Stalingrad

of the Stalingrad debacle. On the evening of 31 January, they were in the Palace Hotel in St Moritz when an urgenttelephone call from the German ambassador in Berne was put through. ‘Stop dancing!’ the ambassador warned. ‘Stalingrad has fallen.’ They both knew that St Moritz had become the favourite resort of senior officers from the SS. Nothing more needed to be said.
    The propaganda ministry’s party line about general and grenadier fighting shoulder to shoulder soon changed. On 18 February, Goebbels organized a mass rally in the Berlin Sportpalast, with the theme ‘Total War – Shortest War!’ A huge banderol carried the great call of 1812: ‘Let Our War-Cry be: Now the People Rise Up and Storm Break Loose’. The very different historical contexts made this glaringly inappropriate to all but the most committed supporter of the regime.
    ‘Do you want total war?’ Goebbels yelled from the podium. His audience bayed its response. ‘Are you determined to follow the Führer and fight for victory whatever the cost?’ Once again the party faithful roared.
    Goebbels, during the weeks following Stalingrad, set the agenda. He demanded an end to half-measures, with mass mobilization, yet symbolism was almost more important in the rash of measures. The copper cladding over the Brandenburg Gate was removed for use in war industry. Professional sporting events were banned. Luxury shops, including jewellers, were closed. All fashion magazines were to cease publication. Goebbels even organized a campaign against fashion, with the notion that women did not need to dress up, because they would please ‘victorious homecoming soldiers just as much in patches’. Rumours spread that permanent waving would be forbidden. Hitler, who passionately believed that it was the duty of womankind to be decorative, objected to this, and Goebbels was forced to announce that ‘there is no need for a woman to make herself ugly’. Barter, that first sign of a siege economy, spread rapidly. Scrubbing-brushes, for example, were soon exchanged for tickets to a Furtwängler concert.
    Nightclubs and luxury restaurants, such as Horcher and the Quartier Latin, Neva Grill, Peltzers Atelier and the Tuskulum in the Kurfürstendamm, were closed. When they reopened, customers were to be encouraged to restrict themselves to
Feldk
ü
chengerichte –
‘field kitchen dishes’ – as an act of solidarity with the soldiers in Russia, quite probably an idea inspired by Zeitzler’s forbidden fast. Goering,however, arranged that Horcher, his favourite restaurant, was reopened as an officers’ club for the Luftwaffe.
    The barely veiled message that corrupt, upper-class generals had betrayed the Nazi ideal was conveyed in numerous ways. Not long afterwards, all members of German royal families serving in the armed forces were told to resign their commissions. Even riding in the Tiergarten was stopped.
    More and more Nazi propaganda slogans appeared on walls, but cynical Berliners preferred the graffiti: ‘Enjoy the war, the peace will be much worse.’ ‘Hold out’ became the most overused word in the propaganda lexicon. A fear grew for the future, above all of Russia’s determination to wreak a violent revenge. An innkeeper from the Black Forest on leave from the
Ostfront
said to Christabel Bielenberg: ‘If we are paid back one quarter of what we are doing in Russia and Poland, Frau Doktor, we will suffer, and we will deserve to suffer.’
    Germans who did not admire the Nazis recognized the grotesque paradox only too clearly. The invasion of the Soviet Union had forced the Russians to defend Stalinism. Now the threat of defeat forced Germans to defend Hitler’s regime and its ghastly failure. The difference was that the Russians had had a vast land mass into which to retreat, while Germany faced war on two fronts, massive bombing raids and a blockade. To make matters worse, Roosevelt and Churchill at Casablanca had declared their intention to fight on until the unconditional surrender of the Axis. This strengthened Goebbels’s hand immeasurably.
    The opposition, for a variety of reasons ranging from irresolution and disagreement to sheer bad luck, had not managed to act in time. It was already far too late to convince the Allies that there was a democratic alternative to the Nazi regime, as opposed to a palace coup by generals afraid of defeat. Its members, although well aware of this, still hoped that Stalingrad would at least provide