Hitler. Part 26

The hypochondriac Hitler was, in turn, dependent upon Morell. He needed to believe, and apparently did believe, that Morell's treatment was the best he could get, and was beneficial. In that way, Morell might indeed have been good for Hitler. At any rate, Morell and his medicines, were neither a major nor even minor part of the explanation of Germany's plight in the autumn of 1944. That Hitler was poisoned by the strychnine and belladonna in the anti-gas pills or other medicaments, drugged on the opiates given him to relieve his intestinal spasms, or dependent upon the cocaine which formed 1 per cent of the ophthalmic drops prescribed by Dr Giesing for conjunctivitis, can be discounted. Probably by now he was indeed dependent upon the noxious c.o.c.ktail of drugs dispensed by Morell. These included regular stimulants to combat his tiredness and sustain his energy and may well have intensified his violent mood-swings and physical decline. However, his physical problems in autumn 1944, chronic though they were, had largely arisen from lifestyle, diet, lack of exercise, and excessive stress, on top of likely congenital weaknesses (which probably accounted for the cardiac problem as well as Parkinson's Syndrome). Mentally, he was under enormous strain, which magnified his deeply embedded extreme personality traits. His phobias, hypochondria, and hysterical reactions were probable indicators of some form of personality disorder or psychiatric abnormality. An element of paranoia underwrote his entire political 'career', and became even more evident towards the end. But Hitler did not suffer from any of the major psychotic disorders. He was certainly not clinically insane. If there was lunacy in the position Germany found itself in by the autumn of 1944, it was not the purported insanity of one man but that of the high-stakes 'winner-takes-all' gamble for continental dominance and world power which the country's leaders not just Hitler backed by much of a gullible population had earlier been prepared to take, and which was now costing the country dearly and revealed as a high-risk policy without an exit-clause.

V.

That all ways out were closed off was made plain once again during these weeks. Hints had come from j.a.pan in late August that Stalin might entertain ideas of a peace settlement with Hitler's Germany. j.a.pan was interested in brokering such a peace, since it would leave Germany able to devote its entire war effort to the western Allies, thereby, it was hoped, draining the energies of the USA away from the Pacific. With ma.s.sive casualties on the Soviet side, the territories lost since 1941 regained, and a presumed interest in Stalin wishing to harness what was left of German industrial potential for a later fight with the West, Tokyo thought prospects for a negotiated peace were not altogether negligible. On 4 September, Oshima, the j.a.panese Amba.s.sador in Berlin, travelled to East Prussia to put the suggestion to take up feelers with Stalin directly to Hitler. The response was predictable. Germany would soon launch a fresh counter-offensive with new weapons at its disposal. And there were, in any case, no signs that Stalin was entertaining thoughts of peace. Only a block on his advance might make him change his mind, Hitler realistically concluded. He wanted no overtures to be made by the j.a.panese for the present.

Oshima evidently did not give up. Later in the month, he used the pretext of a discussion with Werner Naumann, State Secretary in the Propaganda Ministry, about the 'total war' effort to bring the suggestion of a separate peace with the Soviet Union to Goebbels's ears. He could be certain that by this route the proposal would again reach Hitler, perhaps with the backing of one who was known to carry influence at Fuhrer Headquarters.

Naumann's report was plainly the first Goebbels had heard of the j.a.panese suggestion. The Propaganda Minister called the discussion between his State Secretary and the j.a.panese Amba.s.sador 'quite sensational'. Oshima told Naumann, according to Goebbels's summary, that Germany should make every attempt to reach a 'special peace'. Such an arrangement would be possible, he led Naumann to believe. He was frank about the j.a.panese interest, forced by its own problems in the war, in giving Germany a free hand in the west. He thought Stalin, a realist, would be open to suggestions if Germany were prepared to accept 'sacrifices', and criticized the inflexibility of German foreign policy. Goebbels noted that Oshima's proposal amounted to a reversal of German war policy, and was aware that the position of the pro-German j.a.panese Amba.s.sador at home had been seriously weakened as the fortunes of war had turned. But, as Oshima had presumed, Goebbels immediately pa.s.sed on the information to Bormann and Himmler, for further transmission to Hitler himself.

Goebbels decided that more must be done. But rather than try to put the case verbally to Hitler, he decided to prepare a lengthy memorandum. By midnight on 20 September, after he had worked all afternoon and evening on it, the memorandum was ready. Rehearsing what he had heard from Oshima, he suggested that Stalin's cold realism, knowing that he would sooner or later find himself in conflict with the west, offered an opening, since the Soviet leader would not want either to exhaust his own military strength or allow the German armaments potential to fall into the hands of the western powers. He pointed to j.a.pan's self-interest in brokering a deal. An arrangement with Stalin would provide new prospects in the west, and place the Anglo-Americans in a position where they could not indefinitely continue the war. 'What we would attain,' he stated, 'would not be the victory that we dreamed of in 1941, but it would still be the greatest victory in German history. The sacrifices that the German people had made in this war would thereby be fully justified.'

Goebbels waited impatiently for Hitler's reactions to his memorandum. Eventually, he learnt that Hitler had read it, but then put it away without comment. A promised audience to discuss it with him never materialized. Hitler's illness intervened. But in any case, there is no indication that Hitler took the slightest notice of his Propaganda Minister's suggestion. His own plans ran along quite different lines. The idea of a western offensive, which he had hatched in mid-August, was taking concrete shape. He was contemplating a final attempt to turn the tide: using the last reserves of troops and weapons for an offensive through the Ardennes in late autumn or winter aimed at inflicting a significant blow on the western Allies by retaking Antwerp (depriving them of their major continental port) and even forcing them 'back into the Atlantic'. 'A single breakthrough on the western front! You will see!' he told Speer. 'That will lead to a collapse and panic among the Americans. We'll drive through in the middle and take Antwerp. With that, they'll have lost their supply harbour. And there'll be a huge encirclement of the entire English army with hundreds of thousands of prisoners. Like it was in Russia!'

