The decree was never put into practice. Though, initially, several Gauleiter — prominent among them Gauleiter Friedrich Karl Florian in Düsseldorf — were eager to carry out Hitler’s orders to the letter, Speer was eventually successful in persuading them of the futility of the intended action. In any case, the Gauleiter agreed that it was in practice impossible to implement the order.162 Model was one of the front-line military commanders also prepared to cooperate with Speer in keeping destruction of industrial plant to a minimum. By the end of March, with difficulty, Speer had managed to convince Hitler — aware though he was of the Armaments Minister’s effective sabotage of his order — that he should be granted overall responsibility for implementing all measures for destruction. This took the key decisions out of the hands of the Gauleiter, Hitler’s key representatives in the regions. It meant, as Hitler knew, that everything possible would be done to avoid the destruction he had ordered.163
The non-implementation of the ‘scorched earth’ order was the first obvious sign that Hitler’s authority was beginning to wane, his writ ceasing to run. ‘We’re giving out orders in Berlin that in practice no longer arrive lower down, let alone can be implemented,’ remarked Goebbels at the end of March. ‘I see in that the danger of an extraordinary dwindling of authority.’164
Hitler continued to see himself as indispensable. ‘If anything happens to me, Germany is lost, since I have no successor,’ he told his secretaries. ‘Heß has gone mad, Göring has squandered the sympathies of the German people, and Himmler is rejected by the Party,’ was his assessment.165
Hitler had been absolutely dismissive of Göring’s leadership qualities in ‘turbulent times’ in speaking to Goebbels in mid-February 1945. As ‘leader of the nation’, he was ‘utterly unimaginable’.166 Tirades about the Reich Marshal were commonplace. On one occasion, fists clenched, face flushed with anger, he humiliated Göring in front of all present at a military briefing, threatening to reduce him to the ranks and dissolve the Luftwaffe as a separate branch of the armed forces. Göring could only withdraw to the ante-room and swallow a few glasses of brandy.167 But despite regular exposure to Goebbels’s vitriol about the Reich Marshal and impassioned entreaties to dismiss him, Hitler persisted in his view that he had no suitable replacement.168
Hitler’s attitude towards Himmler had also hardened. His blind fury at the retreat of divisions — including that specially named after him, the Leibstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler — of Sepp Dietrich’s 6th Panzer Army in the face of heavy losses and imminent encirclement in bitter fighting on the Danube was directed at Himmler. The Reichsführer-SS was in despair at the breach with Hitler, symbolized in the order he was forced to carry to Dietrich commanding his four Waffen-SS divisions, among them the élite Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, to remove their armlets in disgrace.169 With Hitler now feeling betrayed even by his own SS commanders, Himmler’s waning star sank steeply with his own evident failings as Commander of Army Group Vistula. Hitler held the Reichsführer-SS personally responsible for the failure to block the Soviet advance through Pomerania. He accused him of having immediately fallen under the influence of the General Staff — a heinous offence in Hitler’s eyes — and even of direct disobedience of his orders to build up anti-tank defences in Pomerania. Blaming others as usual, he took the view that Pomerania could have been held if Himmler had followed his orders. He intended, he told Goebbels, to make plain to him at their next meeting that any repetition would lead to an irreparable breach.170 Whether the rift was further deepened through rumours abroad — in fact, close to the truth — linking Himmler’s name with peace soundings is unclear.171 But there was no doubt that Himmler’s standing with Hitler had slumped dramatically.172 The Reichsführer-SS remained, for his part, both dismayed at the rupture in relations, and cautious in the extreme, aware that even now his authority hinged solely on Hitler’s continued favour.173 But after being relieved of his command of Army Group Vistula on 20 March, Himmler increasingly went his own way.
