Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

Hitler’s optimism was soon shown to be utterly misplaced. The redeployment of troops to Italy weakened the chances of staving off the Soviet offensive. And the failure to erect the ‘eastern wall’ of fortifications along the Dnieper during the two years that it had been in German hands now proved costly. The speed of the Soviet advance gave no opportunity to construct any solid defence line.²³¹ By the end of September the Red Army had been able to cross the Dnieper and establish important bridgeheads on the west banks of the great river. The German bridgehead at Zaporozhye was lost in early October. By then, the Wehrmacht had been pushed back about 150 miles along the southern front. German and Romanian troops were also cut off on the Crimea, which Hitler refused to evacuate fearing, as of old, the opportunities it would give for air-attacks on Romanian oil-fields, and concerned about the message it would send to Turkey and Bulgaria. By the end of the month, the Red Army had pushed so far over the big bend of the Dnieper in the south that any notion of the Germans holding their intended defensive line was purely fanciful. To the north, the largest Soviet city in German hands, Kiev, was recaptured on 5 — 6 November. Manstein wanted to make the attempt to retake it. For Hitler, the lower Dnieper and the Crimea were more important. Control of the lower Dnieper held the key to the protection of the manganese ores of Nikopol, vital for the German steel industry. And should the Red Army again control the Crimea, the Romanian oil-fields would once more be threatened from the air.²³² But, whatever Hitler’s thirst for new military successes, the reality was that by the end of 1943, the limitless granaries of the Ukraine and the industrial heartlands of the northern Caucasus, seen by Hitler on so many occasions as vital to the war effort (as well as the source of future German prosperity in the ‘New Order’), were irredeemably lost.²³³

Not lost, however, was the war against the Jews — in Hitler’s eyes, the authors of the entire world conflagration. As we noted, Hitler had agreed in June to Himmler’s wish to complete the ‘evacuation’ of the Polish Jews. By autumn 1943, ‘Aktion Reinhard’ was terminated: in the region of 1½ million Jews had been killed in the gas chambers of extermination camps at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka in eastern Poland.²³⁴ The SS leadership were now pressing hard for the extension of the ‘Final Solution’ to all remaining corners of the Nazi Imperium — even those where the deportations were likely to have diplomatic repercussions. Among these were Denmark and Italy.

The Nazi authorities were well aware that any move against Danish Jews was likely to result in public protests and sour relations with the occupying power. There was little antisemitism in the land. The tiny Jewish minority was fully integrated into Danish society. An attack on the Jews would be seen widely as an assault on Danish citizens. Even so, the SS leadership decided in summer that the time was ripe. Werner Best, the Reich Plenipotentiary in Denmark, pressed for action to be taken. In September, Hitler complied with his request to have the Danish Jews deported, dismissing Ribbentrop’s anxieties about a possible general strike and other civil disobedience. Though these did not materialize, the round-up of Danish Jews was a resounding failure. Several hundred — under ten per cent of the Jewish population — were captured and deported to Theresienstadt. Most escaped. Countless Danish citizens helped the overwhelming majority of their Jewish countrymen — in all 7,900 persons, including a few hundred non-Jewish marital partners — to flee across the Sound to safety in neutral Sweden in the most remarkable rescue action of the war.²³⁵