The objective was to gain time to develop new weapons. From a new position of strength, he could then turn against the Russians. He was well aware that the 'wonder weapons' were, in their current state of deployment, incapable of bringing any decisive change in war fortunes, or of satisfying the exaggerated hopes that incessant propaganda had raised in them among the German public. When he had first seen the prototypes of the V2, Hitler had envisaged 5,000 of the rockets being directed against Britain in a ma.s.sive initial onslaught. But when the eventual launch took place on 8 September, it proved possible only to dispatch twenty-five rockets in a period of ten days. They were little more than a pin-p.r.i.c.k in the Allied thrust against n.a.z.i Germany. Even so, Hitler expected a great deal from the further deployment of the weapon. By the end of the war, through the brutal exploitation of foreign workers, it had proved possible to aim over 3,000 V2s mainly at London, Antwerp, and Brussels. There was no defence against the missiles. Their terroristic effect was considerable, causing the deaths of 2,724 persons in England and many more in Belgium. Their military effect was, however, negligible.

Meanwhile, the development of the one secret weapon certainly capable of affecting Germany's war fortunes, the atomic bomb, had been worked on since the start of the war (though with only slow progress). The research was given special support by Speer in 1942 but, despite his offer of increased funding, was still nowhere near completion and though the German nuclear scientists were unaware of it lagged far behind advances made in the USA. There had seemed no need to force research on such a weapon during the early, triumphant phase of the war. By the time of Speer's meeting with leading atomic scientists, including Otto Hahn and Werner Heisenberg, in mid-1942, a nuclear weapon was as the Armaments Minister was told theoretically possible but in practice several years off. Hitler, already aware in a general sense of the feasibility of an atomic bomb in the more distant future, took Speer's report as confirmation that he would never live to see its deployment, that it could play no part in the present war. Consequently, he took no great interest in it. By this time, in any case, the resources needed to deploy it were not simply not available and were diminishing fast. It is as well that the bomb was not on offer: Hitler would not have hesitated for an instant to drop it on London and Moscow.

A key part of Hitler's strategy was the deployment of large numbers of fighters on the western front to regain the initiative in the air. He had emphasized this in his briefing with Jodl at the end of July. In August, when Speer and Adolf Galland, the flying ace who headed the Luftwaffe's fighter arm, tried to persuade him to use the fighters in the Reich rather than at the western front, he had exploded in such a frenzy of rage that he had ordered a stop to all aircraft production in favour of total concentration on flak. Speer had ignored the outburst of frustration. In September, fighter production reached a record 2,878 aircraft a two-and-a-half-fold increase over production in January. Hitler had his fighters.

Whether they would have any fuel was another question. Hitler knew that raw materials and fuel had sunk to perilous levels. Speer sent him a memorandum on 5 September pointing out that the loss of chrome from Turkey meant that the entire armaments production would grind to a halt within sixteen or so months, by 1 January 1946. Hitler took the news calmly. It can only have encouraged him in the thought that there was nothing to lose, and that everything had to be staked on the new western offensive. He was also informed by Speer that the fuel situation was so critical that fighter squadrons were being grounded and army movements restricted. To make 17,500 tons of fuel what had formerly been two-and-a-half days' production available for the Ardennes Offensive, delivery to other parts of the front had to be seriously curtailed.

Together with Jodl, Hitler pored over maps of the Ardennes while lying on his sick-bed at the end of September. He later told Goebbels that he had spent the weeks of his illness almost exclusively brooding over his revenge. Now he was well again, he could begin to put his intentions into effect. It would be his final gamble. As he knew, it was a long shot. 'If it doesn't succeed,' he told Speer, 'I see no other possibility of bringing the war to a favourable conclusion.' 'But,' he added, 'we'll pull through.'

Before he could fully focus his attention on operational preparations for the coming offensive, a lingering remnant of the July bomb-plot momentarily detained him. Hitler had suspected since early August that Rommel had known about the plot against him. This had been confirmed by the testimony of Lieutenant-Colonel Casar von Hofacker, a member of Stulpnagel's staff in Paris implicated in the plot, who had provided a written statement of Rommel's support for the conspiracy. Hitler showed the statement to Keitel and had Rommel summoned to see him. The field-marshal, recuperating from his injuries at home near Ulm, claimed he was not fit to travel. At this, Keitel wrote Rommel a letter, drafted by Hitler, suggesting he report to the Fuhrer if innocent. Otherwise, he would face trial. He should weigh up the consequences and if necessary act on them. Hitler ordered the letter and Hofacker's incriminating statement to be taken to Rommel by General Wilhelm Burgdorf (the replacement for Schmundt, who had died of the injuries he received in the bomb-blast on 20 July, as his chief Wehrmacht adjutant).

Burgdorf, accompanied by his deputy, General Ernst Maisel, drove to Rommel's home at Herrlingen on Sat.u.r.day, 14 October, and handed over the letter together with Hofacker's statement. Rommel inquired whether Hitler was aware of the statement. He then requested a little time to think matters over. He did not take long. Hitler had given orders to Burgdorf that Rommel should be prevented from shooting himself the traditional mode of suicide among officers and should be offered poison so that the death could be attributed to brain damage following the car accident. Mindful of Rommel's popularity among the German public, Hitler offered him a state funeral with all honours. Faced with expulsion from the army, trial before the People's Court, certain execution, and inevitable recriminations for his family, Rommel took the poison.

Hitler was represented by Rundstedt at the state funeral in the town hall at Ulm on 18 October. Rundstedt declared in his eulogy that Rommel's 'heart belonged to the Fuhrer'. Addressing the dead field-marshal, he intoned: 'Our Fuhrer and Supreme Commander sends you through me his thanks and his greetings.' For public consumption, Hitler announced the same day that Rommel had succ.u.mbed to his severe wounds following his car-accident. 'With him, one of our best army leaders has pa.s.sed away ... His name has entered the history of the German people.'

Another, more far-reaching, problem preoccupied Hitler in the middle of October: Hungary's attempt to defect from its alliance with Germany. Hitler had feared (and expected) this eventuality for weeks. The feelers, known to German intelligence, put out both to the western Allies and to the Soviet Union after Romania's defection gave a clear sign of the way things were moving. At the beginning of October, Horthy had sent a delegation to Moscow to begin negotiations to take Hungary out of the war. Tough conditions laid down by Molotov, on behalf of the Allies, for Hungary to change sides, including an immediate declaration of war on Germany, were accepted by Horthy and signed by the Hungarian delegation in Moscow on 11 October. Their implementation had to await the coup being prepared in Budapest against the German forces in Hungary. Pressed by the Soviet Union to act, Horthy informed the German envoy Edmund Veesenmayer on 15 October that Hungary was leaving the German alliance and announced the armistice in a radio broadcast in the early afternoon.

