Hitler. Part 16

By the time 'Aktion-T4' was halted as secretly as it had begun in August 1941, the target-figure laid down by the doctors in the late summer had been surpa.s.sed. In the T4 'action' alone by this date, between 70,000 and 90,000 patients are reckoned to have fallen victim to Hitler's 'euthanasia programme'. Since the killings were neither confined to the T4 'action', nor ended with the halt to that 'action' in 1941, the total number of victims of n.a.z.ism's drive to liquidate the mentally ill may have been close on double that number.

IV.

Was there the will to halt the already advanced rupture of civilization and descent into modern barbarism that had so swiftly broken new ground since the start of the war? And even if there were the will, could anything be done?

Given Hitler's outright dominance and una.s.sailable position within the regime, significant change could by this time, autumn 1939, be brought about only through his deposition or a.s.sa.s.sination. This basic truth had been finally grasped the previous summer, during the Sudeten crisis, by those individuals in high-ranking places in the military, Foreign Ministry, and elsewhere close to the levers of power who had tentatively felt their way towards radical opposition to the regime. For long, even some of these individuals had tended to exempt Hitler from the criticism they levelled at others, especially Himmler, Heydrich, and the Gestapo. But by now they were aware that without change at the very top, there would be no change at all. This realization started to forge tighter links between the disparate individuals and groups concerned. Colonel Hans Oster, Chief of Staff at the Abwehr, backed by his boss, the enigmatic Admiral Canaris, was the driving-force in making the Abwehr the centre of an oppositional network, building on the contacts made and relations.h.i.+ps forged the previous summer. Oster placed his most trusted a.s.sociate, implacably opposed to Hitler, Lieutenant-Colonel Helmuth Groscurth, as liaison with Chief of Staff Halder at the headquarters of the Army High Command in Zossen, just south of Berlin. He encouraged Weizsacker to appoint, as the Foreign Office's liaison at army headquarters, another opponent of the regime, Rittmeister (Cavalry Major) Ha.s.so von Etzdorf. This was probably done on the initiative of Erich Kordt, head of the Ministerial Bureau who continued, under Weizsacker's protection, to make the Foreign Office a further centre of oppositional contacts, placing sympathizers (including his brother, Theo) in emba.s.sies abroad. Oster also appointed to his own staff an individual who would play an energetic role in extending and deepening oppositional contacts while officially gathering foreign intelligence: the able and well-connected lawyer Hans Dohnanyi, for some years a close a.s.sociate of Reich Justice Minister Gurtner, and who had helped clear former Commander-in-Chief of the Army Fritsch of the trumped-up charges of h.o.m.os.e.xual relations that had been laid against him. Dohnanyi would regularly drive Oster during autumn 1939 dismal weeks for those opposed to Hitler to see the man whom practically all who hoped to see an early end to the n.a.z.i regime regarded as the patron of the oppositional groups, former Chief of the General Staff, Ludwig Beck. Gradually, something beginning to resemble a fundamental, conspiratorial resistance movement among, necessarily, existing or former 'servants' of the regime was in the process of emerging. The dilemma for those individuals, mostly national-conservative in inclination, patriots all, in contemplating the unseating of the head of state was great, and even more acute now that Germany was at war.

The autumn of 1939 would provide a crucial testing-time for the national-conservative resistance. In the end, they would resign themselves to failure. At the centre of their concern was not in the first instance the b.e.s.t.i.a.lity in Poland (though the detailed reports of the abominations there certainly served to cement oppositional feeling and the sense of urgency, both for moral reasons and out of a sense of national shame, at the need to be rid of Hitler and his henchmen who were responsible for such criminal acts). Nor was it the 'euthanasia action'. Of the ma.s.s murder in the asylums they had not for months any real inkling. At any rate, it was not voiced as a matter of prime concern. The key issue for them, as it had been for two years or so, was the certainty that Hitler was leading Germany to catastrophe through engaging in war with the Western powers. Preventing a calamitous attack on France and Britain, and ending the war, was vital. This issue came to a head in the autumn of 1939, when Hitler was determined to press on with an early attack on the West. But even before he pulled back because of poor weather conditions from such a risky venture in the autumn and winter, then went on the following spring to gain unimaginable military successes in the western campaign, the fragility, weakness, and divisions of the nascent resistance had been fully laid bare. No attempt to remove Hitler had been made.

