Hitler had intended around this time to move back to Vinnitsa. But the postponement of ‘Citadel’, the precarious situation in the Mediterranean, and problems with his own health made him decide suddenly to return from a short stay at the Wolf’s Lair to the Obersalzberg.139 He remained there until the end of June. During his weeks in the Bavarian Alps, the Ruhr district, Germany’s industrial heartland, continued to suffer devastation from the skies. In May there had been spectacular attacks on the big dams that supplied the area’s water. Had they been sustained, the damage done would have been incalculable. As it was, the dams could be repaired. Since the ‘dam-buster’ raids, the major cities of Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Bochum, Dortmund, and Wuppertal-Barmen had been laid waste in intensive night bombardment. The inadequacy of the air-defences was all too apparent. Hitler continued to vent his bile on Göring and the Luftwaffe.140 But his own powerlessness to do anything about it was exposed. Goebbels at least showed his face, touring the bombed-out cities, speaking at a memorial service in his home town of Elberfeld, and at a big rally in Dortmund.141 Hitler stayed in his alpine idyll. The Propaganda Minister thought a visit by the Führer pyschologically important for the population of the Ruhr. Though Goebbels had been impressed by the positive response he had encountered during his staged tour, more realistic impressions of morale provided in SD reports painted a different picture. Anger at the regime’s failure to protect them was widespread. The ‘Heil Hitler’ greeting had almost disappeared. Hostile remarks about the regime, and about Hitler personally, were commonplace.142
Hitler promised Goebbels towards the end of June that he would pay an extended visit to the devastated area. It was to take place ‘the next week, or the week after that’. Hitler knew only too well that this was out of the question. He had by then scheduled the beginning of ‘Citadel’ for the first week in July. And he expected the Allied landing off the Italian coast at any time. The human suffering of the Ruhr population had, ultimately, little meaning for him. ‘As regrettable as the personal losses are,’ he told Goebbels, ‘they have unfortunately to be taken on board in the interest of a superior war-effort
While on the Obersalzberg, Hitler was chiefly preoccupied with the prospect of an imminent invasion by the Allies in the south, and the approaching ‘Citadel’ offensive in the east.
He still thought that the Allied landing would come in Sardinia. Sicily was in his view secure enough, and could be held. (Since most of the island’s defenders were Italian, Hitler must have been either less confident than he seemed, or have amended his normally scathing assessment of the Italian armed forces.) He was determined not to retreat from Italy. There would be no withdrawal as far as the Po Valley, even were the Italians to pull out of the war. It was the first rule of the German conduct of war to fight away from the homeland. He thought the Italians more likely to give in bit by bit in deals with the enemy than to capitulate outright. His confidence in Mussolini had finally evaporated. It would be different, he thought, were the Duce still young and fit. But he was old and worn out. The royal family could not be trusted an inch. And — he added a characteristic last reflection — the Jews had not been done away with
As the war had turned remorselessly against Germany, the beleaguered Führer had reverted ever more to his obsession with Jewish responsibility for the conflagration. In his Manichean world-view, the fight to the finish between the forces of good and evil — the Aryan race and the Jews — was reaching its climax. There could be no relenting in the struggle to wipe out Jewry.