Hitler had not stood idly by while these developments were taking place. Both strategically, and also on account of its economic importance for foodstuffs and fuel supplies, everything had to be done to prevent Hungary going the way of Romania and Bulgaria. For weeks, Hitler had been preparing his own counter-coup in Budapest, aimed at ousting Horthy, replacing him with a puppet government under Ferencz Szalasi fanatical leader of the radical Hungarian fascist party, the Arrow Cross and thus ensuring that Hungary did not defect. Already in mid-September Otto Skorzeny, Hitler's leading trouble-shooter (since his daring rescue of Mussolini a year earlier), had been called to the Wolf 's Lair and ordered to prepare an operational plan to seize by force the Citadel in Budapest the fortress which was the residence of Horthy and his entourage should Hungary betray its alliance with Germany.

Skorzeny immediately began detailed planning of the complex operation. It involved the kidnapping of Horthy's son, Miklos (who, as German intelligence knew, had been working through Yugoslav contacts to promote a separate peace with the Soviet Union) in order to blackmail his father into abandoning intentions to defect. In a daring ambush on the morning of Sunday, 15 October, Skorzeny's men, following a five-minute flurry of shooting with Hungarian bodyguards, carried off the younger Horthy, rolled up in a carpet, bundled him into a waiting lorry, whisked him to an airfield, and put him in a plane bound for Vienna and his eventual destination, Mauthausen concentration camp.

Admiral Horthy was faced with the fact of his son's kidnap when Veesenmayer arrived for their prearranged meeting at noon. Veesenmayer told Horthy that at the first sign of 'treason', his son would be shot. The Regent's response was a combination of furious protestation and near nervous collapse. Neither was, of course, to any avail. But nor could German threats deter him from making his radio announcement two hours later of the separate peace with the Soviet Union. No sooner had he finished speaking than the radio building was seized by Arrow Cross men, who put out a counter-declaration avowing Hungary's continuation of the fight against the Soviet Union on Germany's side. A little later Szalasi announced his takeover of power. That evening, the blackmail on Horthy came into full effect. He was told that if he resigned and formally handed over power to Szalasi, he would be given asylum in Germany, and his son would be freed; if not, the Citadel would be taken by force. Horthy buckled under the extreme pressure. He agreed to step down from office and make way for Szalasi. Skorzeny met little resistance when, accompanied by units of 'Panther' and 'Goliath' tanks, he entered the Citadel early next morning. Two days later, on 18 October, Horthy was on his way to Germany in a special train, accompanied by Skorzeny and a German army escort. He would spend the remainder of the war 'as the Fuhrer's guest', in Schlo Hirschberg, near Weilheim, in Upper Bavaria. Under its new, fanatical fascist leadership, Hungary's fate remained tied to Germany's until the encircled defendants of Budapest gave up the struggle on 11 February 1945. Only a few hundred succeeded in breaking through to German lines. It was the end of Hitler's last remaining ally in south-eastern Europe.

With the failure of Horthy's attempt to take Hungary out of the war, the final torment of the largest Jewish community still under German control began. As we noted earlier, Horthy had halted deportations mainly to Auschwitz in July. By that date, 437,402 Jews more than half of the entire community had been sent to their deaths. By the time of the deposition of Horthy and takeover of power by Szalasi in mid-October, Himmler was halting the 'Final Solution' and terminating the killings at Auschwitz. But the desperate labour shortage in Germany now led to plans to deploy Hungarian Jews as slave labourers in the underground a.s.sembly sites of V2 missiles. Without trains to transport them, they would have to walk. Within days of Szalasi taking over, tens of thousands of Jews women as well as men were being rounded up and, by the end of the month, beginning what for so many would turn into death marches as they succ.u.mbed to exhaustion, cold, and the torture of both Hungarian and SS guards. So high was the death rate among Jewish women, in fact, that Szalasi, probably concerned for his own skin as the war fortunes continued to worsen for Germany, stopped the treks in mid-November. Subsequent attempts of the SS to remove more Jews by rail were vitiated by lack of transport. Meanwhile, for the 70,000 remaining Budapest Jews, crammed into a ghetto within range of Soviet guns, deprived of all property, terrorized and killed at will by Arrow Cross men, the daily nightmare continued until the surrender of the city in February. It is estimated that the bodies of up to 10,000 Jews were lying unburied in the streets and houses of Budapest by that time.

Meanwhile, on 21 October a delighted Hitler, recovered from his recent illness, was welcoming Skorzeny with outstretched arms as he led him into his dimly-lit bunker at the Wolf's Lair to hear the story of his triumph in Budapest and reward him with promotion to Obersturmbannfuhrer. When Skorzeny stood up to leave, Hitler detained him: 'Don't go, Skorzeny,' he remarked. 'I have perhaps the most important job in your life for you. So far very few people know of the preparations for a secret plan in which you have a great part to play. In December, Germany will start a great offensive, which may well decide her fate.' He proceeded to give Skorzeny a detailed outline of the military operation which would from now on occupy so much of his time: the Ardennes Offensive.

VI.

Hitler had laid out his demands for an Ardennes offensive on 16 September. Guderian voiced grave misgivings because of the situation on the eastern front, the theatre for which he was directly responsible. Jodl warned of air supremacy and the likelihood of parachute landings. Hitler ignored them. He wanted, he said, 1,500 fighters by 1 November, when preparations for the offensive must be complete. The launch of the offensive would take place in bad weather, when enemy aircraft were badly handicapped. Enemy forces would be split and encircled. Antwerp would be taken, leaving the enemy without an escape route.

By this time, the enemy was already on German soil in the west. By mid-September, American soldiers from the 1st US Army had penetrated the Westwall and reached the outskirts of Aachen, which was finally taken on 21 October.