Hitler could by late 1939 be brought down in only one of two ways: a coup d'etat coup d'etat from above, meaning a strike from within the regime's leaders.h.i.+p from those with access to power and military might; or, something which the Dictator never ruled out, an a.s.sa.s.sination attempt from below, by a maverick individual operating entirely alone, outside any of the known by now tiny, fragmented, and utterly powerless left-wing underground resistance groups which could so easily be infiltrated by the Gestapo. While generals and leading civil servants pondered whether they from above, meaning a strike from within the regime's leaders.h.i.+p from those with access to power and military might; or, something which the Dictator never ruled out, an a.s.sa.s.sination attempt from below, by a maverick individual operating entirely alone, outside any of the known by now tiny, fragmented, and utterly powerless left-wing underground resistance groups which could so easily be infiltrated by the Gestapo. While generals and leading civil servants pondered whether they might might act, but lacked the will and determination to do so, one man with no access to the corridors of power, no political links, and no hard-and-fast ideology, a Swabian joiner by the name of Georg Elser, act, but lacked the will and determination to do so, one man with no access to the corridors of power, no political links, and no hard-and-fast ideology, a Swabian joiner by the name of Georg Elser, did did act. In early November 1939 Elser would come closer to destroying Hitler than anyone until July 1944. Only luck would save the Dictator on this occasion. And Elser's motives, built on the naivety of elemental feeling rather than arising from the tortured consciences of the better-read and more knowledgeable, would mirror not the interests of those in high places but, without doubt, concerns of countless ordinary Germans at the time. We will return to them shortly. act. In early November 1939 Elser would come closer to destroying Hitler than anyone until July 1944. Only luck would save the Dictator on this occasion. And Elser's motives, built on the naivety of elemental feeling rather than arising from the tortured consciences of the better-read and more knowledgeable, would mirror not the interests of those in high places but, without doubt, concerns of countless ordinary Germans at the time. We will return to them shortly.

For Hitler, the swift and comprehensive demolition of Poland did not signal a victory to sit upon and await developments. Certainly, he hoped that the West, having now witnessed the might of the Wehrmacht in action, would from his point of view see sense, and come to terms with Germany. The peace feelers that he put out in September and October were couched in this vein. As Weizsacker reckoning the chances of peace to be no higher than 20 per cent put it early in October, summarizing what he understood as. .h.i.tler's desired outcome, in the somewhat unlikely event that London might agree to a settlement at the expense of Poland, Germany 'would be spared the awkward decision on how England could be militarily forced down'. As it was, Hitler, though his overtures were serious enough, had few expectations that Britain would show interest in a settlement, particularly once the British cabinet had announced that it was preparing for a war that would last at least three years. He was sure that the western powers would try to hold out as long as possible, until their armaments programmes were complete. That would mark a danger-point for Germany. Though a view not shared by his generals he held the French military in some contempt, he had a high esteem of British resilience and fighting-power. And behind the British, there was always the threat (which at this time he did not rate highly) that in due course the Americans would intervene. So there was no time to lose. On the very day after his return to Berlin, with the sh.e.l.ls still raining down on Warsaw, Hitler told his military leaders to prepare for an attack on the West that very autumn.

