Hitler

Hitler, has been more generously viewed by posterity. As Chief of the General Staff, responsibility for the planning of army operations was his. The chequered relations with the High Command of the Wehrmacht, in large measure Hitler’s own mouthpiece, of course gravely weakened Halder’s position. But the Chief of the General Staff failed to highlight difficulties in the original ‘Barbarossa’ plan. The northward swing of Army Group Centre forces was not fully worked out. The problems that motorized forces would face in the terrain between Leningrad and Moscow were not taken into account. Halder was lukewarm from the outset about the concentration on the Baltic and would have preferred the frontal assault on Moscow. But instead of being settled beforehand, the dispute was left to fester once the campaign was under way.
    Moreover, the all-out attack on Moscow that Halder – andCommander of Army Group Centre von Bock – were urging, would itself have been a highly risky venture. It would then almost certainly have been impossible to eliminate the large Soviet forces on the flanks (as happened in the ‘Battle of Kiev’). And the Russians were expecting the attack on the capital. Had the Wehrmacht reached the city, in the absence of a Luftwaffe capable of razing Moscow to the ground (as Hitler wanted), the result would probably have been a preview of what was eventually to happen at Stalingrad.
    That the eastern campaign was blown off course already by late summer of 1941 cannot solely, or even mainly, be put down to Hitler’s meddling in matters which should have been left to the military professionals. The implication, encountered in some post-war memoirs, that, left to their own devices, the military would have won the war in the east for Germany was both a self-defensive and an arrogant claim. The escalating problems of ‘Barbarossa’ were ultimately a consequence of the calamitous miscalculation that the Soviet Union would collapse like a pack of cards in the wake of a
Blitzkrieg
resting on some highly optimistic assumptions, gross underestimation of the enemy, and extremely limited resources. This was Hitler’s miscalculation. But it was shared by his military planners.
    IV
    In his lengthy talk with Hitler on 23 September, Goebbels took the opportunity to describe the state of morale within Germany. Hitler, remarked the Propaganda Minister, was well aware of the ‘serious psychological test’ to which the German people had been subjected over the past weeks. Goebbels pressed Hitler, who had not appeared in public since the start of the Russian campaign and had last spoken to the German people on 4 May, following the victorious Balkan campaign, to come to Berlin to address the nation. Hitler agreed that the time was ripe, and asked Goebbels to prepare a mass meeting to open the Winter Aid campaign at the end of the following week. The date of the speech was fixed for 3 October.
    Around 1 p.m. that day, Hitler’s train pulled into Berlin. Goebbels was immediately summoned to the Reich Chancellery. He found Hitler looking well and full of optimism. In the privacy of Hitler’s room, hewas given an overview of the situation at the front. The advance on Moscow, which had begun the previous day, was proceeding beyond expectations. Big successes were being attained. ‘The Führer is convinced,’ commented Goebbels, ‘that if the weather stays moderately favourable the Soviet army will be essentially smashed within a fortnight.’
    Cheering crowds, which the party never had any trouble in mobilizing, lined the streets as Hitler was driven in the afternoon to the Sportpalast. A rapturous reception awaited him in the cavernous hall. Goebbels compared it with the mass meetings in the run-up to power. Hitler justified the attack on the Soviet Union as preventive. He said German precautions had been incomplete on only one thing: ‘We had no idea how gigantic the preparations of this enemy were against Germany and Europe, and how immense the danger was, how by a hair’s breadth we have escaped the annihilation not only of Germany, but of the whole of Europe.’ He claimed, at last coming out with the words that his audience were anxious to hear: ‘I can say today that this enemy is already broken and will not rise up again.’
    Almost every sentence towards the end was interrupted by storms of applause. Hitler, despite the lengthy break, had not lost his touch. The audience in the Sportpalast rose as one in