A few days earlier, the enemy had also burst into German territory in the east. On 16 October, the '3rd White Russian Front', led by General Ivan Tscherniakowski, had broken through into East Prussia as far as Nemmersdorf, Goldap the first sizeable town in the province and the fringes of Gumbinnen, heading for Konigsberg. The roads were full of refugees fleeing in panic from the oncoming Russians. The Red Army was within striking reach of Fuhrer Headquarters. For the time being, Hitler resisted pressure to leave the Wolf 's Lair. A move to the Berghof or to Berlin, he thought, would send the wrong signals to his fighting men at the front. He gave strict instructions that there should be no talk of leaving. But the staff was reduced, while Schaub packed all Hitler's files and possessions, ready to depart at any moment. It proved possible to delay the moment. Gumbinnen was recaptured revealing horrifying scenes of atrocities (including untold cases of women raped and murdered, and houses plundered at will by Soviet troops). The Red Army was forced on the defensive in East Prussia. Goldap, too, was retaken by the Wehrmacht a fortnight or so later. The immediate danger was contained.

When Nicolaus von Below returned to the Wolf's Lair on 24 October, after recuperating for several weeks from the effects of the bomb-blast on 20 July, he found the Dictator heavily involved in preparations for the Ardennes offensive, expected to take place in late November or early December. The big anxiety, as ever, was whether by then the Luftwaffe would be in any position to provide the necessary air cover. The failure of the Luftwaffe, Below was told by naval adjutant Karl-Jesko von Puttkamer, was still the 'number one topic', and there was permanent tension between Hitler and Goring. Though he put the best face on it, Hitler was well aware that air-power was his weakest suit; hence, the constant tirades against Goring. The odds in the coming offensive were far more heavily stacked against him than he was prepared to acknowledge.

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 n.a.z.i calendar. 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.

The proclamation itself 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. It offered no more than the old refrain that eventual triumph would come. And Hitler made it clear that as long as he was alive, there would be no capitulation, no end to the fighting. 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'. 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's own end was now starting to occupy his mind. Perhaps a renewed bout of illness, now affecting his throat, prompted his depressed mood. 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. 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.

So little was. .h.i.tler a real presence for the German people by this time that, as Goebbels had to note, rumours were rife that he was seriously ill, or even dead. Goebbels had the opportunity to speak at length with him at the beginning of December. He found him recovered from his stomach troubles, able to eat and drink normally again. He was also over the operation to his vocal cords, and his voice was back to normal. Hitler told him he had come to Berlin to prepare for the coming attack in the west. Everything was prepared for a major blow to the Allies which would give him not just a military but also a political success. He said he had worked day and night on the plan for the offensive, also during his illness. Goebbels thought Hitler back to his old form.

Hitler outlined the grandiose aim of the offensive. Antwerp would be taken within eight to ten days. The intention was to smash the entire enemy force to the north and south, then turn a ma.s.sive rocket attack on London. A major success would have a huge impact on morale at home, and affect att.i.tudes towards Germany abroad. Hitler, in Goebbels's judgement, was like a man revived. The prospect of a new offensive, and of regaining the initiative, had evidently worked on him like a drug.

Operational plans for the Ardennes offensive had been devised by the OKW in September and put to Hitler on 9 October. The objective of the operation the sweep through the Eifel and Ardennes through Belgium to the Channel coast, taking Antwerp was finalized at this point. The detailed plans of the offensive were outlined by Jodl to senior western commanders on 3 November. Sixteen divisions, eight of them armoured, would form the focal point of the attack. SS-Oberstgruppenfuhrer Sepp Dietrich would lead the 6th SS-Panzer Army; General Ha.s.so von Manteuffel the 5th Panzer Army. Without exception, the a.s.sembled military commanders thought the objective the taking of Antwerp, some 125 miles away quite unrealistic. The forces available to them were simply inadequate, they argued, especially in winter conditions. At best, they claimed, a more limited objective recovery of Aachen and the adjacent parts of the Westwall, with perhaps the base being laid for a later westward push might be attained. Jodl ruled out the objections. He made clear to the commanders that limited gains would not suffice. Hitler had to be in a position, as a result of the offensive, to 'make the western powers ready to negotiate'. On 10 November, Hitler signed the order for the offensive. He acknowledged in the preamble that he was prepared 'to accept the maximum risk in order to proceed with this operation'.

Hitler left Berlin on the evening of 10 December and moved his headquarters to Ziegenberg, not far from Bad Nauheim, close to the western front. Bunkers and barracks had been constructed in a woodland area by the Organization Todt earlier in the war. Rundstedt and his staff were quartered in a stately residence nearby.

In two groups, on the day of his arrival, 11 December, and again the following day, Hitler spoke to his military commanders at the 'Adlerhorst' ('Eagle's Eyrie'), as the new headquarters were called, to brief them on the coming offensive. After a lengthy preamble giving his own account of the background to the war, he outlined his thinking behind the offensive. Psychological considerations, as always, were paramount for Hitler. War could only be endured as long as there was hope of victory. It was necessary, therefore, to destroy this hope through offensive action. A defensive strategy could not achieve this goal. It had to be followed by successful attack. 'I have striven, therefore, from the beginning to conduct the war wherever possible in the offensive,' he stated. 'Wars are finally decided through the recognition by one side or the other that the war as such can no longer be won. To get the enemy to realize this is therefore the most important task.' If forced back on to the defensive, it was all the more important to convince the enemy that victory was not in sight. Hitler came to another unalterable premiss of his conduct of the war. 'It is also important to strengthen these psychological factors in letting no moment pa.s.s without making plain to the enemy that whatever he does he can never reckon with capitulation, never, never. That is the decisive point.' He referred, almost inevitably, to the reversal of Frederick the Great's fortunes in the Seven Years War. Here, he had reached another constant in his thinking: the will of the heroic leader, which alone made triumph out of adversity possible when all around him despaired of success.

This brought him to the fragility (he thought) of the coalition he was facing. 'If a few really heavy blows were inflicted,' he argued, 'it could happen any moment that this artificially sustained common front could suddenly collapse with a huge clap of thunder.' The tensions between the Soviet and western Allies had, indeed, become more apparent during the second half of 1944. But Hitler was certainly rational enough to know that his own destruction, and that of the regime he headed, provided sufficient common ground to hold the coalition together until Germany's defeat. He knew, too, that neither the western Allies nor despite what Oshima had told him the Soviets would look for peace with Germany while they were militarily so totally in the ascendancy.

