261. IMG, xxvi.327–36, D0C.789-PS; Domarus, 1422; DGFP, D, 8, 439–46, here 440, No.384, ‘Memorandum of a Conference of the Führer with the Principal Military Commanders, November 23, 1939’.
262. Domarus, 1422; DGFP, D, 8, 441, No.384.
263. Domarus, 1423; DGFP, D, 8, 441, No.384.
264. Domarus, 1423; DGFP, D, 8, 442, No.384.
265. Domarus, 1424; DGFP, D, 8, 442, No.384.
266. Domarus, 1424; DGFP, D, 8, 443, No.384.
267. Domarus, 1424; DGFP, D, 8, 443, No.384.
268. Domarus, 1425; DGFP, D, 8, 444, N0.384.
269. This echoed the comments he had made several weeks earlier, immediately after returning from Poland, on 27 September (Halder KTB, i. 88 (27 September 1939)).
270. Domarus, 1426; DGFP, D, 8, 445, No.384. See also Hillgruber, Strategie, 28–9.
271. Domarus, 1425, 1426; DGFP, D, 8, 444–5, No.384.
272. Domarus, 1426; DGFP, D, 8, 445–6, No.384.
273. Domarus, 1426; DGFP, D, 8, 446, N0.384.
274. LB Darmstadt, 287.
275. Domarus, 1426; DGFP, D, 8, 446, N0.384.
276. Domarus, 1427; DGFP, D, 8, 446, No.384.
277. Halder KTB, i.132 (23 November 1939), for Hitler’s reference to the ‘Geist von Zossen’; IMG, xx.628 (statement of von Brauchitsch, 9 August 1946).
278. Müller, Heer, 547–9, 550.
279. TBJG, I/7, 228 (12 December 1939).
280. Halder KTB, i. 154 (10 January 1940), 157 (13 January 1940), 161 (18 January 1940), 165–7 (20 January 1940), 167–9 (21 January 1940); Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Fall Gelb. Der Kampf um den deutschen Operationsplan zur Westoffensive 1930, Wiesbaden, 1957, 93.
281. See Hilberg, 137ff.; Aly, 29ff.
282. TBJG, 1/7, 220–21 (5 December 1939).
<p>CHAPTER 7: ZENITH OF POWER</p>1. TBJG, 1/7, 273 (16 January 1940).
2. Halder KTB, i.93 for the pessimistic report of Major-General Georg Thomas, head of the Defence Economy and Armaments Office at the OKW, on economic shortages and the inability to satisfy the needs of the armed forces for months to come; DRZW, ii.242; Hillgruber, Strategie, 54, referring to the basic plan, aimed at a long war, approved by the British cabinet on 9 September 1939.
3. DRZW, ii.235–6; Hillgruber, Strategie, 40.
4. Hillgruber, Strategie, 38–9. Nevertheless, the Luftwaffenführungsstab (Luftwaffe Operations Staff) pressed in autumn 1939 for bombing-raids on Britain to be launched before the end of the year — targeting harbours to damage shipping and supplies — before British aerial defences could be built up (DRZW, ii.333, 336).
5. DRZW, ii.193.
6. DRZW, ii.239, 266; Hillgruber, Strategie, 34–40, 48, and (for the Z-Plan, which, on 11 July 1940, Hitler agreed to recommence) 148.
7. IMT, xv.385–6 (Jodl testimony); Jacobsen, Fall Gelb, 4–5; Hillgruber, Strategie, 34, 53. The British Expeditionary Force, initially comprising a mere 152,000 men, began moving to France only on 4 September and was purely defensive in composition — without armoured division, inadequate in communications, equipment, and training, and with little air power (The Oxford Companion to the Second World War, ed. I. C. B. Dear and M. R. D. Foot, Oxford, 1995, 154–5).
8. DRZW, ii.236–7. See Staatsmänner, i.45, for Hitler’s account to Mussolini (on 18 March 1940) of how weak the German forces were on the western front at the outbreak of war, though he added that the Westwall would have provided an impenetrable barrier to an allied attack. Germany’s munitions were sufficient for a third of the available divisions for fourteen days of fighting, with reserves sufficient for a further fourteen days (Halder KTB, i.99 (8 October 1939)).
9. Jacobsen, Fall Gelb, 18–21.
10. Hillgruber, Strategie, 41–5, 48.
11. Hillgruber, Strategie, 32, 45–6. See also Andreas Hillgruber, ‘Der Faktor Amerika in Hitlers Strategie 1938–1941’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte. Beilage zur Wochenzeitung ‘Das Parlament’, B19/66 (11 May 1966), 3–21, especially 8ff.
12. DGFP, D, VIII, 604–9 (especially 608), Doc.504; Hillgruber, Strategie, 30 n.13.
13. DGFP, D, VIII, 871–80 (especially 876), Doc.663; Hillgruber, Strategie, 30 n.13. See William Carr, Poland to Pearl Harbor. The Making of the Second World War, London, 1985, 113–14, for further comments along these lines, which Carr is prepared to see as an indication that Hitler’s views on Russia were undergoing a metamorphosis.
