The man at the centre of the rapidly imploding system that had unleashed such unpredecented horror and misery boarded his special train at Ziegenberg, his western headquarters, on the evening of 15 January 1945 and, with his regular entourage of orderlies, secretaries, and adjutants, left for Berlin. As one wit pointed out, Berlin was more practical as headquarters; it would soon be possible to travel from there both to the eastern and western front by suburban railway. Hitler was still able to raise a laugh.76 But his hopes of military success in the west were definitively at an end. Trying to stave off the Soviet offensive in the east was now the urgent priority.77 His departure had been prompted by Guderian’s opposition to his order on 15 January to transfer the powerful Panzer Corps ‘Großdeutschland’ from East Prussia to the vicinity of Kielce in Poland, where the Red Army was threatening to break through and expose the way forward through the Warthegau. Not only, Guderian pointed out, was the manoeuvre impossible to execute in time to block the Soviet advance; it would at the same time gravely weaken the defences of East Prussia just as the Soviet attack from the Narev was placing that province in the utmost peril. As it was, the ‘Großdeutschland’ troops sat in railway sidings while the Führer and his Chief of the General Staff argued on the telephone about their deployment. Hitler would not rescind his order. But the dispute helped to persuade him that he needed to direct affairs at closer quarters. It was time to move back to Berlin.78
His train, its blinds pulled down, pulled into the capital that night. Triumphant arrivals in Berlin were no more than distant memories. As his car made its way amid the rubble through unlit streets to the Reich Chancellery — now cold and dismal, its pictures, carpets, and tapestries removed to safety in view of the increasing air-raids on Berlin — few inhabitants of the city even knew he had returned; probably still fewer cared.79 Hitler in any case had no wish to see them. The path to his portals was blocked for all but the few who had the requisite papers and passes to satisfy the intense scrutiny of SS guards armed with machine-guns and posted at a series of security checks. Even the Chief of the General Staff had to surrender his weapons and have his briefcase meticulously examined.80
Hitler was completely immersed during the next days in the events on the eastern front. His insistence on the troops standing fast and refusing to concede a metre of territory had proved successful in stemming what could have turned into a rout outside Moscow in December 1941. In the defensive campaigns of 1943 and 1944, it had been in the main costly and counterproductive. Now it was futile and disastrous. It brought daily confrontation with Chief of Staff Guderian. As we noted, Hitler’s rage over the loss of Warsaw and over tactical withdrawals of his generals in East Prussia knew no bounds. Seemingly incapable of acknowledging the objective imbalances in forces and the tactical weaknesses which had left the Vistula front so exposed, he thought he scented betrayal at every point. Frequent rantings about the incompetence or treachery of his generals dragged out the twice-daily military briefings to inordinate length. Guderian reckoned that his trips from General Staff Headquarters at Zossen, south of Berlin, twice a day took up around three hours. A further four to six hours were consumed during the conferences themselves. From the Chief of Staff’s point of view, it was time wasted.81
The regular clashes between Hitler and his one-time admirer Guderian reflected what were by now wholly and irreconcilably conflicting philosophies with no middle-ground between them. For Hitler, capitulation could not be contemplated, even if the price was the total destruction of Germany. For the Chief of Staff, the destruction of Germany must be prevented, even if the price was capitulation — at any rate, in the west. Guderian — and he was far from alone in this — saw the only hope of preventing the complete destruction of Germany as putting everything into blocking the Soviet onslaught and at the same time opening negotiations for an armistice with the West, however poor the bargaining base. Perhaps the West could be persuaded that it was in its own interests to prevent Russian dominance of a post-war Germany by accepting the surrender of the western parts of the country to enable the Reich to defend its eastern borders.