As the supreme propagandist of old, he could always summon up absolute conviction when addressing an audience and needing to persuade them that what he was proposing was the only alternative on offer. It had proved his greatest strength since the early 1920s. The hints of pessimism or greater realism to Below and others in the weeks before the Ardennes offensive, even though only momentary slips of his guard, suggest, however, that Hitler was well aware of the size of the gamble in the Ardennes. He had to take it because, indeed, from his perspective, there was no alternative way out. If the long-shot were to come off, he reasoned, and a serious defeat were to be inflicted on the western powers while new German weaponry started to come into operation and before the expected Soviet winter offensive could begin, then new options could open up. At any rate, the only alternative to the gamble, as he saw it, was to fight for every inch of German soil in a rearguard struggle certain ultimately to end not just in defeat but in Germany's total destruction and his own. The gamble had to be taken.

'Operation Autumn Mist' the Ardennes offensive began in the early morning of 16 December. All possible reserves had been mustered. Around 200,000 German troops backed by 600 tanks were launched against a front comprising around 80,000 American soldiers with 400 tanks. The weather was perfect for the German attack, with heavy cloud hindering enemy aircraft. The American forces were taken by surprise. Sepp Dietrich's SS-Panzer Army soon encountered strong defence on the north of the front and could make only slow progress. Manteuffel's 5th Panzer Army broke through in the south, however, and pressed forward in a deep cut of some sixty-five miles to within a few miles of the river Meuse, laying siege to the town of Bastogne, an important communications point. But Bastogne held out, tying down three German divisions in the process before eventually being relieved by General Patton's 3rd US Army.

Manteuffel's advance had meanwhile slowed, handicapped by difficult terrain, bad weather, broken bridges, and fuel shortages as well as increasingly stiff American resistance. On 24 December, the weather lifted, exposing the German troops to relentless air attacks by some 5,000 Allied aircraft. Troop movements could now only take place at night. Supply-lines and German airfields were heavily bombed. German fighters suffered serious losses. Once Patton had broken through the German front to relieve Bastogne on 26 December, Manteuffel had to give up any hopes of advancing further. 'Operation Autumn Mist' had failed.

Hitler was still not prepared, however, to bow to the inevitable. As a diversion, he ordered a subsidiary offensive in the north of Alsace ('Operation North Wind'). The aim was to cut off and destroy the American forces in the north-eastern corner of Alsace, enabling Manteuffel to continue the main offensive in the Ardennes. Once more Hitler addressed the commanders of the operation. And once more he laid the stress on the all-or-nothing nature of the struggle for Germany's existence. Again, he ruled out the possibility of Germany fighting indefinitely a defensive war. For strategic and psychological reasons it was essential to return to the offensive, and to seize the initiative. The operation would be decisive, he claimed. Its success would automatically remove the threat to the southern part of the Ardennes offensive, and with that the Wehrmacht would have forced the enemy out of half of the western front. 'Then we'll want to have a further look,' he added.

One slip of the tongue seemed to reveal, however, his realization that the ambitious aim he had placed in the Ardennes offensive could no longer be attained; that he knew he could no longer force the Allies off the Continent; and that, therefore, defensive operations would have to continue in the west as in the east. He spoke at one point of 'the unshakeable aim' of the operation as producing merely 'in part' a 'cleansing' of the situation in the west. It implied that his speech to the commanders had been little more than the elevation of hope over reason.

'North Wind' began on New Year's Day. It was. .h.i.tler's last offensive and his least effective. German troops were able to advance no more than about twenty kilometres, making a few minor gains and causing Eisenhower to pull back forces in the Strasbourg area for a time. But the offensive was too weak to have much effect. It proved possible to halt it without the Americans having to withdraw troops from the Ardennes. 'North Wind' had proved to be little more than a momentary stiff breeze.

Even more devastating was the death-blow to the Luftwaffe, imparted on 1 January, the same day that 'North Wind' had commenced. It had finally proved possible to launch a German air-offensive though with disastrous consequences. Around 800 German fighters and bombers engaged in ma.s.s attacks on Allied airfields in northern France, Belgium, and Holland. They succeeded in destroying or seriously damaging almost 300 planes, limiting Allied air-power for a week or more. But 277 German planes were also lost. There was no possibility of the Luftwaffe recovering from such losses. It was effectively at an end.

On New Year's Day 1945, German radios broadcast Hitler's traditional address to the German people. It held nothing new for them. Hitler offered them not a sentence on the effect of 'wonder weapons', steps to counter the terror from the skies, or anything specific on military progress on the fronts. Above all, he gave no hint that the end of the war was near. He spoke only of its continuation in 1945 and until a final victory which by now only dreamers could imagine was attained. His audience had heard it all many times before: the reaffirmation that 'a 9 November in the German Reich will never repeat itself'; that Germany's enemies, led by 'the Jewish-international world conspiracy', intended to 'eradicate' its people; that Germany's plight had been caused by the weakness of its allies; that the combined effort of front and homeland showed the 'essence of our social community' and an indomitable spirit, incapable of destruction; and that 'the Jewish-international world enemy' would not only fail in its attempt 'to destroy Europe and eradicate its peoples, but would bring about its own destruction'.

Few remained convinced. Many, like some observers in the Stuttgart area, were probably ready to acknowledge that 'the Fuhrer has worked for war from the very beginning'. Far from being the genius of Goebbels's propaganda, such observers remarked, Hitler had 'intentionally unleashed this world conflagration in order to be proclaimed as the great "transformer of mankind"'. It was belated recognition of the catastrophic impact of the leader they had earlier supported, cheered, eulogized. Their backing had helped to put him in the position where his power over the German state was total. By now, in the absence of either the ability or the readiness especially since the events of 20 July of those with access to the corridors of power to defy his authority, let alone oust him, this man quite simply held the fate of the German people in his own hands. He had again avowed, as he always had done, his adamant refusal to contemplate capitulation in any event. This meant that the suffering of the German people and of the countless victims of the regime they had at one time so enthusiastically supported had to go on. It would cease, it was abundantly clear, only when Hitler himself ceased to exist. And that could only mean Germany's total defeat, ruin, and occupation.

With the petering out of the Ardennes offensive, all hope of repelling the relentless advance from the west was gone. And in the east, the Red Army was waiting for the moment to launch its winter offensive. Hitler was compelled by 3 January to accept that 'continuation of the originally planned operation [in the Ardennes] no longer has any prospect of success'. Five days later came the tacit acknowledgement that his last gamble had been a losing throw of the dice with his approval of the withdrawal of the 6th Panzer Army to the north-west of Bastogne, and next day, his order to pull back his SS panzer divisions from the front. On 14 January, the day before Hitler left his headquarters on the western front to return to Berlin, the High Command of the Wehrmacht acknowledged that 'the initiative in the area of the offensive has pa.s.sed to the enemy'.

