Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

The previous autumn, having as we noted removed top priority from production of the Me262 because of its heavy fuel-consumption, Hitler had changed his mind. He had been led to believe — possibly it was a misunderstanding — by the designer, Professor Willi Messerschmitt, that the jet, once in service, could be used not as a fighter, but as a bomber to attack Britain and to play a decisive role in repelling the coming invasion, wreaking havoc on the beaches as Allied troops were disembarking. Göring, at least as unrealistic as his Leader in his expectations, promised the jet-bombers would be available by May.¹¹⁸ At his meeting with Speer and Milch in January, when he demanded accelerated production of the jet, Hitler had stated, to the horror of the Luftwaffe’s technical staff, that he wanted to deploy it as a bomber. Arguments to the contrary were of no avail.¹¹⁹

Now, on 23 May, in a meeting at the Berghof with Göring, Saur, and Milch about aircraft production, he heard mention of the Me262 as a fighter. He interrupted. He had presumed, he stated, that it was being built as a bomber. It transpired that his instructions of the previous autumn, unrealistic as they were, had been simply ignored. Hitler exploded in fury, ordering the Me262 — despite all technical objections levelled by the experts present — to be built exclusively as a bomber. Göring lost no time in passing the brickbats down the line to the Luftwaffe construction experts. But he had to tell Hitler that the major redesign needed for the plane would now delay production for five months.¹²⁰ Whether fuel would by that time be available for it was another matter. Heavy American air-raids on fuel plants in central and eastern Germany on 12 May, to be followed by even more destructive raids at the end of the month, along with Allied attacks, carried out from bases in Italy, on the Romanian oil-refineries near Ploesti, halved German fuel production. Nimbly taking advantage of Göring’s latest embarrassment, Speer had no trouble in persuading Hitler to transfer to his ministry full control over aircraft production.¹²¹

Three days after the wrangle about the Me262, another, larger, gathering took place on the Obersalzberg. A sizeable number of generals and other senior officers, who had been participants in ideological training courses and were ready to return to the front, had been summoned to the Berghof to hear a speech by Hitler — one of several such speeches he gave between autumn 1943 and summer 1944.¹²² They assembled on 26 May in the Platterhof, the big hotel adjacent to the Berghof on the site of the far more modest Pension Moritz, where Hitler had stayed in the 1920s. Two days earlier, they had been addressed by Reichsführer-SS Himmler, who had sought to strengthen their National Socialist commitment by emphasizing how the ‘Jewish Question’, a matter ‘decisive for the internal security of the Reich and Europe’, had been ‘solved without compromise, according to command and rational understanding (verstandesmäßiger Erkenntnis).’¹²³ The ‘Final Solution’ was being used both to harden fighting morale — and to point out to the military commanders about to head for the front that they and the leaders of the regime were all in the same boat, all complicitous in the killing of the Jews. Hitler spoke to the officers that afternoon. His purpose, like Himmler’s, was to cement their identity as a group with the ideals of National Socialism that he embodied.¹²⁴ And like Himmler, he would refer in unmistakable terms to what was happening to the Jews.

After a lengthy preamble outlining, as usual, how he came to his own political convictions and leadership of party and state, Hitler expounded the virtues of intolerance, based upon his social-Darwinistic principles, emphasizing that ‘the whole of life is a perpetual intolerance’, that there was ‘no tolerance in nature’ which ‘destroys (vernichtet) everything incapable of life’.¹²⁵ He went on to stress the leadership qualities to be found only in the Nordic race, the forging of a new classless society under National Socialism, and the glorious future that would follow final victory. A central passage in the speech touched on the ‘Final Solution’. Hitler spoke of the Jews as a ‘foreign body’ in the German people which, though not all had understood why he had to proceed ‘so brutally and ruthlessly’, it had been essential to expel.¹²⁶