Immersed in military matters and facing calamity on all sides, Hitler was in no mood to travel through a war-weary Reich to address the Party’s ‘Old Guard’ as usual on 8 November, the anniversary of the Putsch in 1923 and the most sacred date in the Nazi calendar. Goebbels had tried in September to persuade Hitler to speak to the German people again, at least through a brief radio broadcast. Hitler had agreed in principle, but wanted to await developments in Hungary. This was unintelligible to Goebbels. But the coup under preparation to prevent Hungary’s defection was the only potential success in view for Hitler. And he evidently felt as always that he needed some success to proclaim if speaking to the German people, both to stir up morale at home and for consumption outside Germany.
Goebbels wanted an early broadcast, but, predictably, nothing came of the idea. Then Hitler’s illness intervened and any hopes of a speech disappeared.284 The dangers of a bombing-raid to coincide with a public speech as normal in the Löwenbräukeller in Munich probably also contributed to its cancellation this year. Instead, a pale shadow of the normal event was scheduled to take place for the first time not on the actual anniversary of the Putsch, but on the following Sunday, 12 November, in Munich. Its centrepiece was a proclamation by Hitler to be read out by Himmler. As Goebbels pointed out, this had nothing like the effect of hearing Hitler himself, particularly when read out in Himmler’s cold diction.285
The proclamation itself, despite Goebbels’s praise for its content and style, could only have been a disappointment for those hoping for news of some reversal of war fortunes or — the desire of most people — a hint that the war would soon be over. Hitler did not even refer directly to events at the front. A lengthy preamble reasserted the principles of National Socialism and drew the faintest of parallels between the current struggle and the crises the Party had mastered after 1923 and in gaining power ten years later. The fight for national survival against enemies intent upon the ‘annihilation of our people [and] the eradication and thereby ending of its existence’ was as usual underlined, as was the ‘satanic will to persecution and destruction’ of Jewry.286 The ‘salvation of Europe from the Bolshevik monster’ could only be brought about by the German Reich under National Socialist leadership.287 He went on to berate the ‘betrayal on betrayal’ that had beset Germany over the previous two years, saving his most poisonous bile for the ‘criminals’ within who had tried to stab Germany in the back.288 He praised the bravery of the Wehrmacht and, quite especially, of the home front. He insisted that eventual triumph would come. And he made it clear that as long as he was alive, there would be no capitulation, no end to the fighting. His opponents were right in one thing, he said: ‘As long as I live, Germany will not suffer the fate of the European states inundated by Bolshevism.’289 He was, he said, ‘unshakeable in his will to give the world to follow a no less praiseworthy example in this struggle than great Germans have given in the past’.290 In this struggle, his own life was of no consequence. It was a veiled hint that what now remained for him to fight for was his place in history. The ‘heroic’ struggle he envisaged, one of Wagnerian proportions, ruled out any contemplation of capitulation, the shameful act of 1918. The fight to the last, it seemed clear, was destined to drag down to destruction the German people itself with the ‘heroic’ self-destruction of its warlord.
The warlord came close in the days following his speech, in fact, almost for the first time, even in private, to admitting the war was lost. His own end was now starting to occupy his mind. When Jodl recommended moving Führer Headquarters to Berlin, using the coming Ardennes offensive as an argument, Hitler stated that he would not leave East Prussia again.291 Perhaps a renewed bout of illness, now affecting his throat, prompted his depressed mood.292 It may also have encouraged him to agree with Bormann that the time had indeed finally come to move his headquarters from East Prussia, since it had been established that he needed a minor operation in Berlin to remove a polyp from his vocal cords.293 On the afternoon of 20 November, Hitler and his entourage boarded his special train bound for Berlin and left the Wolf’s Lair for good.