Hitler had stated categorically in his briefings before the Ardennes and Alsace offensives that Germany could not indefinitely sustain a defensive war. By now, he had used up his last precious reserves of manpower, lost untold quant.i.ties of weaponry, and exhausted his remaining divisions in an offensive that had cost the lives of about 80,000 German soldiers (at the same time weakening the eastern front and paving the way for the rapid inroads of the Red Army in the coming weeks). He had also seen the remnants of the Luftwaffe devastated to the point of no return; while rapidly dwindling supplies of fuel and other supplies essential for the war effort held out in any case the prospect of continuing the struggle only for a few more months. The logic was plain: the last faint glimmer of hope had been extinguished, the last exit route cut off. Defeat was inevitable. Hitler had not lost touch with reality. He realized this. Below found him one evening after the failure of the offensive in his bunker after air-raid sirens had sounded, deeply depressed. He spoke of taking his own life since the last chance of success had evaporated. He was savage in his criticism of the failure of the Luftwaffe, and of the 'traitors' in the army. According to Below's later recollection, Hitler said: 'I know the war is lost. The superior power is too great. I've been betrayed. Since 20 July everything has come out that I didn't think possible. Precisely those were against me who have profited most from National Socialism. I spoilt them all and decorated them. That's the thanks. I'd like most of all to put a bullet through my head.' But, as so often, Hitler rapidly pulled himself together, saying: 'We'll not capitulate. Never. We can go down. But we'll take a world with us.'

This was what kept him going. It had underpinned his political 'career' since the beginning. There would be no repeat of 1918: no stab-in-the-back; no capitulation. That and his place in history as a German hero brought down by weakness and betrayal was all that was left to him.

27.

Into the Abyss

I.

Hitler was still reeling from the failure of the Ardennes offensive, his last big hope, when all h.e.l.l broke loose on the eastern front. The Soviet offensive had started. The main thrust, from bridgeheads on the Vistula, south of Warsaw, was aimed at southern Poland, then on to the vital Silesian industrial belt, and the river Oder, the last barrier before Berlin. Marshal Ivan Konev's 1st Ukrainian Front began the attack on 12 January, following a five-hour artillery barrage, from the Baranov bridgehead on the southern Vistula. It was rapidly followed, farther to the north, from the bridgeheads at Polavy and Magnuszev, by an a.s.sault from Marshal Georgi Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front. A secondary thrust, by the 2nd and 3rd Belorussian Fronts, from bridgeheads on the river Narev to the north of Warsaw, aimed at cutting off German troops in East Prussia.

The Red Army's superiority in numbers was overwhelming. In the vital central sector of the 900-kilometre front that stretched from the Carpathians to the Baltic, some 2,200,000 Soviet troops were arrayed against 400,000 on the German side. But at the key bridgeheads on the Vistula, from where the offensive was launched, the imbalance was ma.s.sive. The German general staff calculated that it was 11 to 1 in infantry, 7 to 1 in tanks, and 20 to 1 in guns in favour of the Red Army. Aware from the reports of General Reinhard Gehlen, head of 'Foreign Armies East' department, of the huge build-up of Soviet forces and of an impending offensive, Guderian had pleaded with Hitler at Christmas, when the Ardennes offensive had already lost impetus, to transfer troops to the east. Hitler had dismissed Gehlen's reports as enemy bluff, 'the greatest imposture since Genghis Khan'. When, on a further visit to Fuhrer Headquarters at Ziegenberg on New Year's Day 1945 Guderian had wrung the release of four divisions out of Hitler, the Dictator insisted they be sent to Hungary, not to the centre of the eastern front where military intelligence was pointing to the looming peril. On 9 January, Guderian had made a further trip to Ziegenberg to show Hitler diagrams and charts displaying the relative strength of forces in the vulnerable areas on the Vistula. Hitler, in a rage, rejected them as 'completely idiotic', and told Guderian that whoever had compiled them should be shut up in a lunatic asylum. Guderian defended Gehlen and stood his ground. The storm subsided as rapidly as it had blown up. But Hitler nevertheless contemptuously refused the urgent recommendations to evacuate parts of the Vistula and Narev, withdraw to more defensible positions, and transfer forces from the west to sh.o.r.e up these weak points of the front. Guderian remarked, prophetically: 'The Eastern Front is like a house of cards. If the front is broken through at one point, all the rest will collapse.' Hitler's reply was that 'The Eastern Front must help itself and make do with what it's got.' As Guderian later commented, it was an 'ostrich strategy'.

A week later, on 16 January, with the Red Army already making ma.s.sive advances, Hitler, now back in Berlin, was finally prepared to transfer troops from west to east. But Guderian was outraged to learn that Sepp Dietrich's 6th Panzer Army brought back from the unsuccessful Ardennes campaign and forming the bulk of the new forces available was to be sent to Hungary, where Hitler was hoping to force the Russians back across the Danube and relieve Budapest. With German synthetic oil-plants destroyed by air-raids in mid-January, retention of the Hungarian oil-fields and refineries was, for him, the vital consideration. Without them, he argued, the German war effort was doomed anyway. Nor did Guderian have much success in trying to persuade Hitler to evacuate by sea over the Baltic the German troops in grave danger of being cut off in Courland, on the tip of Latvia, for redeployment on the eastern front. Donitz had been instrumental in persuading Hitler that Courland was a vital coastal area for the new U-boats which, he claimed, were almost ready to be turned against the West. The consequence was that 200,000 desperately needed troops were tied up in Courland until Germany's capitulation in May.

As Guderian had predicted, the Wehrmacht was wholly incapable of blocking the Red Army's advance. By 17 January, the Soviet troops had steamrollered over the troops in their path. The way to the German frontier now lay open before them. Overhead, Soviet planes controlled the skies, strafing and bombing at will. Some German divisions were surrounded; others retreated westward as fast as they could go. Warsaw was evacuated by the remaining German forces on 17 January, driving Hitler into such a paroxysm of rage that, at a critical point of the advance when they were needed for vital military operations, he had several officers from the General Staff who had issued signals connected with the withdrawal from Warsaw arrested and together with Guderian himself interrogated for hours by the head of the Reich Security Head Office, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and chief of the Gestapo, Heinrich Muller.

