Hitler

Back in his headquarters, Hitler put it down to ‘stupidity or pure dimwittedness’ that ‘such an irreplaceable man as Heydrich should expose himself to the danger’ of assassins, by driving without adequate bodyguard in an open-top car, and insisted that Nazi leaders comply with proper security precautions. Hitler was in reflective mood at the state funeral in Berlin on 9 June. So soon after the loss of Todt, it seemed to him – and, in fact, was not far from the truth – as if the party and state leadership only assembled for state funerals. He spent time in the evening reminiscing with Goebbels about the early days of the party. ‘The Führer is very happy in these memories,’ remarked Goebbels. ‘He lives from the past, which seems to him like a lost paradise.’
    V
    ‘Operation Blue’, the great summer offensive in the south, began on 28 June. The offensive, carried out by five armies in two groups against the weakest part of the Soviet front, between Kursk in the north and Taganrog on the Sea of Azov in the south, was able – as Barbarossa had done the previous year – to use the element of surprise to make impressive early gains. Meanwhile, on 1 July, finally, the fall of Sevastopol brought immediate promotion to Field-Marshal for Manstein.
    After the initial break through the Russian lines, the rapid advance on Voronezh ended in the capture of the city on 6 July. This brought, however, the first confrontation of the new campaign between Hitler and his generals. Voronezh itself was an unimportant target. But a Soviet counter-attack had tied down two armoured divisions in the city for two days. This slowed the south-eastern advance along the Don and allowed enemy forces to escape. Hitler was enraged that Bock had ignored his instructions that the advance of the panzer divisions was to proceed without any hold-ups to the Volga in order to allow maximum destruction of the Soviet forces. In fact, when he had flown to Bock’s headquarters at Poltava on 3 July, Hitler had been far less dogmatic and clear in face-to-face discussion with the field-marshal than he was in the map-room of the Wolf ’s Lair. But that did not save Bock. Hitler saidhe was not going to have his plans spoiled by field-marshals as they had been in autumn 1941. Bock was dismissed and replaced by Colonel-General Freiherr Maximilian von Weichs.
    To be closer to the southern front, Hitler moved his headquarters on 16 July to a new location, given the name ‘Werwolf ’, near Vinnitsa in the Ukraine. Sixteen planes, their engines already whirring, waited on the runway at the Wolf ’s Lair that day for Hitler and his entourage to take them on a three-hour flight to their new surrounds. After a car-ride along rutted roads, they finally arrived at the damp, mosquito-infested huts that were to be their homes for the next three and a half months. Even the Wolf ’s Lair began to seem idyllic. Halder was pleased enough with the layout of the new headquarters. Hitler’s secretaries were less happy with their cramped quarters. As at Rastenburg, they had little to do and were bored. For Hitler, the daily routine was unchanged from that in the Wolf ’s Lair. At meals – his own often consisted of no more than a plate of vegetables with apples to follow – he could still appear open, relaxed, engaged. As always, he monopolized dinner-table topics of conversation on a wide variety of topics that touched on his interests or obsessions. These included the evils of smoking, the construction of a motorway-system throughout the eastern territories, the deficiencies of the legal system, the achievements of Stalin as a latter-day Ghengis Khan, keeping the standard of living low among the subjugated peoples, the need to remove the last Jews from German cities, and the promotion of private initiative rather than a state-controlled economy.
    Away from the supper soliloquies, however, tension mounted once more between Hitler and his military leaders. The military advance continued to make ground. But the numbers of Soviet prisoners captured steadily diminished. This was endlessly discussed at FHQ. Hitler’s military advisers were worried. They took it that the Soviets were pulling back their forces in preparation for a big counter-offensive, probably on the Volga, in the Stalingrad region. Halder had warned as early as 12 July of concern at the front that the enemy, recognizing German envelopment tactics, was avoiding direct fight and withdrawing