At any rate, his recorded speech, broadcast at 10p.m. that evening, amounted to little more than an attempt to stiffen morale, to appeal to fighting spirit, to demand the most extreme sacrifice in ‘the most serious crisis for Europe in many centuries’, and to emphasize his own will to fight on and refusal to contemplate anything other than victory. He referred, inevitably, to a ‘Jewish-international world conspiracy’, to ‘Kremlin Jews’, the ‘spectre of asiatic Bolshevism’, and of a ‘storm-flood from inner Asia’. But the military disasters of the previous fortnight were not touched upon with a single word. And only a single sentence mentioned ‘the horrible fate now taking place in the east, and eradicating people in their tens and hundreds of thousands in villages, in the marches, in the country, and in towns’, which would eventually ‘be fought off and mastered’,99 The speech could have appealed to few beyond remaining diehards. Only two of a group of soldiers listening to the speech on the radio at their post in Bamberg rose to their feet and stood with outstretched right arms in the Nazi salute as the national anthem brought the broadcast to an end. The rest stayed sitting, and were soon voicing their criticism.100 Goebbels professed himself satisfied with the speech and reckoned it had a significant impact on the German public.101 Probably more realistic in its assessment of what proved to be the last time the German people heard Hitler’s voice was a local SD report from southern Germany: ‘Propaganda has not managed to strengthen belief in a positive change. Even the Führer’s speech on 30 January was unable to remove the loudly voiced doubts
That same day, 30 January, Speer had a memorandum passed to Hitler. It told him that the war economy and armaments production were at an end. Following the loss of Upper Silesia, there was no possibility of meeting the needs of the front in munitions, weapons, and tanks. The material superiority of the enemy can, accordingly, no longer be compensated for by the bravery of our soldiers.’ Hitler’s cold response made plain that he did not take kindly to receiving such reports that smacked of defeatism, He forbade Speer to pass the memorandum to anyone, adding that conclusions from the armaments position were his alone to draw.103 Short of the miracle for which he was still waiting, it must nevertheless have been obvious to Hitler, as to all those around him, that Germany could last out neither economically nor militarily for much longer.
Speer, long after the events, posed the question why even at this point Hitler was not faced with any joint action from those with regular contact to him to demand an explanation of how he intended to bring the war to an end. (He gave no hint of what might have followed from such an unlikely scenario.) Göring, Himmler, Ribbentrop, and even in some ways Goebbels had, after all, been among the Nazi leaders who at one time or another had broached the question of peace overtures to the enemy, which Hitler had repeatedly dismissed out of hand. Now the end was near, and Germany was facing not just military defeat but total destruction. ‘Surely something must happen,’ Speer whispered to Dönitz during a briefing in early February, when further disasters were reported. Dönitz replied coolly that he was there only to represent the navy. The Führer would know what he was doing.104
