During February, Hitler, perusing the international press summarized for him as usual in the overview provided by his Press Chief Otto Dietrich, had seen a press notice from Stockholm stating that a general staff officer of the army had been designated to shoot him. SS-Standartenführer Johann Rattenhuber, responsible for Hitler’s personal safety, was instructed to tighten security at the Wolf’s Lair. All visitors were to be carefully screened; not least, briefcases were to be thoroughly searched. Hitler had reservations, however, about drawing security precautions too tightly.56 In any case, within days the matter lost its urgency since he decided to leave the Wolf’s Lair and move to the Berghof, near Berchtesgaden. The recent air-raids on Berlin and increasing allied air-supremacy meant that the prospect of a raid on Führer Headquarters could no longer be ruled out. It was essential, therefore, to strengthen the walls and roofs of the buildings. While workers from the Todt Organization were carrying out the extensive work, headquarters would be transferred to Berchtesgaden.57 On the evening of 22 February, having announced that he would be speaking to the ‘Old Guard’ in Munich on the 24th at the annual celebration of the announcement of the Party Programme in 1920, he left the Wolf’s Lair in his special train and headed south.58 He would not return from the Berghof until mid-July.
He had been unwell in the middle of the month. His intestinal problems were accompanied by a severe cold. The trembling in his left leg was noticeable.59 He also complained of blurred vision in his right eye, diagnosed a fortnight later by an ophthalmic specialist as caused by minute blood-vessel haemorrhaging.60 His health problems were by now chronic, and mounting.61 But he was a good deal better by the time he arrived on 24 February in one of his old haunts, Munich’s Hofbräuhaus, to deliver his big speech to a large gathering of fervent loyalists, the Party’s ‘Old Guard’ as they called themselves.62 In this company, Hitler was in his element. His good speaking-form returned. The old certitudes sufficed. He believed, the assembled fanatics heard, more firmly than ever in the victory that toughness in holding out would bring; retaliation was on its way in massive attacks on London; the allied invasion, when it came, would be swiftly repelled. His peroration reached culmination-point when he told his wildly enthusiastic audience, which interrupted constantly with rapturous applause, that the road from the promulgation of the Party Programme to the takeover of power had been far harder and more hopeless than that which the German people had to go down to attain victory.
He would go his way without compromise. He linked this to the ‘Jewish Question’: just as the Jews had been ‘smashed down’ in Germany, so they would be in the entire world. The Jews of England and America — held as always to blame for the war — could expect what had already happened to the Jews of Germany. It was a crude attack on the prime Nazi ideological target as compensation for the lack of any tangible military success. But it was exactly what this audience wanted to hear. They loved it.63 Many of them were less enamoured with the evening after the speech, spent in a cold and damp air-raid shelter, fearing a heavy raid on Munich which did not materialize.64 By then, Hitler had left Munich and headed for the Berghof — its alpine splendour now also affected by the danger from the air, covered by camouflage netting, its great hall dimly lit, connected with newly constructed passages to air-raid bunkers.65
At the beginning of March, Hitler summoned Goebbels to the Berghof. The immediate reason was the prospect of the imminent defection of Finland.66 In fact, for the time being this proved a false alarm. Finland would eventually secede only six months later.67 But the meeting with Goebbels on 3 March was, as usual, not confined to a specific issue, and prompted another
He told Goebbels that, in the light of the Finnish crisis, he was now determined to put an end to the continued ‘treachery’ in Hungary. The government would be deposed and arrested, the head of state Admiral Horthy placed under German ‘protection’, the troops disarmed, and a new regime installed. Then the Hungarian aristocracy and, especially, the Budapest Jews (who, naturally, were taken to be behind the problem) could be tackled. Weapons, manpower, oil, and foodstuffs to be confiscated from Hungary would all stand Germany in good stead. The whole issue would be dealt with as soon as possible.68
