Hitler

which subsequently arose from it. His tirades about the judicial system and bureaucracy in the spring of 1942 were a further indicator of his sensitivity towards such interference. To avoid any legalistic meddling, Himmler explicitly refused in the summer of 1942 to entertain attempts to define ‘a Jew’.
    IV
    Manstein’s difficulties in taking Sevastopol held up the start of ‘Operation Blue’ – the push to the Caucasus – until the end of June. But at this point, Hitler needed have no doubts that the war was going well. In the Atlantic, the U-boats had met with unprecedented success. In the first six months of 1942, they had sunk almost a third more shipping tonnage than during the whole of 1941, and far fewer U-boats had been lost in the process. And on the evening of 21 June came the stunning news that Rommel had taken Tobruk. Through brilliant tactical manoeuvring during the previous three weeks, Rommel had outwitted the ineffectively led and poorly equipped British 8th Army and was then able to inflict a serious defeat on the Allied cause by seizing the stronghold of Tobruk, on the Libyan coast, capturing 33,000 British and Allied soldiers (many of them South African) and a huge amount of booty. It was a spectacular German victory and a disaster for the British. The doorway to German dominance of Egypt was wide open. All at once there was a glimmering prospect in view of an enormous pincer of Rommel’s troops pushing eastwards through Egypt and the Caucasus army sweeping down through the Middle East linking forces to wipe out the British presence in this crucial region. Hitler, overjoyed, immediately promoted Rommel to Field-Marshal. Italian hopes of German support for an invasion of Malta were now finally shelved until later in the year. Hitler backedinstead Rommel’s plans to advance to the Nile. Within days, German troops were in striking distance of Alexandria.
    One dark cloud on an otherwise sunny horizon was, however, the damage being caused to towns in western Germany by British bombing raids. On 30 May, Hitler had said that he did not think much of the RAF’s threats of heavy air-raids. Precautions, he claimed, had been taken. The Luftwaffe had so many squadrons stationed in the west that destruction from the air would be doubly repaid. That very night, the city centre of Cologne was devastated by the first 1,000-bomber raid. Hitler was enraged at the failure of the Luftwaffe to defend the Reich, blaming Göring personally for neglecting the construction of sufficient flak installations.
    Despite the bombing of Cologne, the military situation put Hitler and his entourage in excellent mood in early June. On the first day of the month Hitler flew to Army Group South’s headquarters at Poltava to discuss with Field-Marshal Bock the timing and tactics of the coming offensive. Apart from Manstein, all the commanders were present, as Hitler agreed to Bock’s proposal to delay the start of ‘Operation Blue’ for some days in order to take full advantage of the victory at Kharkhov to destroy Soviet forces in adjacent areas. Hitler informed the commanders that the outcome of ‘Blue’ would be decisive for the war.
    On 4 June, Hitler paid a surprise visit – it had been arranged only the previous day – to Finland. Officially, the visit was to mark the seventy-fifth birthday of the Finnish military hero, Marshal Baron Carl Gustaf von Mannerheim, supreme commander of the Finnish armed forces. The aim was to bolster Finnish solidarity with Germany through underlining for Mannerheim – a veteran of struggles with the Red Army – the immensity of the threat of Bolshevism. The Finns would at the same time be warned about any possible considerations of leaving German ‘protection’ and putting out feelers to the Soviet Union. In addition, the visit would head off any possible ties of Finland with the western Allies.
    The meeting had no concrete results. That was not its aim. For now, Hitler had reassured himself that he had the Finns’ continued support. He was well satisfied with the visit. For their part, the Finns maintained their superficially good relations with Germany, while keeping a watchful eye on events. The course of the war over the next six months conveyed its own clear message to them to begin looking for alternative loyalties.
    While Hitler was
en route
to Finland, news came through from Prague that Reinhard Heydrich had died of the wounds he had suffered in the attack on 27 May.