Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

To be closer to the southern front, Hitler moved his headquarters on 16 July to a new location, given the name ‘Werwolf, near Vinnitsa in the Ukraine.¹⁹⁴ Sixteen planes, their engines already whirring, waited on the runway at the Wolf’s Lair that day for Hitler and his entourage to take them on a three-hour flight to their new surrounds. After a car-ride along rutted roads, they finally arrived at the damp, mosquito-infested huts that were to be their homes for the next three and a half months.¹⁹⁵ Even the Wolf’s Lair began to seem idyllic. At the ‘Werwolf, the days were stiflingly hot, the nights, even in high summer, distinctly chilly. The mosquitoes were an even greater plague than they had been in East Prussia. Everyone had to take each day a bitter-tasting medicine called Atibrin as a precaution against malaria. Halder was pleased enough with the layout of the new headquarters. Hitler’s secretaries were less happy with their cramped quarters. As at Rastenburg, they had little to do and were bored. A visit to a local abattoir and meat-processing plant, collective farm, or decrepit theatre in the nearby town was, apart from watching old films, the closest thing to escapism.¹⁹⁶ For Hitler, the daily routine was unchanged from that in the Wolf’s Lair. At meals — his own often consisted of no more than a plate of vegetables with apples to follow — he could still appear open, relaxed, engaged.¹⁹⁷ As always, he monopolized dinner-table topics of conversation on a wide variety of topics that touched on his interests or obsessions. These included the evils of smoking, the construction of a motorway system throughout the eastern territories, the deficiencies of the legal system, the achievements of Stalin as a latter-day Ghengis Khan, keeping the standard of living low among the subjugated peoples, the need to remove the last Jews from German cities, and the promotion of private initiative rather than a state-controlled economy.¹⁹⁸

Away from the supper soliloquies, however, tension mounted once more between Hitler and his military leaders. The military advance continued to make ground. But the numbers of Soviet prisoners captured steadily diminished. This was endlessly discussed at FHQ.¹⁹⁹ Hitler’s military advisers were worried. They took it that the Soviets were pulling back their forces in preparation for a big counter-offensive, probably on the Volga, in the Stalingrad region.²⁰⁰ Halder had warned as early as 12 July of concern at the front that the enemy, recognizing German envelopment tactics, was avoiding direct fight and withdrawing to the south.²⁰¹ Hitler’s view was, however, that the Red Army was close to the end of its tether. He pressed all the more for a speedy advance.²⁰²

His impulsive, though sometimes — as the Voronezh episode had shown — unclear or ambiguous command-style caused constant difficulties for the operational planners. But the essential problem was more far-reaching. Hitler felt compelled by two imperatives: time, and material resources. The offensive had to be completed before the might of Allied resources came fully into play. And possession of the Caucasian oil-fields would, in his view, both be decisive in bringing the war in the east to a successful conclusion, and provide the necessary platform to continue a lengthy war against the Anglo-Saxon powers.²⁰³ If this oil were not gained, Hitler had said, the war would be lost for Germany within three months.²⁰⁴ Following his own logic, Hitler had, therefore, no choice but to stake everything on the ambitious strike to the Caucasus in a victorious summer offensive.²⁰⁵ Even if some sceptical voices could be heard, Halder and the professionals in Army High Command had favoured the offensive. But the gap, already opened up the previous summer, between them and the dictator was rapidly widening. What Hitler saw as the negativity, pessimism, and timidity of Army High Command’s traditional approaches drove him into paroxysms of rage. Army planners for their part had cold feet about what increasingly seemed to them a reckless gamble carried out by dilettante methods, more and more likely to end in disaster. But they could not now pull out of the strategy which they had been party to implementing. A catastrophe at Stalingrad was the heavy price that would soon be paid. The German war effort had set in train its own self-destructive dynamic.