'Militarily,' he declared, 'time, especially in the psychological and material sense, works against us.' It was, therefore, 'essential that immediate plans for an attack against France be prepared'. The rainy season would arrive within a few weeks. The air-force would be better in spring. 'But we cannot wait,' he insisted. If a settlement with Chamberlain were not possible, he would 'smash the enemy until he collapses'. The defeat of France, it was plainly inferred, would force Britain to terms. The goal was 'to bring England to its knees; to destroy France'. His favoured time for carrying out the attack was the end of October. The Commanders-in-Chief even Goring were taken aback. But none protested. Hitler casually threw his notes into the fire when he had finished speaking.

Two days later, Hitler told Rosenberg that he would propose a major peace conference (together with an armistice and demobilization) to regulate all matters rationally. Rosenberg asked whether he intended to prosecute the war in the West. 'Naturally,' replied Hitler. The Maginot Line, Rosenberg recorded him saying, was no longer a deterrent. If the English did not want peace, he would attack them with all means available 'and annihilate them' again, his favourite phrase.

Hitler's speech to the Reichstag on 6 October indeed held out, as he had indicated to Rosenberg, the prospect of a conference of the leading nations to settle Europe's problems of peace and security. But a starting-point was that the division of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union was to remain. There would be no recreation of the Poland of the Versailles settlement. It would be peace on Hitler's terms, with no concessions on what he had won. He painted a lurid picture of death and destruction if the western powers should decline his 'offer'. He blamed the warmongering on 'a certain Jewish-international capitalism and journalism', implying in particular Churchill and his supporters. If Churchill's view should prevail, he concluded, then Germany would fight. Riding one of his main hobby-horses, he added: 'A November 1918 will never be repeated in German history.' The speech amounted to an olive-branch clenched in a mailed fist.

Hitler's 'offer' was dismissed by Chamberlain in a speech in the House of Commons six days later. It was what Hitler had expected. He had not waited. On the very day of his Reichstag speech, he stressed to Brauchitsch and Halder that a decisive move in the north-west was necessary to prevent a French advance that autumn through Belgium, threatening the Ruhr. Two days later Brauchitsch was informed that Hitler had provisionally set 25 November as the date of attack. On 9 October, Hitler completed a lengthy memorandum that he had worked on for two nights, outlining and justifying his plans for an attack on the West. He had specifically prepared it because of his awareness of opposition to the idea in the army leaders.h.i.+p. Again, he emphasized that time was of the essence. The attack could not begin soon enough. The aim was the complete military defeat of the western powers. He read out the memorandum at a meeting with his military leaders on 10 October. Its contents were embodied in 'Directive No.6 for the Conduct of War' issued later that day (though dated 9 October), stating Hitler's determination 'without letting much time pa.s.s by' to take offensive action.

When Hitler heard on 12 October of Chamberlain's rejection of his 'peace offer', he lost no time in announcing, even without waiting for the full text of Chamberlain's speech, that Britain had spurned the hand of peace and that, consequently, the war continued. On 16 October Hitler told Brauchitsch he had given up hope of coming to an agreement with the West. 'The British,' he said, 'will be ready to talk only after defeats. We must get at them as quickly as possible.' He reckoned with a date between 15 and 20 November. Within a matter of days, Hitler had brought this date forward and now fixed 'Case Yellow', as the attack on the West had been code-named, for 12 November.

Speaking to his generals, Hitler confined himself largely to military objectives. To his trusted circle, and to party leaders, he was more expressive. Goebbels found him high in confidence on 11 October. Germany's defeat in the last war, he stated, was solely attributable to treachery. This time traitors would not be spared. He responded to Chamberlain's dismissal of his 'peace offer' by stating that he was glad that he could now 'go for England'. He had given up almost all hope of peace. 'The English will have to learn the hard way,' he stated.