On 18 January, Soviet troops entered Budapest. The battles in the city would last until mid-February, bitter fighting around Lake Balaton and in other parts of Hungary for several weeks longer. But however much weight Hitler attached to it, the uneven contest could have only one outcome. And Hungary formed little more than a sideshow to the major catastrophe for the Reich unfolding to the north, where Soviet troops encountered little serious opposition as they advanced at great speed through Poland. Lodz was taken. The towns of Kalisz and Posen in the Warthegau were already in their sights. On 20 January, they crossed the German border in the Posen area and in Silesia.

Still further north, German forces were in disarray in the face of Soviet advances into East Prussia. Colonel-General Hans Reinhardt, commander of Army Group Centre which was defending East Prussia, was sacked by a raging Hitler for evacuating coastal positions when Soviet troops broke through on 26 January, cutting off two German armies. General Friedrich Hobach, commanding the 4th Army, was also peremptorily dismissed by a furious. .h.i.tler for ignoring orders to hold ground and not consulting his Army Group about his decision when faced with a hopeless position and in grave danger of encirclement. In a wild temper, Hitler accused both Reinhardt and Hobach of treason. But a change of personnel the capable Austrian Colonel-General Lothar Rendulic in place of Reinhardt, and General Friedrich-Wilhelm Muller for Hobach could do nothing to alter the disastrous German collapse in the face of hopeless odds, in East Prussia as on the rest of the eastern front. This proved equally true in Hitler's replacement on 17 January of Colonel-General Josef Harpe, made the scapegoat for the collapse of the Vistula front, by his favourite, Colonel-General Ferdinand Schorner, and his ill-judged appointment on 25 January of Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, in the teeth of Guderian's strident objections, to take command of the newly formed and hastily const.i.tuted Army Group Vistula, which aimed to stave off the Soviet advance into Pomerania. The hope that 'triumph of the will' and the toughness of one of his most trusted 'hard' men would prevail rapidly proved ill-founded. Himmler, backed by courageous but militarily inexperienced Waffen-SS officers, soon found that combating the might of the Red Army was a far stiffer task than rounding up and persecuting helpless political opponents and 'racial inferiors'. By mid-February, Hitler was forced to concede that Army Group Vistula was inadequately led. After a furious row with Guderian lasting two hours, Hitler suddenly backed down and a.s.signed General Walther Wenck to Himmler's headquarters to take over effective command of the planned limited counter-offensive on the Oder in Pomerania. The Reichsfuhrer-SS's failure as a military commander would finally and belatedly be recognized by Hitler in his replacement by Colonel-General Gotthard Heinrici on 20 March. It marked a significant point in the growing estrangement of Hitler and his SS chief.

The catastrophe on the eastern front was by that time well-nigh complete. In the south, fired by the fanatical n.a.z.i leadership of Gauleiter Karl Hanke, Breslau held out under siege until early May. Glogau, to the north-west, also continued to resist. But the defiance was of little military significance. By the end of January, the key industrial region of Silesia was lost to Germany. By 23 January Russian troops had already reached the Oder between Oppeln and Ohlau; five days later, they crossed it at Steinau, south of Breslau. Further north, Posen was encircled and most of the Warthegau lost. Its Gauleiter, Arthur Greiser, one of Hitler's most brutal henchmen, who had imposed a reign of terror on the predominantly Polish population of his fiefdom, had already fled westwards, along with other n.a.z.i leaders from the region, in an attempt ultimately to prove futile to save his own skin. His flight, like that of other party representatives, fuelled the anger and contempt of ordinary people at the behaviour of n.a.z.i bigwigs.

By the first days of February, Soviet troops had established a bridgehead over the Oder between Kustrin and Frankfurt an der Oder. Even now, Hitler, waving his fists in a frenzy of rage, refused to listen to Guderian's entreaties to evacuate forthwith the military outposts in the Balkans, Italy, Norway, and, especially, Courland to free up reserves to defend the capital. All that Guderian could muster was poured into a short-lived German counter-offensive in Pomerania in mid-February. Easily fending this off, the Red Army occupied practically the whole of Pomerania during February and early March. Though the surrounded Konigsberg was still holding out, most of East Prussia was by now also in Soviet hands.

The immense Soviet gains of January had by then been consolidated, and even extended. Zhukov's men had advanced almost 300 miles since the middle of January. From the bridgehead on the Oder near Kustrin, Berlin lay open to attack, only forty or so miles away. The last obstacle en route to the capital had been surmounted. But the rapidity of the advance had meant that Soviet supply-lines lagged behind. They needed to be a.s.sembled across the wrecked transport routes of a battered Poland. Soviet strategists reckoned, furthermore, that wet spring weather was certain to hamper military manoeuvres. And it was plain that the b.l.o.o.d.y battles in store to take Berlin would require detailed preparation. The final a.s.sault on the capital, they concluded, could wait for the time being.

While this disaster of colossal proportions was unfolding on the eastern front, the Allies in the west were swiftly rea.s.serting themselves after staving off the Ardennes offensive. By early February, some 2 million American, British, Canadian, and French soldiers were ready for the a.s.sault on Germany. The attack of the Canadian 1st Army, which began on 8 February south of Nijmegen in the Wesel direction, met stiff opposition and could at first advance only slowly, amid bitter fighting. But in the last week of the month, American troops to the south-west pushed rapidly forwards towards Cologne, reaching the Rhine south of Dusseldorf on 2 March and the outskirts of Cologne three days later. Hitler's dismissal again of Field-Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, Commander-in-Chief in the West, who had tried in vain to persuade him to withdraw his forces behind the Rhine, and replacement on 10 March by Field-Marshal Albert Kesselring, the former tenacious defender of German positions in Italy, made no difference.

