Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

Hitler seemed calm, and looked well compared with his condition in recent months, when Goebbels accompanied him to the Tea House on the afternoon of 5 June. Earlier, he had told the Propaganda Minister that the plans for retaliation were now so advanced that he would be ready to unleash 300-400 of the new pilotless flying-bombs on London within a few days.¹³² (He had, in fact, given the order for a major air-attack on London, including use of these new weapons, on 16 May.)¹³³ He repeated how confident he was that the invasion, when it came, would be repulsed. Rommel, he said, was equally confident.¹³⁴ The field-marshal indeed appeared to have overcome much of his initial scepticism of the previous autumn, when Hitler had made him responsible for the Atlantic defences (though Goebbels thought the report by one of his underlings, following a visit to Rommel, ‘to some extent alarming’).¹³⁵ On 4 June Rommel had even left for a few days’ leave with his family near Ulm. Other commanding officers in the west were equally unaware of the imminence of the invasion, though reconnaissance had provided telegraph warnings that very day of things stirring on the other side of the channel. Nothing of this was reported to OKW at Berchtesgaden or, even more astonishingly, to General Friedrich Dollmann’s 7th Army directly on the invasion front.¹³⁶

On their walk to the Tea House, Goebbels spotted no signs of depression or mental tiredness in Hitler. He was still unfolding plans for a future after the war. He ruled out any arrangement with Britain. He thought the country finished, and was determined, given half an opportunity, to impart the death-blow. The English plutocracy had planned, he went on, for war against Germany since 1936. Britain and Italy would eventually be made to pay for the war. Goebbels returned from the walk with fears for the course of the war should Hitler’s health not hold up. The Propaganda Minister entrusted one wish to his diary, following discussion of a number of personnel issues (not least, his long-standing criticisms of Göring and Ribbentrop): that the Führer ‘may become harder in his material and personnel decisions than he actually is’.¹³⁷ Among such decisions, Goebbels was still hoping that Hitler would provide him with full powers to introduce genuine ‘total war’ measures — far more radical than those adopted so far — within Germany. For this, the Propaganda Minister would still have to wait some weeks.

That evening, Goebbels was back at the Berghof. After the meal Hitler and his entourage viewed the latest newsreel. The discussion moved to films and the theatre. Eva Braun joined in with pointed criticism of some productions. ‘We sit then around the hearth until two o’clock at night,’ wrote Goebbels, ‘exchange reminiscences, take pleasure in the many fine days and weeks we have had together. The Führer inquires about this and that. All in all, the mood is like the good old times.’ A thunderstorm broke as Goebbels left the Berghof. It was four hours since the first news started to trickle in that the invasion would begin that night. Goebbels had been disinclined to believe the tapping into enemy communications. But coming down the Obersalzberg to his quarters in Berchtesgaden, the news was all too plain; ‘the decisive day of the war had begun.’¹³⁸