He was in similar mood when he addressed the Reichs- and Gauleiter in a two-hour speech on 21 October. He reckoned war with the West was unavoidable. There was no other choice. But at its end would be 'the great and all-embracing German people's Reich'. He would, Hitler told his party leaders, unleash his major a.s.sault on the West and on England itself within a fortnight or so. He would use all methods available, including attacks on cities. After defeating England and France he would again turn to the East. Then an allusion to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages he would create a Germany as of old, incorporating Belgium and Switzerland. Hitler was evidently still thinking along such lines when he told Goebbels a few days later he had earmarked Burgundy for the resettlement of the South Tyroleans. 'He's already distributing French provinces,' noted the Propaganda Minister. 'He hurries far ahead of all steps of development. Just like every genius.'

On 6 November Goebbels was again listening to Hitler's views on the war. 'The strike against the western powers will not have to wait much longer,' he recorded. 'Perhaps,' added Goebbels, 'the Fuhrer will succeed sooner than we all think in annulling the Peace of Westphalia. With that his historic life will be crowned.' Goebbels thought the decision to go ahead was imminent.

All the signs are that the pressure for an early strike against the West came directly from Hitler, without initiation or prompting from other quarters. That it received the support of Goebbels and the party leaders.h.i.+p was axiomatic. Within the military, it was a different matter. Hitler could reckon with the backing or at least lack of objection of Raeder, Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. And whatever his private anxieties, Goring would never deviate in public from Hitler's line. But, as. .h.i.tler recognized, the decision to attack the West already in the autumn set him once more on a collision course with the army leaders.h.i.+p, spearheaded by Brauchitsch and Halder. On 14 October, primed by Weizsacker about Hitler's reaction to Chamberlain's speech rejecting his 'peace offer', the head of the army and his Chief of Staff met to discuss the consequences. Halder noted three possibilities: attack, wait, 'fundamental changes'. None offered prospects of decisive success, least of all the last one 'since it is essentially negative and tends to render us vulnerable'. The qualifying remarks were made by Brauchitsch. The weak, ultra-cautious, and tradition-bound Commander-in-Chief of the Army could not look beyond conventional attempts to dissuade Hitler from what he thought was a disastrous course of action. But he was evidently responding to a suggestion floated by Halder, following his discussions with Weizsacker the previous day, to have Hitler arrested at the moment of the order for attack on the West. The cryptic third possibility signified then no less than the extraordinary fact that in the early stages of a major war the two highest representatives of the army were airing the possibility of a form of coup d'etat coup d'etat involving the removal of Hitler as head of state. involving the removal of Hitler as head of state.

The differences between the two army leaders were nonetheless wide. And nothing flowed from the discussion in the direction of an embryonic plan to unseat Hitler. Brauchitsch attempted, within the bounds of orthodoxy, to have favoured generals such as Reichenau and Rundstedt try to influence Hitler to change his mind a fruitless enterprise. Halder went further. By early November he was, if anything, still more convinced that direct action against Hitler was necessary to prevent the imminent catastrophe. In this, his views were coming to correspond with the small numbers of radical opponents of the regime in the Foreign Ministry and in the Abwehr who were now actively contemplating measures to remove Hitler.

In the last weeks of October various notions of deposing Hitler often unrealistic or scarcely thought through were furtively pondered by the tiny, disparate, only loosely connected, oppositional groups. Goerdeler and his main contacts Ha.s.sell (the former Amba.s.sador to Rome), Beck, and Johannes Popitz (former State Secretary in the Reich Finance Ministry) were one such cl.u.s.ter, weighing up for a time whether a transitional government headed by Goring (whose reluctance to engage in war with Britain was known to them) might be an option. This cl.u.s.ter, through Beck, forged loose links with the group based in the Abwehr Oster, Dohnanyi, Hans-Bernd Gisevius (one-time Gestapo officer but by now radically opposed to Hitler), and Groscurth. The latter grouping worked out a plan of action for a coup, involving the arrest of Hitler (perhaps declaring him mentally ill), along with Himmler, Heydrich, Ribbentrop, Goring, Goebbels, and other leading n.a.z.is. Encouraged by their chief, Admiral Canaris, and driven on by Oster, the Abwehr group attempted, though with little success, to gain backing for their ideas from selected officers at General Staff headquarters in Zossen. Their ambivalence about Halder meant that they did not approach him directly. Moreover, they knew nothing of the thoughts he had aired to Brauchitsch on 14 October. A third set of individuals sharing the view that Hitler had to be removed and war with the West prevented centred on Weizsacker in the Foreign Ministry, and was chiefly represented by Erich Kordt, who was able to utilize his position as head of Ribbentrop's Ministerial Bureau to foster contacts at home and abroad. As we noted, this grouping had contact to the Abwehr group and to known sympathizers in the General Staff mainly staff officers, though at this point not Halder himself through Weizsacker's army liaison, Legation Secretary Ha.s.so von Etzdorf.