Retreating German troops had blown up the Rhine bridges everywhere as they went except Remagen, between Bonn and Koblenz, which was discovered intact, as the retreating Germans failed to detonate in time the explosives they had laid, and immediately secured by American forces of the 1st US Army under General Courtney H. Hodges on 7 March. With a bridgehead swiftly established, the last natural barrier in the way of the western Allies had been crossed. Within a fortnight, American troops had again crossed the Rhine at Oppenheim, south of Mainz. By then, the banks of the Rhine between Koblenz and Ludwigshafen were under American control. Further north, Montgomery now enjoyed a staged moment of glory as, watched by Churchill and Eisenhower, his troops crossed the Lower Rhine on 2324 March following a ma.s.sive air and artillery a.s.sault on Wesel. The most serious German resistance had by now been largely overcome. A third of all the German forces arrayed on the western front had been lost since early February 293,000 men captured, 60,000 killed or wounded. Hitler's insistence on refusing to concede any territory west of the Rhine, rather than retreating to fight from behind the river, as Rundstedt had recommended, had itself contributed significantly to the magnitude and speed of the Allied success.

As German defences were collapsing on both eastern and western fronts and enemy forces prepared to strike at the very heart of the Reich, German cities as well as military installations and fuel plants were being subjected to the most ferocious bombing of the entire war. Pressed by the British Air Chief Marshal Arthur Harris's Bomber Command, the American and British chiefs of staff had agreed by the end of January to exploit the shock of the Soviet offensive by extending the planned air-attacks on strategic targets mainly oil-plants and transport interchanges to include the area-bombing and destruction of Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden, and other cities in central and eastern Germany. The aim was to intensify the mounting chaos in the big urban centres in the east of the Reich, as thousands of refugees fled westwards from the path of the Red Army. In addition, the western Allies were keen to demonstrate to Stalin, about to meet Churchill and Roosevelt at Yalta, that they were lending support to the Soviet offensive through their bombing campaign. The result was to magnify ma.s.sively the terror from the skies as the bombs rained down on near-defenceless citizens. Beyond the forty-three large-scale precision attacks on Magdeburg, Gelsenkirchen, Botrop, Leuna, Ludwigshafen, and other targeted installations that laid waste Germany's fuel production, ma.s.sive raids directed at civilian centres of population turned German inner-cities into wastelands. Berlin was. .h.i.t on 3 February by the most damaging raid it had suffered so far during the war, killing 3,000 and injuring a further 2,000 people. Some of its poorer inner-city areas suffered most. Ten days later, on the night of 1314 February, the beautiful city of Dresden, the glittering cultural capital of Saxony, renowned for its fine china but scarcely a major industrial centre, and now teeming with refugees, was turned into a towering inferno as thousands of incendiaries and explosive bombs were dropped by waves of RAF Lancaster bombers (followed next day by a further ma.s.sive raid by American B-17s). Up to 40,000 citizens are estimated to have lost their lives in the most ruthless display experienced of Allied air superiority and strength. Other devastated cities included Essen, Dortmund, Mainz, Munich, Nuremberg, and Wurzburg. In the last four and a half months of the war, 471,000 tons of bombs were dropped on Germany, double the amount during the entire year of 1943. In March alone, almost three times as many bombs were dispatched as during the whole of the year 1942.

By that time, Germany militarily and economically was on its knees. But as long as. .h.i.tler lived, there could be no prospect of surrender.

II.

The man at the centre of the rapidly imploding system that had unleashed unprecedented horror and misery on the countless victims of the n.a.z.i regime 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. 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. His departure had been prompted by Guderian's opposition to his order on 15 January to transfer the powerful Panzer Corps 'Grodeutschland' 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 'Grodeutschland' troops sat in railway sidings while the Fuhrer 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.

His train, its blinds 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. 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 pa.s.ses 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.

Hitler was completely immersed during the next days in the events on the eastern front. 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.

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.

This was the proposition that Guderian outlined on 23 January to Dr Paul Barandon, the Foreign Ministry's new liaison with the army. It was a faint hope but, as Guderian noted, drowning men clutch at straws. He hoped that Barandon would engineer for him an audience with Ribbentrop, and that the Foreign Minister and he could approach Hitler immediately with a view to ending the war. Barandon arranged the interview. Ribbentrop, when Guderian met him two days later, seemed shocked at the prospect of the Russians at the gates of Berlin within a few weeks. But he declared himself a loyal follower of the Fuhrer, knew the latter's antipathy to any peace feelers, and was unwilling to support Guderian. As Guderian entered the briefing room that evening, he heard Hitler in a loud and agitated voice say: 'So when the Chief of the General Staff goes to see the Foreign Minister and informs him of the situation in the East with the object of securing an armistice in the West, he is doing neither more nor less than committing high treason!' Ribbentrop had, of course, promptly reported to Hitler the content of his talks with Guderian. No action followed. But it was a warning shot across the bows. 'I forbid most decisively generalizations and conclusions about the overall situation,' Speer recalled Hitler ranting. 'That remains my business. Anyone in future claiming to another person that the war is lost will be treated as a traitor to his country with all the consequences for him and his family. I will act without respect for position and standing.' The head of the Security Police, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, from now on sat silently but menacingly in the background during the briefing sessions.

In fact, despite this outburst and Ribbentrop's refusal to entertain Guderian's suggestion Hitler was aware in early 1945 of his Foreign Minister's extremely tentative feelers via Stockholm, Bern, and Madrid to the western Allies to end the war with Germany and join the fight against Bolshevism. He knew, too, of Ribbentrop's consideration of an alternative suggestion: approaching the Soviet Union to help crush Britain. Hitler had first opposed any idea of peace feelers. Then he appeared to change his mind. 'Nothing will come of it,' Hitler told Ribbentrop. 'But if you really want, you can try it.' However, not only was there no prospect of either the Soviets or the western Allies showing genuine readiness to enter peace negotiations at this stage; Ribbentrop knew that Hitler had not the slightest wish to pursue them. A premiss of any peace-talks, as. .h.i.tler well realized, would have been his own removal. That in itself was sufficient to make him dismiss in fury any idea of negotiations. As the Foreign Minister himself later remarked, Hitler 'regarded any peace feeler as a sign of weakness'. His soundings, so he said, merely 'showed that no serious peace talk was possible' as long as. .h.i.tler lived.

This was equally plain to Goebbels. The Propaganda Minister was approached by Goring at the end of January, disconsolate at events in the east and despairing of Germany's military chances. Goring was prepared, he said, to use his Swedish contacts to put out feelers to Britain and sought the help of Goebbels in persuading Hitler that, since any overtures from Ribbentrop (regarded with utter contempt by the Reich Marshal as well as the Propaganda Minister) were doomed to failure, he should try t