Meanwhile, the situation in North Africa was giving grounds for the gravest concern. Some of Hitler’s closest military advisers, Jodl among them, had been quietly resigned to the complete loss of North Africa as early as December 1942.100 Hitler himself had hinted at one point that he was contemplating the evacuation of German troops.101 But no action had followed. He was much influenced by the views of the Commander-in-Chief South, Field-Marshal Kesselring, one of nature’s optimists and, like most in high places in the Third Reich, compelled in any case to exude optimism whatever his true sentiments and however bleak the situation was in reality.102 In dealings with Hitler — as with other top Nazi leaders whose mentality was attuned to his — it seldom paid to be a realist. Too easily, realism could be seen as defeatism. Hitler needed optimists to pander to him — yet another form of ‘working towards the Führer’. In the military arena, this reinforced the chances of serious strategic blunders.
In March, buoyed by Manstein’s success at Kharkhov, Hitler had declared that the holding of Tunis would be decisive for the outcome of the war. It was, therefore, a top priority.103 With the refusal to contemplate any withdrawal, the next military disaster beckoned. When Below flew south at the end of the month to view the North African front and report back to Hitler, even Kesselring was unable to hide the fact that Tunis could not be held. Colonel-General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, who had taken over the North African command from the exhausted and dispirited Rommel, was of the same opinion. Kesselring’s staff were even more pessimistic: they saw no chance of successfully fending off an Allied crossing from Tunis to Sicily once — which they regarded as a certainty — North Africa had fallen. When Below reported back, Hitler said little. It seemed to his Luftwaffe adjutant that he had already written off North Africa and was inwardly preparing himself for the eventual defection of his Italian partners to the enemy.104
In early April, Hitler had spent the best part of four days at the restored baroque palace of Klessheim, near Salzburg, shoring up Mussolini’s battered morale — half urging, half browbeating the Duce to keep up the fight, knowing how weakened he would be through the massive prestige blow soon to descend in North Africa. Worn down by the strain of war and depression, Mussolini, stepping down from his train with assistance, looked a ‘broken old man’ to Hitler.105 The Duce also made a subdued impression on interpreter Dr Paul Schmidt as he pleaded forlornly for a compromise peace in the east in order to bolster defences in the west, ruling out the possibility of defeating the USSR.106 Dismissing such a notion out of hand, Hitler reminded Mussolini of the threat that the fall of Tunis would pose for Fascism in Italy. He left him with the impression ‘that there can be no other salvation for him than to achieve victory with us or to die’.107 He exhorted him to do the utmost to use the Italian navy to provide supplies for the forces there. The remainder of the visit consisted largely of monologues by Hitler — including long digressions about Prussian history — aimed at stiffening Mussolini’s resistance.108 Hitler was subsequently satisfied that this had been achieved.109
The talks with Mussolini amounted to one of a series of meetings with his allies that Hitler conducted during April, while staying at the Berghof. King Boris of Bulgaria, Marshal Antonescu of Romania, Admiral Horthy of Hungary, Prime Minister Vidkun Quisling of Norway, President Tiso of Slovakia, ‘Poglavnik’ (Leader) Ante Pavelic of Croatia, and Prime Minister Pierre Laval from Vichy France all visited the Berghof or Kiessheim by the end of the month.110 In each case, the purpose was to stiffen resolve — partly by cajoling, partly by scarcely veiled threats — and to keep faint-hearts or waverers tied to the Axis cause.
Hitler let Antonescu know that he was aware of tentative approaches made by Romanian ministers to the Allies. He posed, as usual, a stark choice of outright victory or ‘complete destruction’ in a fight to the end for ‘living space’ in the east. Part of Hitler’s implicit argument, increasingly, in attempting to prevent support from seeping away was to play on complicity in the persecution of the Jews. His own paranoia about the responsibility of the Jews for the war and all its evils easily led into the suggestive threat that boats had been burned, there was no way out, and retribution in the event of a lost war would be terrible. The hint of this was implicit in his disapproval of Antonescu’s treatment of the Jews as too mild, declaring that the more radical the measures the better it was when tackling the Jews.111