Halder himself (and his most immediate friend and subordinate General Otto von Stulpnagel) came round to the idea of a putsch by the end of the month, after Hitler had confirmed his intention of a strike on 12 November. Halder sent Stulpnagel to take surrept.i.tious soundings among selected generals about their likely response to a coup. The findings were not encouraging. While army-group commanders such as Bock and Rundstedt were opposed to an offensive against the West, they rejected the idea of a putsch, partly on the grounds that they were themselves unsure whether they would retain the backing of their subordinate officers. In addition, Halder established to his own satisfaction, based on a 'sample' of public opinion drawn from the father of his chauffeur and a few others, that the German people supported Hitler and were not ready for a putsch. Halder's hesitancy reflected his own deep uncertainty about the moral as well as security aspect of a strike against the head of state and supreme commander of the armed forces. Others took a bolder stance. But, though loosely bonded through parallel thoughts of getting rid of Hitler, the different oppositional cl.u.s.ters had no coherent, unified, and agreed plan for action. Nor, while now accepting Halder's readiness to act, was there full confidence in the determination of the Chief of Staff, on whom practically everything depended, to see it through.

This was the position around noon on 5 November when Brauchitsch nervously made his way through the corridors of the Reich Chancellery to confront Hitler directly about the decision to attack the West. If the attack were to go ahead on schedule on 12 November, the order to make operational preparations had to be confirmed to the Commander-in-Chief of the Army by 1 p.m. on the 5th. Among the oppositional groups, the hope was that Brauchitsch could finally be persuaded to go along with a putsch if Hitler, as was to be expected, held firm to his decision for an attack. Halderwaited in the ante-room while Brauchitsch and Hitler conferred together. Keitel joined them some while later. The meeting was a fiasco. It lasted no longer than twenty minutes. Brauchitsch hesitantly began to tell Hitler that preparations were not sufficiently advanced for an offensive against the West which, therefore, had every chance of proving catastrophic. He went on to back up his argument by pointing out that the infantry had shown morale and technical weaknesses in the attack on Poland, and that the discipline of officers and men had often been lacking. The Front showed similar symptoms to those of 191718, he claimed. This was a bad mistake by Brauchitsch. It diverted from the main issue, and, as Brauchitsch could have antic.i.p.ated, it provoked Hitler into a furious outburst. He wanted concrete evidence, he fumed, and demanded to know how many death-sentences had been carried out. He did not believe Brauchitsch, and would fly the next night to the front to see for himself. Then he dismissed Brauchitsch's main point. The army was unprepared, he a.s.serted, because it did not want to fight. The weather would still be bad in the spring and furthermore bad for the enemy too. He knew the 'spirit of Zossen', he raged, and would destroy it. Almost shaking with anger, Hitler marched out of the room, slamming the door, leaving the head of the army speechless, trembling, face as white as chalk, and broken.

'Any sober discussion of these things is impossible with him,' Halder commented, in something of an understatement. But for Halder the impact of the meeting went further. Talk of destroying the 'spirit of Zossen' suggested to the Chief of Staff that Hitler knew of the plot to unseat him. The Gestapo could turn up in Zossen any time. Halder returned in panic to his headquarters and ordered the destruction of all papers relating to the conspiracy. Next day he told Groscurth that the attack in the west would be carried out. There was nothing to be done. 'Very depressing impression,' recorded Groscurth.

