Hitler categorically ruled out, as he always had done, any possibility of capitulation.403 He stated that any collapse of the German Reich was out of the question. But his further remarks betrayed the fact that he was contemplating precisely that. The event of such a collapse ‘would represent the ending of his life’, he declared. It was plain who, in such an eventuality, the scapegoats would be: the German people themselves. ‘Such a collapse could only be caused through the weakness of the people,’ Goebbels recorded Hitler as saying. ‘But if the German people turned out to be weak, they would deserve nothing else than to be extinguished by a stronger people; then one could have no sympathy for them.’404 The sentiment would stay with him to the end.
To the Party leadership, the backbone of his support, Hitler could speak in this way. The Gauleiter could be rallied by such rhetoric. They were after all fanatics as Hitler himself was. They were part of his ‘sworn community’. The responsibility of the Party for the radicalization of the ‘home front’ was music to their ears. In any case, whatever private doubts (if any) they harboured, they had no choice but to stick with Hitler. They had burnt their boats with him. He was the sole guarantor of their power.
The German people were less easily placated than Hitler’s immediate viceroys. When he spoke in Berlin to the nation for the first time since Stalingrad, on the occasion (which this year, of all years, he could not possibly avoid) of Heroes’ Memorial Day on 21 March 1943, his speech gave rise to greater criticism than any Hitler speech since he had become Chancellor.405
The speech was one of Hitler’s shortest. Goebbels was pleased that it was only fifteen pages long; it lessened the chances of being interrupted by the British air-raid that was feared and predicted.406 Hitler told Goebbels that he wanted to use the speech for another fierce attack on Bolshevism. He felt like an old propagandist, he said: propaganda meant repetition.407 Perhaps it was the anxiety, as Goebbels had hinted, about a possible air-raid which made Hitler race through his speech in such a rapid and dreary monotone. Whatever the reason, the routine assault on Bolshevism and on Jewry as the force behind the ‘merciless war’ could stir little enthusiasm. Disappointment was profound. Rumours revived about Hitler’s poor health — along with others that it had been a substitute who had spoken, while the real Führer was under house-arrest on the Obersalzberg suffering from a mental breakdown after Stalingrad. Extraordinary was the fact that Hitler never even directly mentioned Stalingrad in a ceremony meant to be devoted to the memory of the fallen and at a time where the trauma was undiminished. And his passing reference, at the end of his speech, to a figure of 542,000 German dead in the war was presumed to be far too low and received with rank incredulity.408
Reactions to the speech were a clear indicator that the German people’s bonds with Hitler were dissolving. This was no overnight phenomenon. But Stalingrad was the point at which the signs became unmistakable. There was no rebellion in the air; Hitler was right about that. The mood was sullenly depressed, anxious about the present, fearful of the future, above all else weary of the war; but not rebellious. To all but the few who had served the regime from the inside, had contacts in high places with recourse to the power of the military, and were now actively conspiring to bring about Hitler’s downfall, thoughts of overthrowing the regime could scarcely be entertained. The regime was far too strong, its capacity for repression far too great, its readiness to strike down all opposition far too evident (and becoming even more so as positive support waned and loyalties weakened). The reserves of hard-core Nazi support were still substantial. They could be found especially — though here, too, there were unmistakable signs of erosion — among members of a younger generation that had swallowed Nazi ideals in school, among many ordinary front soldiers desperately clinging to a ray of hope, and, naturally, most of all among Party activists who had combined fervent belief with careerism.409 Fanatical devotees of the Führer cult, who had not wavered in their adulation of Hitler, or who were implicated in the crimes against humanity which he had inspired, remained in control of the home front, itching to resort to any measures, however ruthless, to shore up the regime’s foundations. For the bulk of the population, there was no alternative to struggling on.
