Hitler

way of sidelining the Committee. Speer had already sounded him out. In talks lasting five hours at Göring’s palatial villa on the Obersalzberg, partly with Speer present, the Reich Marshal, dressed in ‘somewhat baroque clothes’, was quickly won over.
    The Propaganda Minister’s plan – actually it had initally been suggested by Speer – was to revive the Ministerial Council for the Defence of the Reich (established under Göring’s chairmanship just before the outbreak of war but long fallen into desuetude), and to give it the membership to turn it into an effective body to rule the Reich, leaving Hitler free to concentrate on the direction of military affairs. He reminded Göring of what threatened if the war were lost: ‘Above all as regards the Jewish Question, we are in it so deeply that there is no getting out any longer. And that’s good. A Movement and a people that have burnt their boats fight, from experience, with fewer constraints than those that still have a chance of retreat.’ The party needed revitalizing. And if Göring could now reactivate the Ministerial Council and put it in the hands of Hitler’s most loyal followers, argued Goebbels, the Führer would surely be in agreement. They would choose their moment to put the proposition to Hitler. This would, they knew, not be easy.
    The problem, however, especially as Goebbels saw it, went beyond the ‘Committee of Three’: it was a problem of Hitler himself. To rescue the war effort, stronger leadership at home was needed. Goebbels remained utterly loyal to the person he had for years regarded as an almost deified father-figure. But he saw in Hitler’s leadership style – his absence from Berlin, his detachment from the people, his almost total preoccupation with military matters, and, above all, his increasing reliance on Bormann for everything concerning domestic matters – a fundamental weakness in the governance of the Reich.
    In his diary, Goebbels complained of a ‘leadership crisis’. He thought the problems among the subordinate leaders were so grave that the Führer ought to sweep through them with an iron broom. The Führer carried, indeed, a crushing burden through the war. But that was because he would take no decisions to alter the personnel so that he would not need bothering with every trivial matter. Goebbels thought – though heexpressed it discreetly – that Hitler was too weak to do anything. ‘When a matter is put to him from the most varied sides,’ he wrote, ‘the Führer is sometimes somewhat vacillating in his decisions. He also doesn’t always react correctly to people. A bit of help is needed there.’
    When he had spoken privately in his residence to Speer, Funk, and Ley just over a week after his ‘total war’ speech, he had gone further. According to Speer’s later account, Goebbels had said on that occasion: ‘We have not only a “leadership crisis”, but strictly speaking a “Leader crisis”!’ The others agreed with him. ‘We are sitting here in Berlin. Hitler does not hear what we have to say about the situation. I can’t influence him politically,’ Goebbels bemoaned. ‘I can’t even report to him about the most urgent measures in my area. Everything goes through Bormann. Hitler must be persuaded to come more often to Berlin.’ Goebbels added that Hitler had lost his grip on domestic politics, which Bormann controlled by conveying the impression to the Führer that he still held the reins tightly in his grasp. With Bormann given the title, on 12 April, of ‘Secretary of the Führer’, the sense, acutely felt by Goebbels, that the Party Chancellery chief was ‘managing’ Hitler was even further enhanced.
    Goebbels and Speer might lament that Hitler’s hold on domestic affairs had weakened. But when they saw him in early March, intending to put their proposition to him that Göring should head a revamped Ministerial Council for the Defence of the Reich to direct the home front, it was they who proved weak. Speer had flown to Hitler’s headquarters, temporarily moved back to Vinnitsa in the Ukraine, on 5 March to pave the way for a visit by Goebbels. The Propaganda Minister arrived in Vinnitsa three days later. Straight away, Speer urged caution. The continued, almost unhindered, bombing raids on German towns had left Hitler in a foul mood towards Göring and the inadequacies of the Luftwaffe. It was hardly a propitious moment to broach the subject of reinstating the Reich