Hitler had given the order for the offensive at 1.30 p.m. on 5 November, soon after his interview with Brauchitsch. Two days later the attack was postponed because of poor weather. But the chance to strike against Hitler had been lost. The circ.u.mstances would not be as favourable for several years. The order for the attack, meant to be the moment to undertake the proposed coup, had come and gone. Brauchitsch, badly shaken by his audience with Hitler, had indicated that he would do nothing, though would not try to hinder a putsch. Canaris, approached by Halder, was disgusted at the suggestion that he should instigate Hitler's a.s.sa.s.sination. Other than this suggestion that someone else might take over responsibility for the dirty work, Halder now did little. The moment had pa.s.sed. He gradually pulled back from the opposition's plans. In the end, he lacked the will, determination, and courage to act. The Abwehr group did not give up. But they acknowledged diminis.h.i.+ng prospects of success. Oster's soundings with Generals Witzleben, Leeb, Bock, and Rundstedt produced mixed results. The truth was that the army was divided. Some generals opposed Hitler. But there were more who backed him. And below the high command, there were junior officers, let alone the rank-and-file, whose reactions to any attempt to stop Hitler dead in his tracks were uncertain. Throughout the conflict with the army leaders.h.i.+p, Hitler continued to hold the whip-hand. And he had not yielded in the slightest. Despite repeated postponements because of bad weather twenty-nine in all he had not cancelled his offensive against the West. Divisions, distrust, fragmentation, but above all a lack of resolve had prevented the oppositional groups especially the key figures in the military from acting.

The plotters in the Abwehr, Foreign Ministry, and General Staff headquarters were as astonished as all other Germans when they heard of an attack on Hitler's life that had taken place in the Burgerbraukeller on the evening of 8 November 1939. They thought it might have come from someone within their own ranks, or been carried out by dissident n.a.z.is, or some other set of opponents Communists, clerics, or 'reactionaries' and that Hitler had been tipped off in time. In fact, Hitler, sitting in the compartment of his special train and discussing with Goebbels how the showdown with the clergy would have to await the end of the war, was wholly unaware of what had happened until his journey to Berlin was interrupted at Nuremberg with the news. His first reaction was that the report must be wrong. According to Goebbels, he thought it was a 'hoax'. The official version was soon put out that the British Secret Service was behind the a.s.sa.s.sination attempt, and that the perpetrator was 'a creature' of Otto Stra.s.ser. The capture next day of the British agents Major R. H. Stevens and Captain S. Payne Best on the Dutch border was used by propaganda to underpin this far-fetched interpretation.

The truth was less elaborate but all the more stunning. The attempt had been carried out by a single person, an ordinary German, a man from the working cla.s.s, acting without the help or knowledge of anyone else. Where generals had hesitated, he had tried to blow up Hitler to save Germany and Europe from even greater disaster.

His name was Georg Elser. He was a joiner from Konigsbronn in Wurttemberg, thirty-six years old, a loner with few friends. Before 1933 he had supported the KPD in elections, but because in his view it stood for improving the lot of the working cla.s.ses, not on account of an ideological programme. After 1933 he said he had observed the deterioration in the living-standard of the working cla.s.s, and restrictions on its freedom. He noticed the anger among workers at the regime. He took part in discussions with workmates about poor conditions, and shared their views. He also shared their anxieties about the coming war which they all expected in the autumn of 1938. After the Munich Agreement he remained convinced, he said, 'that Germany would make further demands of other countries and annex other countries and that therefore a war would be unavoidable'. Prompted by no one, he began to be obsessed by ways of improving the condition of workers and preventing war. He concluded that only the 'elimination' of the regime's leaders.h.i.+p by which he meant Hitler, Goring, and Goebbels would bring this about. The idea would not leave him. In autumn 1938 he decided that he himself would see it was done.

