Hitler

Goebbels, ready as so often to counter Hitler’s instinctive optimism with cautious hints of realism, pointed out that, should the western defences not hold, ‘our last political war argument would collapse’, since the Anglo-Americans would be able to penetrate to central Germany and would have no interest in any negotiations. The growing crisis in the Alliance remained a straw to clutch at. But Goebbels was aware that Germany might be prostrate before it materialized.
    Hitler still thought Stalin more likely than the western powers to show interest in negotiations. Whereas Roosevelt and Churchill would havedifficulties with public opinion, Stalin could ignore it in reversing his war-policy overnight. But, as always, Hitler emphasized that the basis of any ‘special peace’ could only be military success. Pushing the Soviets back and inflicting heavy losses on them would make them more amenable. A new division of Poland, the return of Hungary and Croatia to German sovereignty, and operational freedom against the West would, Hitler hoped, be the prize. Thereafter, his aim, according to Goebbels, was to ‘continue the struggle against England with the most brutal energy’. Britain, he thought, turning on the country that had spurned his earlier advances, was the ‘eternal trouble-causer in Europe’. Sweeping it out of the Continent for good would bring Germany – at least for a while – some peace. Goebbels reflected that the Soviet atrocities were a handicap for Hitler’s way forward. But he noted laconically that Europe had once survived the ravages of the Mongols: ‘The storms from the east come and go, and Europe has to cope with them.’
    Goebbels remained the fervent devotee of Hitler that he had been for twenty years. Though often frustrated and critical behind his leader’s back at what he saw as undue reluctance to take measures necessary to radicalize the home front, and weakness in personnel matters – particularly the repeated unwillingness to dismiss Göring and Ribbentrop (both of whom he saw as bearing undue responsibility for Germany’s plight) – Goebbels never ceased to be enthused once more by Hitler after spending time in his company. For Goebbels, Hitler’s determination and optimism shone through the ‘desolate mood’ of the Reich Chancellery. ‘If anyone can master the crisis, then he can,’ the Propaganda Minister remarked. ‘No one else can be found who is anywhere near touching him.’
    But, though his personal subordination for the father-figure he had for so long revered remained, even Goebbels was no longer persuaded by Hitler’s apparent confidence in turning the tide. He was anticipating the end, looking to the history books. Magda and the children would join him and stay in Berlin, come what may, he told Hitler. If the struggle could not be mastered, then at least it had to be sustained with honour, he wrote. He was gripped by Thomas’s Carlyle’s biography, glorifying the heroism of Frederick the Great, and presented Hitler with a copy. He read out to him the passages relating the King’s reward for his unbending resolution in circumstances of mounting despair during the Seven Years War by the sudden and dramatic upturn in his fortunes.Hitler’s eyes filled with tears. Hitler, too, was looking to his place in history. ‘It must be our ambition,’ he told Goebbels on 11 March, ‘Heroes’ Memorial Day’, ‘also in our times to set an example for later generations to look to in similar crises and pressures, just as we today have to look to the past heroes of history.’ The theme ran through his proclamation to the Wehrmacht that day. He declared it his ‘unalterable decision … to provide the world to come with no worse example than bygone times have left us’. The sentence that followed encapsulated the essence of Hitler’s political ‘career’: ‘The year 1918 will therefore not repeat itself.’
    IV
    To rule this out, no price – even self-destruction – was too high. In his characteristic ‘either-or’ way of thinking, Hitler had invariably posed total destruction as the alternative to the total victory for which he had striven. Inwardly convinced that his enemies were intent on bringing about that total destruction – the Morgenthau Plan of 1944, envisaging the reduction of a defeated Germany to the status of an agricultural country with a pre-industrial economy had given sustenance to this belief – no measure was for him too radical