Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

After lunch, sitting together in the great hall of the Berghof, with its huge window opening out to a breathtaking panorama of the Alps, Goebbels fully expounded his argument. He expressed his doubts about groundless optimism, ‘not to say illusions’, about the war. ‘Total war’ had remained a mere slogan. The crisis had to be recognized before it could be overcome. A thorough reform of the Wehrmacht was urgently necessary. Göring, he had observed (here came the usual attacks on the Reich Marshal), lived in a complete fantasy world. The Propaganda Minister extended his attack to the remainder of the top military leadership. The Führer needed a Scharnhorst and a Gneisenau — the Prussian military heroes who had created the army that repelled Napoleon — not a Keitel and a Fromm (commander of the Reserve Army), he declared. Goebbels promised that he could raise a million soldiers through a rigorous reorganization of the Wehrmacht and draconian measures in the civilian sphere. The people expected and wanted tough measures. Germany was close to being plunged into a crisis which could remove any possibility of taking such measures with any prospect of success. It was necessary to act with realism, wholly detached from any defeatism, and to act now.¹⁷¹

Characteristically, Hitler began his wordy reply with a potted history of the Wehrmacht. He accepted that there were some weaknesses in the organization of the Wehrmacht, and that few of its leaders were National Socialists. But to dispense with them during the war would be a nonsense (Unding), since there were no replacements. He defended Keitel and Fromm. The overblown organization of the Wehrmacht had been necessary for the occupation of the huge areas of the east that had been conquered. Though these had now largely been lost, a reorganization could not take place overnight. Hitler was bitter at the ‘absolute failure’ of the Luftwaffe, which he laid at Göring’s door. His own wishes had been ignored by Luftwaffe technical experts. Reform in the Luftwaffe was needed, and had already been started. He could not rely upon his generals, who had ‘swindled’ him the whole time. The war had not produced a single genius among them.

Despite his criticisms, his answer could offer Goebbels little encouragement. All in all, Hitler concluded, the time was not ripe for the extraordinary measures the Propaganda Minister wanted. Despite Goebbels’s pleas, he wanted to proceed for the time being with the tried and tested methods. He thought that they would come through the present crises with such methods. If more serious crises took place — among them, entry of Turkey on the Allied side, the collapse of Finland, inability (which he acknowledged as a possibility) to hold the eastern front, or failure to break the bridgeheads in the west — then he would be ready to take ‘completely abnormal measures’. Goebbels summed up: ‘The Führer does not regard the crisis as sufficiently serious and compelling that it could persuade him to pull out all the stops.’¹⁷² Hitler told Goebbels that the instant he felt the need to resort to ‘final measures’, he would bestow the appropriate powers on the Propaganda Minister. But ‘for the time being he wanted to proceed along the evolutionary, not revolutionary, way’. Goebbels went away empty-handed, leaving what he regarded as one of the most serious meetings he had had with Hitler sorely disappointed.¹⁷³

Goebbels was evidently dubious about Hitler’s continued positive gloss on military prospects. He doubted, correctly, the reassurances that it ought to be possible to hold Cherbourg until the two new divisions from the east could arrive; and Hitler’s view that a massive panzer attack could then destroy the Allied bridgehead. On the ‘wonder-weapons’, however, the Führer’s expectations seemed realistic enough to the Propaganda Minister. Hitler did not, thought the Propaganda Minister, over-estimate the impact of the V1 (short for Vergeltungswaffe-1 — ‘Retaliation Weapon 1’), as Goebbels had now dubbed the flying-bomb. But he hoped to have the A4 rocket (later renamed the V2) ready for launching by August, and looked to its destructive power to help decide the war. Hitler ruled out once again any prospect of an ‘arrangement’ with Britain, but was less inclined — so Goebbels inferred — to dismiss the possibility at some point of coming to terms with the Soviet Union. This could not be entertained given the present military situation, though a significant shift in fortunes in the Far East might alter the position. As Goebbels realized, however, this was entering the realm of vague musings.¹⁷⁴