The danger in the east would not, it was true, be fully repelled. ‘But we would stand armed for it in the future,’ he claimed. The next words showed that Goebbels knew how difficult his task was if he were to alter Hitler’s hitherto obdurate refusal to entertain any negotiations. ‘You, my Führer, will reject all that perhaps as Utopian,’ he stated. But were it to be attained, it would mark in the eyes of the people ‘the highest achievement of the German political art of war’. The war situation would be altered at one fell swoop. Germany would again have breathing space, freedom of movement, could regenerate itself and then, when necessary, ‘dole out the blows which would decide the war’.225
Goebbels waited impatiently for Hitler’s reactions to his memorandum. Eventually, he learnt that Hitler had read it, but then put it away without comment. A promised audience to discuss it with him never materialized.226 Hitler’s illness intervened. But in any case, there is no indication that Hitler took the slightest notice of his Propaganda Minister’s suggestion. His own plans ran along quite different lines. The idea of a western offensive, which he had hatched in mid-August,227 was taking concrete shape. He was contemplating a final attempt to turn the tide: using the last reserves of troops and weapons for an offensive through the Ardennes in late autumn or winter aimed at inflicting a significant blow on the western Allies by retaking Antwerp (depriving them of their major continental port) and even forcing them ‘back into the Atlantic’.228 ‘A single breakthrough on the western front! You will see!’ he told Speer. ‘That will lead to a collapse and panic among the Americans. We’ll drive through in the middle and take Antwerp. With that, they’ll have lost their supply harbour. And there’ll be a huge encirclement of the entire English army with hundreds of thousands of prisoners. Like it was in Russia!’229
The objective was to gain time to develop new weapons.230 From a new position of strength, he could then turn against the Russians.231 He was well aware that the ‘miracle weapons’ were, in their current state of deployment, incapable of bringing any decisive change in war fortunes, or of satisfying the exaggerated hopes that incessant propaganda had raised in them among the German public.232 When he had first seen the prototypes of the V2, Hitler had envisaged 5,000 of the rockets being directed against Britain in a massive initial onslaught.233 But when the eventual launch took place on 8 September, it proved possible only to dispatch twenty-five rockets in a period of ten days.234 They were little more than a pin-prick in the Allied thrust against Nazi Germany. Even so, Hitler expected a great deal from the further deployment of the weapon.235 By the end of the war, through the brutal exploitation of foreign workers, it had proved possible to aim over 3,000 V2s mainly at London, Antwerp, and Brussels. There was no defence against the missiles. Their terroristic effect was considerable, causing the deaths of 2,724 persons in England and many more in Belgium. Their military effect was, however, negligible.236
Meanwhile, the development of the one secret weapon certainly capable of affecting Germany’s war fortunes, the atomic bomb, had been worked on since the start of the war (though with only slow progress). The research was given special support by Speer in 1942 but, despite his offer of increased funding, was still nowhere near completion and — though the German nuclear scientists were unaware of it — lagged far behind advances made in the USA. There had seemed no need to force research on such a weapon during the early, triumphant phase of the war. By the time of Speer’s meeting with leading atomic scientists, including Otto Hahn and Werner Heisenberg, in mid-1942, a nuclear weapon was — as the Armaments Minister was told — theoretically possible but in practice several years off. Hitler, already aware in a general sense of the feasibility of an atomic bomb in the more distant future, took Speer’s report as confirmation that he would never live to see its deployment, that it could play no part in the present war. Consequently, he took no great interest in it. By this time, in any case, the resources needed to deploy it were simply not available — and diminishing fast. It is as well, nevertheless, that the bomb was not on offer: Hitler would not have hesitated for an instant to drop it on London and Moscow.237
