Between monologues, he had had ‘discussions’ with Mussolini in the baroque Klessheim Castle, once a residence of the Prince Bishops of Salzburg, now luxuriously refurbished with furniture and carpets removed from France to make a Nazi guest-house and conference-centre.96 The atmosphere was cordial. Hitler looked tired to Ciano, and bearing the signs of the strains of the winter. His hair, Ciano noticed, was turning grey. Hitler’s primary aim was to convey optimism to Mussolini about the war in the east.97 Ribbentrop’s message to Ciano, in their separate meeting, was no different: the ‘genius of the Führer’ had mastered the evils of the Russian winter; a coming offensive towards the Caucasus would deprive Russia of fuel, bring the conflict to an end, and force Britain to terms; British hopes from America amounted to ‘a colossal bluff’.98
The talks continued the next day, now with military leaders present, at the Berghof. How much of a genuine discussion there was is plain from Ciano’s description: ‘Hitler talks, talks, talks, talks,’ non-stop for an hour and forty minutes. Mussolini, used himself to dominating all conversation, had to suffer in silence, occasionally casting a surreptitious glance at his watch. Ciano switched off and thought of other things. Keitel yawned and struggled to keep awake. Jodl did not manage it: ‘after an epic struggle’, he finally fell asleep on a sofa.99 Mussolini, overawed as always by Hitler, was, apparently, satisfied with the meetings.100
In reality, they had no concrete results. Hitler had, as usual, begun with a rosy-hued account of the war in the east, giving the impression that Soviet industrial capacity had fallen sharply and that the military calibre of the Red Army had also diminished. He drew the conclusion, typically, that ‘it can therefore in no way become worse, but only better’.101 He repeated his assumption that if Russia were defeated, Britain’s hopes would have gone. But he went on to indicate the dangers of a British landing in the west, or in North Africa. With either eventuality in mind, there was need, he urged, for great caution in dealing with France, whose collaboration was merely opportunistic. In North Africa, it had to be reckoned that the French colonies would support an Allied invasion. The Axis powers had therefore to be ready, he stressed to Mussolini, to seize unoccupied France at any critical moment. Hitler was half-hearted about the Italians’ plans for an early assault on Malta. As far as the Mediterranean was concerned, his own priority was to provide what limited support he could to Rommel’s forthcoming North African offensive, soon to be launched. This had to precede an attack on Malta.102 His eyes were, however, on the east. That is where the war on land would be decided, he declared.103
Back at the Berghof, after the Italian party had left, Hitler told his lunchtime ensemble how impressed he had been by Hermann Giesler’s spacious refurbishment of Klessheim. ‘Generous ideas’ about spaciousness needed to be incorporated by architects into town-planning in Germany. Then the higgledy-piggledy housing complexes of Zwickau, Gelsenkirchen, Bitterfeld and other towns ‘without any culture’ could be avoided. ‘It was, therefore, his firm resolution,’ he was recorded as stating, ‘to see to it that a bit of culture comes even into the smallest town and that as a result the appearance of our towns slowly reaches an ever-higher level.’104
A week later, on 8 May, the Wehrmacht began its planned spring offensive. The first targets for Manstein’s nth Army, as laid down in Hitler’s directive of 5 April, were the Kerch peninsula and Sevastopol in the Crimea.105 The directive stipulated the drive on the Caucasus, to capture the oil-fields and occupy the mountain passes that opened the route to the Persian Gulf, as the main goal of the summer offensive to follow, code-named ‘Blue’. The removal of the basis of the Soviet war-economy and the destruction of remaining military forces — thought catastrophically weakened over the winter — would, it was presumed, bring victory in the east. There, Hitler had reasserted in planning the summer operations, the war would be decided.106 The key factor was no longer ‘living space’, but oil. ‘If I don’t get the oil of Maykop and Grozny,’ Hitler admitted, ‘then I must finish
