With the Italian crisis still at its height, the disastrous month of July drew to a close amid the heaviest air-raids to date. Between 24 and 30 July, the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command, using the release of aluminium strips to blind German radar, unleashed ‘Operation Gomorrha’ — a series of devastating raids on Hamburg, outdoing in death and destruction anything previously experienced in the air-war. Waves of incendiaries whipped up horrific fire-storms, turning the city into a raging inferno, consuming everything and everybody in their path. People suffocated in their thousands in cellars or were burnt to cinders on the streets. An estimated 30,000 people lost their lives; over half a million were left homeless; twenty-four hospitals, fifty-eight churches, and 277 schools lay in ruins; over 50 per cent of the city was completely gutted.199 As usual, Hitler revealed no sense of remorse at any human losses. He was chiefly concerned about the psychological impact. When he was given news that fifty German planes had mined the Humber estuary, he exploded: ‘You can’t tell the German people in this situation: that’s mined; 50 planes have laid mines! That has no effect at all… You only break terror through terror! We have to have counter-attacks. Everything else is rubbish.’200
Hitler mistook the mood of a people with whom he had lost touch. What they wanted, in their vast majority, was less the retaliation that was Hitler’s only thought than proper defence against the terror from the skies and — above all else — an end to the war that was costing them their homes and their lives. SD reports caught rumours of unrest which the police had had to suppress, and spoke — recalling 1918 — of a ‘November mood’ among the population.201 Gauleiter Karl Kaufmann repeatedly requested Hitler to visit the ruins of Germany’s second largest city. But the Führer would not even receive a party of those who had performed outstanding feats in the emergency services.202 Goebbels pleaded for Hitler to speak on the radio, even for only a quarter of an hour. ‘The Führer has not spoken to the public since Heroes’ Memorial Day [21 March],’ Goebbels added. ‘He has disappeared somewhat into the clouds. That’s not good for the practical war effort.’ Hitler agreed to speak — probably later in the week.203 Naturally, nothing came of it. That Hitler would not speak to the people was incomprehensible to Goebbels. ‘At any rate, the unrest among the broad masses has grown to such an extent that only a word from the Führer himself can again clarify matters,’ he ruminated. But Hitler adjudged the current situation ‘as unsuitable as could be imagined’.204 In any case, he remained, as he had been throughout the agony of Hamburg, more taken up with events in Italy.
Remarkably enough, despite the frenetic urgency of the crisis meetings following Mussolini’s deposition, the major military decisions had, in fact, been postponed or were left unimplemented. The flurry of activity had produced little. The war council to which his acolytes had been summoned post haste from all over the Reich had left matters in the air. The spontaneous ‘decisions’ taken in the lengthy military briefings — amid outbursts of menacing invective towards the Badoglio ‘clique’ — came in the main to nothing, or were toned down in the light of calmer professional judgement. Badoglio’s protestations that Italy’s commitment to the war was unchanged meant that Germany had to move cautiously. Wiser counsels had prevailed over Hitler’s impulsive urge to occupy Rome and depose the government. And though Hitler had still rejected any evacuation of Sicily, insistent that the enemy should not set foot on the Italian mainland, Kesselring had taken steps to prepare the ground for what proved a brilliantly planned evacuation on the night of 11 — 12 August, catching the Allies by surprise and allowing 40,000 German and 62,000 Italian troops, with their equipment, to escape to safety. The last German troops in Sicily were finally given the order to undertake a fighting withdrawal to the mainland on 17 August.205 The split command between Kesselring in the south and Rommel in the north of Italy had been left in place.206 But as August drew on, suspicions mounted that it would not be long before the Italians defected. And at the end of the month, directives for action in the event of an Italian defection, in the drawer for months and now refashioned under the code-name ‘Axis’, were issued.207
