A dispute in Munich between Gauleiter Paul Giesler (brother of court-architect, Hermann) and the corrupt, roughneck city councillor Christian Weber, one of Hitler’s longest-standing cronies, had to go as far as the Führer himself to find its resolution. Weber was a classical product of the Party’s early days in Munich. A former pub-bouncer and beer-hall bruiser, he had been elevated in the Third Reich to a host of honorary offices in the ‘capital city of the Movement’, with an apartment in the Residenz formerly inhabited by the Kings of Bavaria. He was detested locally for the way he flaunted the wealth and power his favour with Hitler had brought him. Some scurrilously thought his advancement was to keep him from spilling unwelcome secrets about the Führer’s lifestyle in the early years. But Hitler would have had other ways of handling such indirect blackmail. Weber had certainly rendered Hitler valuable service in the Munich street-fighting days. His rise to local riches and notoriety was simply a particularly colourful expression of the gross corruption that was an endemic feature of the Third Reich. But at any rate, as an ‘Old Fighter’ — literally — from the earliest times, and owner (among many other things, including a monopoly of the regional bus service) of the racecourse at Riem, Weber had to be placated.79 So, however, did Giesler, Hitler’s most important lieutenant in Bavaria, and a fanatical supporter of the ‘total war’ drive. Hitler’s judgement-of-Solomon ‘decision’ was that racing should be banned at Riem (on the grounds that it could only be reached by car and bus, thus causing unnecessary petrol usage), but allowed in the city centre on the Theresienwiese.
Shortly afterwards he noticed a newspaper advertisement for horse-racing in Berlin and remarked to Bormann that Munich should not be disadvantaged against the Reich capital. Racing was again to be permitted in Riem. As the issue rumbled on, various authorities became involved. Lammers and Bormann exchanged letters. His opinion sought yet again, Hitler came up with the intriguing macro-economic reflection that betting absorbed surplus spending power. The Gauleiter continued their complaints. Finally, after six months of wrangling on an issue of such breathtaking triviality, Bormann and Lammers agreed, in accordance with ‘an expression of will of the Führer’, to permit horse-racing and bookmaking in general terms — but to leave the decision in each individual case to the respective Reich Defence Commissar.80 Ultimately, therefore, no decision had been taken, other than to leave matters to the whim of the Party bosses.
Little could demonstrate more clearly the absurdity of the dictatorship’s patterns of rule (or lack of them). Hitler’s power was intact. His imprimatur had been sought on several occasions by all parties concerned. No one else could settle the matter. But nor, except by the ultimate retreat from a decision, could Hitler. His wavering, fluctuating interventions — often evidently following the advice of the last person to have spoken to him — dragged out the affair. But it was scarcely rational in the first place that a head of state and commander of the armed forces should be repeatedly bothered in the middle of a world war by various underlings involved in petty disputes over horse-racing. The problem was, here as in other instances: he had delegated no genuine authority to the ‘Committee of Three’; they in turn had to call upon him at every point; and this was frequently necessary, as in the horse-racing case, because there was no central Reich body to reach sensibly agreed decisions and impose them as government policy. The failed experiment of the ‘Committee of Three’ showed conclusively that, however weak their structures, all forms of collective government were doomed by the need to protect the arbitrary ‘will of the Führer’. But it was increasingly impossible for this ‘will’ to be exercised in ways conducive to the functioning of a modern state, let alone one operating under the crisis conditions of a major war. As a system of government, Hitler’s dictatorship had no future.
<p>II</p>Matters at home were far from Hitler’s primary concern in the spring and summer of 1943. He was, in fact, almost solely preoccupied with the course of the war. The strain of this had left its mark on him. Guderian, back in favour after a long absence, was struck at their first meeting, on 20 February 1943, by the change in Hitler’s physical appearance since the last time he had seen him, back in mid-December 1941: ‘In the intervening fourteen months he had aged greatly. His manner was less assured than it had been and his speech was hesitant; his left hand trembled.’81