He read in the newspapers that the next gathering of party leaders would be in the Burgerbraukeller in early November and travelled to Munich to a.s.sess the possibilities for what he had in mind. The security problems were not great. (Security for the events was left to the party, not to the police.) He worked out that the best method would be to place a time-bomb in the pillar behind the dais where Hitler would stand. During the next months he stole explosives from the armaments factory where he was currently working, and designed the mechanism for his time-bomb. At the beginning of August he returned to Munich. Between then and early November he hid over thirty times during the night in the Burgerbraukeller, working on hollowing out a cavity in the selected pillar and leaving by a side-door early next morning. The bomb was in place, and set, by 6 November. Elser was leaving nothing to chance. He returned on the night of 7 November to make sure it was functioning properly. He pressed his ear to the side of the pillar, and heard the ticking. Nothing had gone wrong. Next morning he left Munich for Konstanz, en route as he thought to Switzerland, and safety.

That evening, as always on 8 November, the 'Old Guard' of the party a.s.sembled. Hitler's annual address usually lasted from about 8.30 p.m. until about ten o'clock. It had already been announced that, in the circ.u.mstances of the war, this year's meeting would begin earlier and that the two-day commemoration of the putsch would be shortened. Hitler began his speech soon after his arrival in the Burgerbraukeller, at 8.10 p.m., and finished at 9.07 p.m. Escorted by a good number of party big-wigs, he left immediately for the station to take the 9.31 p.m. train back to Berlin.

At twenty past nine the pillar immediately behind the dais where Hitler had stood minutes earlier, and part of the roof directly above, were ripped apart by Elser's bomb. Eight persons were killed in the blast, a further sixty-three injured, sixteen of them seriously. Hitler had been gone no more than ten minutes when the bomb went off.

He attributed his salvation to the work of 'Providence' a sign that he was to fulfil the task destiny had laid out for him. In its headline on 10 November, the Volkischer Beobachter Volkischer Beobachter called it 'the miraculous salvation of the Fuhrer'. There was, in fact, nothing providential or miraculous about it. It was pure luck. Hitler's reasons for returning without delay to Berlin were genuine enough. The decision to attack the West had been temporarily postponed on 7 November, with a final decision set for the 9th. Hitler had to be back in the Reich Chancellery by then. It was more important than reminiscing about old times with party stalwarts in the Burgerbraukeller. Elser could have known nothing about the reasons for the curtailment of Hitler's quick trip to Munich. It was mere chance that the Swabian joiner did not succeed where the generals had failed even to mount an attempt. called it 'the miraculous salvation of the Fuhrer'. There was, in fact, nothing providential or miraculous about it. It was pure luck. Hitler's reasons for returning without delay to Berlin were genuine enough. The decision to attack the West had been temporarily postponed on 7 November, with a final decision set for the 9th. Hitler had to be back in the Reich Chancellery by then. It was more important than reminiscing about old times with party stalwarts in the Burgerbraukeller. Elser could have known nothing about the reasons for the curtailment of Hitler's quick trip to Munich. It was mere chance that the Swabian joiner did not succeed where the generals had failed even to mount an attempt.

Elser himself was already under arrest at the customs post near Konstanz when the bomb went off. He had been picked up trying to cross the Swiss border illegally. It seemed a routine arrest. Only some hours after the explosion did the border officials begin to realize that the contents of Georg Elser's pockets, including a postcard of the Burgerbraukeller, linked him with the a.s.sa.s.sination attempt on Hitler. On 14 November, Elser confessed. A few days later he gave a full account of his actions, and the motives behind them. He was interned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and treated, remarkably, as a privileged prisoner. Probably Hitler, who continued to believe that Elser was the front-man of an international conspiracy, intended a post-war show-trial to incriminate the British Secret Service. At the end of 1944 or in early 1945 Elser was brought to Dachau. There was to be no show-trial. With the war as good as lost, Elser had no more value to the regime. Shortly before the Americans liberated Dachau, he was taken out and killed.

