Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

By the time of the evening military briefing in the Führer Headquarters, the sensational news from Italy had broken, though there was still not complete clarity. Almost the entire session was taken up with the implications. Since Italy had not pulled out of the war, plans to occupy the country in such an event — code-named ‘Alarich’ — could not be put into operation. But in a highly agitated mood, Hitler demanded immediate action to occupy Rome and depose the new regime. He denounced what had taken place as ‘naked treachery’, describing Badoglio as ‘our grimmest enemy’.¹⁷⁸ He still had belief in Mussolini — so long as he was propped up by German arms. Presuming the Duce still at liberty, he wanted him brought straight away to Germany. He was confident that in that event the situation could still be remedied. He fumed that he would send troops to Rome the next day to arrest the ‘rabble’ — the entire government, the King, the Crown Prince, Badoglio, the ‘whole bunch’. In two or three days there would then be another coup.¹⁷⁹ He had Göring — ‘ice-cold in the most serious crises’, as he had repeatedly stated at midday, the Reich Marshal’s failings as head of the Luftwaffe temporarily forgotten — telephoned and told him to come as quickly as he could to the Wolf’s Lair.¹⁸⁰ Rommel was located in Salonika and summoned to present himself without delay. Hitler intended to put him in overall command in Italy.¹⁸¹ He wanted Himmler contacted.¹⁸² Goebbels, too, was telephoned and told to leave straight away for East Prussia. The situation, Goebbels acknowledged, was ‘extraordinarily critical.’¹⁸³ Ribbentrop, still not recovered from a chest infection, was ordered up from Fuschl, his residence in the Salzkammergut near Salzburg.¹⁸⁴ Soon after midnight, Hitler met his military leaders for the third time in little over twelve hours, frantically improvising details of the evacuation from Sicily and the planned occupation of Rome, together with the seizure of the members of the new Italian government.¹⁸⁵

At ten o’clock that morning, 26 July, Hitler met Goebbels and Göring, just arrived in FHQ. Ribbentrop joined them half an hour later. Goebbels had already been exchanging views on the situation with Himmler and Bormann. It was still only possible to guess at what had happened. But Goebbels was close to the mark in his own assumptions about how the coup had taken place. How a regime that had been in power for twenty-one years could be overthrown so quickly from within gave him pause for thought.¹⁸⁶ Could something similar take place closer to home? Hitler gave his own interpretation of the situation. He presumed that Mussolini had been forced out of power. Whether he was still alive was not known, but he would certainly be unfree. Hitler saw the forces of Italian freemasonry — banned by Mussolini but still at work behind the scenes — behind the plot. Ultimately, he claimed, the coup was directed at Germany since Badoglio would certainly come to an arrangement with the British and Americans to take Italy out of the war. The British would now look for the best moment for a landing in Italy — perhaps in Genoa in order to cut off German troops in the south. Military precautions to anticipate such a move had to be taken.

Hitler explained, too, his intention of transferring a parachute division, currently based in southern France, to Rome as part of the move to occupy the city. The King, Badoglio, and the members of the new government would be arrested and flown to Germany. Once they were in German hands, things would be different. Possibly Farinacci, who had escaped arrest by fleeing to the German embassy, and was now en route to FHQ, could be made head of a puppet government if Mussolini himself could not be rescued. Hitler saw the Vatican, too, as deeply implicated in the plot to oust Mussolini. In the military briefing just after midnight he had talked wildly of occupying the Vatican and ‘getting out the whole lot of swine’.¹⁸⁷ Goebbels and Ribbentrop dissuaded him from such rash action, certain to have damaging international repercussions. Hitler still pressed for rapid action to capture the new Italian government. Rommel, who by then had also arrived in FHQ and was earmarked for supreme command in Italy, opposed the improvised, high-risk, panicky response. He favoured a carefully prepared action; but that would probably take some eight days to put into place.¹⁸⁸ The meeting ended with the way through the crisis still unclear.