Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

‘The year 1944 will make tough and severe demands of all Germans. The course of the war, in all its enormity, will reach its critical point during this year. We are fully confident that we will successfully surmount it.’¹ This, and the prospect of new cities rising resplendently after the war from the bombed-out ruins, was all Hitler had to offer readers of his New Year proclamation in 1944. Fewer than ever of them were able to share his confidence. For the embattled soldiers at the front, Hitler’s message was no different. The military crisis of 1943 had been brought about, he told them, by sabotage and treachery by the French in North Africa and the Italians following the overthrow of Mussolini. But the greatest crisis in German history had been triumphantly mastered. However hard the fighting in the east had been, ‘Bolshevism has not achieved its goal.’ He glanced at the western Allies, and at the future: ‘The plutocratic western world can undertake its threatened attempt at a landing where it wants: it will fail!’²

Since Germany had been forced on to the defensive, experiencing only setbacks, Hitler had not changed his tune. His stance had become immobilized, fossilized. In his view, the military disasters had been the consequence of betrayal, incompetence, disobedience of orders, and, above all, weakness. He conceded not a single error or misjudgement on his own part. No capitulation; no surrender; no retreat; no repeat of 1918; hold out at all costs, whatever the odds: this was the unchanging message. Alongside this went the belief — unshakeable (apart, perhaps, from his innermost thoughts and bouts of depression during sleepless nights) but an item of blind faith, not resting on reason — that the strength to hold out would eventually lead to a turning of the tide, and to Germany’s final victory. In public, he expressed his unfounded optimism through references to the grace of Providence. As he put it to his soldiers on 1 January 1944, after overcoming the defensive period then returning to the attack to impose devastating blows on the enemy, ‘Providence will bestow victory on the people that has done most to earn it.’ His instinctive belief in reward for the strongest remained intact. ‘If, therefore, Providence grants life as the prize to those who have fought and defended the most courageously, then our people will find mercy from the just arbiter who at all times gave victory to the most meritorious.’³

However hollow such sentiments sounded to men at the various fronts, suffering untold hardships, enduring hourly danger, often realizing they would never see their loved ones again, they were, for Hitler himself, far from mere cynical propaganda. He had to believe these ideas — and did, certainly down to the summer of 1944, if not longer. The references, in public and private, to ‘Providence’ and ‘Fate’ increased as his own control over the course of the war declined.⁴ The views on the course of the war which he expressed to his generals, to other Nazi leaders (including private conversations with Goebbels), and to his immediate entourage gave no inkling that his own resolve was wavering, or that he had become in any way resigned to the prospect of defeat. If it was an act, then it was one brilliantly sustained, and remained substantially unchanged whatever the context or personnel involved. ‘It is impressive, with what certainty the Führer believes in his mission,’ noted Goebbels in his diary in early June 1944.⁵ Others who saw Hitler frequently, in close proximity, and were less impressionable than Goebbels, thought the same.⁶ Without the inner conviction, Hitler would have been unable to sway those around him, as he continued so often to do, to find new resolve. Without it, he would not have engaged so fanatically in bitter conflicts with his military leaders. Without it, he would have been incapable, not least, of sustaining in himself the capacity to continue, despite increasingly overwhelming odds.