Hitler

German people in Europe. As always, he posed stark alternatives: defeat in the war would mean ‘the end of our people’, victory ‘the beginning of our domination over Europe’.
    VII
    Whatever nervousness was felt at the Berghof in the early days of June about an invasion which was as good as certain to take place within the near future, there were few, if any, signs of it on the surface. To Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus von Below, it seemed almost like pre-war times on the Obersalzberg. Hitler would take Below’s wife on one side when she was invited to lunch and talk about the children or her parents’ farm. In the afternoon, he would gather up his hat, his walking-stick, and his cape, and lead the statutory walk to the Tea House for coffee and cakes. In the evenings, around the fire he would find some relaxation in the inconsequential chat of his guests or would hold forth, as ever, on usual themes – great personalities of history, the future shape of Europe, carrying out the work of Providence in combating Jews and Bolsheviks, the influence of the Churches, and, of course, architectural plans, along with the usual reminiscences of earlier years. Even the news, on 3–4 June, that the Allies had taken Rome, with the German troops pulling back to the Apennines, was received calmly. For all its obvious strategic importance, Italy was, for Hitler, little more than a sideshow. He would have little longer to wait for the main event.
    Hitler seemed calm, and looked well compared with his condition in recent months, when Goebbels accompanied him to the Tea House on the afternoon of 5 June. Earlier, he had told the Propaganda Minister that the plans for retaliation were now so advanced that he would be ready to unleash 300–400 of the new pilotless flying-bombs on London within a few days. (He had, in fact, given the order for a major air-attack on London, including use of these new weapons, on 16 May.) He repeated how confident he was that the invasion, when it came, would be repulsed. Rommel, he said, was equally confident. On 4 June Rommel, whom Hitler had the previous autumn made responsible for the Atlanticdefences, had even left for a few days’ leave with his family near Ulm. Other commanding officers in the west were equally unaware of the imminence of the invasion, though reconnaissance had provided telegraph warnings that very day of things stirring on the other side of the Channel. Nothing of this was reported to OKW at Berchtesgaden or, even more astonishingly, to General Friedrich Dollmann’s 7th Army directly on the invasion front.
    That evening, Hitler and his entourage viewed the latest newsreel. The discussion moved to films and the theatre. Eva Braun joined in with pointed criticism of some productions. ‘We sit then around the hearth until two o’clock at night,’ wrote Goebbels, ‘exchange reminiscences, take pleasure in the many fine days and weeks we have had together. The Führer inquires about this and that. All in all, the mood is like the good old times.’ The heavens opened and a thunderstorm broke as Goebbels left the Berghof. It was four hours since the first news had started to trickle in that the invasion would begin that night. Goebbels had been disinclined to believe the tapping into enemy communications. But coming down the Obersalzberg to his quarters in Berchtesgaden, the news was all too plain; ‘the decisive day of the war had begun.’
    Hitler went to bed not long after Goebbels had left, probably around 3 a.m. When Speer arrived next morning, seven hours later, Hitler had still not been wakened with the news of the invasion. In fact, it seems that the initial scepticism at the High Command of the Wehrmacht that this indeed was the invasion had been finally dispelled only a little while earlier, probably between 8.15 and 9.30 a.m. Influenced by German intelligence reports, Hitler had spoken a good deal in previous weeks that the invasion would begin with a decoy attack to drag German troops away from the actual landing-place. (In fact, Allied deception through the dropping of dummy parachutists and other diversionary tactics did contribute to initial German confusion about the location of the landing.) His adjutants now hesitated to waken him with mistaken information. According to Speer, Hitler – who had earlier correctly envisaged that the landing would be on the Normandy coast – was still suspicious at the lunchtime military conference that it was a