacks through propaganda more attuned to the realism of the harshness of war and the sacrifices it demanded. Hitler and Goebbels evidently discussed the catastrophic lack of winter clothing for the troops, and the effect this was having on morale.335 Goebbels was well aware from the bitter criticism in countless soldiers’ letters to their loved ones of how bad the impact of the supplies crisis was on morale, both at the front and at home.336 But Hitler’s eyes were already set on the big spring offensive in 1942.337 And, as always when faced with setbacks, he pointed to the ‘struggle for power’, and how difficulties had at that time been overcome.338
The need to boost morale, in the first instance among those he held responsible for upholding it on the home front, undoubtedly lay behind Hitler’s address — the second in little over a month — to his Gauleiter on the afternoon of 12 December.
He began with the consequences of Pearl Harbor. If Japan had not entered the war, he would have at some point had to declare war on the USA. ‘Now the East-Asia conflict falls to us like a present in the lap,’ Goebbels reported him saying. The pyschological significance should not be underrated. Without the conflict between Japan and the USA, a declaration of war on the Americans would have been difficult to accept by the German people. As it was, it was taken as a matter of course. The extension to the conflict also had positive consequences for the U-boat war in the Atlantic. Freed of restraint, he expected the tonnage sunk now to increase greatly — and this would probably be decisive in winning the war. Aware of objections that the alliance with the Japanese stood opposed to ‘the interests of the white man in East Asia’, Hitler was frank, forthright, and pragmatic: ‘Interests of the white race must at present give place to the interests of the German people. We are fighting for our life. What use is a fine theory if the basis of life
He turned to the war in the east. Both tone and content were much as they had been with Goebbels in private. He acknowledged that the troops had had for the time being to be pulled back to a defensible line, but, given the supplies problems, saw this as far better than standing some 300 kilometres further east. The troops were now being saved for the coming spring and summer offensive. A new panzer army in preparation within Germany would be ready by then. He also alluded to the difficulties in defending against the Russian tanks, but pointed out that a new anti-tank gun was well in preparation. He viewed the general situation very favourably. The North African campaign, he misleadingly stated, was well provided for, and an Allied landing on the Continent for the time being out of the question. The difficulties faced at present were determined by the elements
