Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

Hitler turned to the war in the east. He described the winter crisis, castigating the failings of the leaders of the Wehrmacht, the organizers of transport, the judiciary, and the civil service.¹²² Japan’s intervention had been a blessing, at a time when Germany was facing catastrophe. Some established army leaders had lost their nerve in this situation. He alone — this was the gist of his remarks — had, through his unyielding refusal of requests to retreat, prevented ‘a Napoleonic débâcle’.¹²³ He had praise for the Waffen-SS in the east, and for the Party as the backbone of the home front, the counter to doubts and pessimism.¹²⁴ He was determined, after their ‘insidious’ behaviour during the winter, he said, doubtless playing here on the many complaints fed to him by Goebbels and the other Gauleiter, to destroy the Christian Churches after the war.¹²⁵ A revolution against the regime would never occur, he declared, if rebellious elements were dealt with in time. He had given Himmler express orders, should there be a danger of the Reich ‘sinking into chaos’, to ‘shoot the criminals in all concentration camps’.¹²⁶

Hitler said he recognized in Stalin a ‘man of stature who towered above the democratic figures of the Anglo-Saxon powers’. He naturally knew, Goebbels reported him as saying, ‘that the Jews are determined under all circumstances to bring this war to victory for them, since they know that defeat also means for them personal liquidation’. It was a more forthright version of his ‘prophecy’ — on this occasion unmistakably and explicitly linking it, in Goebbels’s understanding of what was intended, with the physical liquidation of the Jews.¹²⁷

Hitler emphasized that the war in the east was not comparable with any war in the past. It was not a simple matter of victory or defeat, but of ‘triumph or destruction (Triumph oder Untergang)’. He was aware of the enormous capacity of the American armaments programme. But the scale of output claimed by Roosevelt ‘could in no way be right’. And he had good information on the scale of Japanese naval construction. He reckoned on serious losses for the American navy when it clashed with the Japanese fleet.¹²⁸ He took the view ‘that in the past winter we have won the war’. Preparations were now in place to launch the offensive in the south of the Soviet Union to cut off the enemy’s oil supplies. He was determined to finish off the Soviets in the coming summer.¹²⁹

He looked to the future. His vision was very familiar to those who had been his lunch or supper guests in the Wolf’s Lair. Hitler was frank about his imperialist aims. The Reich would massively extend its land in the east, gaining coal, grain, oil, and above all national security. In the west, too, the Reich would have to be strengthened. The French would ‘have to bleed for that’. But there it was a strategic, not an ethnic, question. ‘We must solve the ethnic (völkischen) questions in the east.’ Once the territory needed for the consolidation of Europe was in German hands, it was his intention to build a gigantic fortification, like the limes of Roman times, to separate Asia from Europe. He went on with his vision of a countryside settled by farmer-soldiers, building up a population of 250 million within seventy or eighty years. Then Germany would be safe against all future threats. It should not be difficult, he claimed, to preserve the ethnic-German (völkisch) character of the conquered territories. ‘That would also be the actual meaning of this war. For the serious sacrifice of blood could only be justified through later generations gaining from it the blessing of waving cornfields.’ Nice though it would be to acquire a few colonies to provide rubber or coffee, ‘our colonial territory is in the east. There are to be found fertile black earth and iron, the bases of our future wealth.’ He ended his vision of the future with the vaguest notion of what he understood as a social revolution. The National Socialist Movement, he said, had to make sure that the war did not end in a capitalist victory, but in a victory of the people. A new society would have to be constructed out of the victory, one resting not on money, status, or name, but on courage and test of character (Bewährung). He was confident that victory would be Germany’s. Once the ‘business in the east’ was finished — in the summer, it was to be hoped — ‘then the war is practically won for us. Then we will be in the position of conducting a large-scale pirate-war against the Anglo-Saxon powers, which in the long run they will not be able to withstand.’¹³⁰