In his anxieties about the war, Elser spoke for many. He was on far less sure ground with his attribution of blame for the war to the n.a.z.i leaders.h.i.+p. The signs are that propaganda had been successful in persuading most ordinary Germans that the western powers were to blame for the prolongation of a war which Hitler had done all he could to avoid. Whatever criticisms and they were many and bitter that people had of the party and the regime, Hitler still retained his ma.s.sive popularity. Few would have applauded a successful a.s.sa.s.sination attempt. Vast numbers would have been appalled. The chances of a backlash, and a new 'stab-in-the-back' legend, would have been great. People were saying that if the attempt had been successful it would have resulted in internal confusion, benefit to Germany's enemies, loss of the war, worse misery than was caused by Versailles, and the upturning of everything achieved since 1933.

Hitler's hold over Germany was as strong as ever. The failure of those in positions of power to move against him and the repercussions of Elser's bomb-attack demonstrated that his authority was unchallengeable from within the regime's elites and that he was still immensely popular with the ma.s.ses. He played on this latter point when he addressed a gathering of around 200 commanding generals and other senior Wehrmacht officers in the Reich Chancellery at noon on 23 November.

Hitler's speech was remarkable for its frankness. In the light of the conflict with the army leaders.h.i.+p in the previous weeks, its aim was to convince the generals of the need to attack the West without delay. After his usual tour d'horizon tour d'horizon he reached the characteristic conclusion: 'Everything is determined by the fact that the moment is favourable now; in six months it might not be so any more.' He turned to his own role. 'As the last factor I must in all modesty describe my own person: irreplaceable. Neither a military man nor a civilian could replace me ... I shall strike and not capitulate. The fate of the Reich depends only on me.' Internal conditions also favoured an early strike, he went on. Revolution from within was impossible. And behind the army stood the strongest armaments industry in the world. Hitler said he was now gambling all he had achieved on victory. At stake was who was to dominate Europe in the future. His decision was unalterable, Hitler went on. 'I shall attack France and England at the most favourable and earliest moment. Breach of the neutrality of Belgium and Holland is of no importance. No one will question that when we have won ...' His final point was the psychological readiness of the German people. With an eye on the possible deterioration of the backing he had from the German people, he now told the military: 'I want to annihilate the enemy. Behind me stands the German people, whose morale can only grow worse.' he reached the characteristic conclusion: 'Everything is determined by the fact that the moment is favourable now; in six months it might not be so any more.' He turned to his own role. 'As the last factor I must in all modesty describe my own person: irreplaceable. Neither a military man nor a civilian could replace me ... I shall strike and not capitulate. The fate of the Reich depends only on me.' Internal conditions also favoured an early strike, he went on. Revolution from within was impossible. And behind the army stood the strongest armaments industry in the world. Hitler said he was now gambling all he had achieved on victory. At stake was who was to dominate Europe in the future. His decision was unalterable, Hitler went on. 'I shall attack France and England at the most favourable and earliest moment. Breach of the neutrality of Belgium and Holland is of no importance. No one will question that when we have won ...' His final point was the psychological readiness of the German people. With an eye on the possible deterioration of the backing he had from the German people, he now told the military: 'I want to annihilate the enemy. Behind me stands the German people, whose morale can only grow worse.'

Hitler had been right in his speech: no revolution could be expected from within. Heydrich's police-state ruled that out. But it was not only a matter of repression. Alongside the ruthlessness of the regime towards internal opponents stood the widespread basic consensus reaching across most of society behind much of what the regime had undertaken and, in particular, what were taken to be the remarkable achievements of Hitler himself. Elser's bomb had merely brought a renewed demonstration of his popularity. Meanwhile, the internal opposition was resigned to being unable to act. The navy and Luftwaffe were behind Hitler. The army leaders.h.i.+p would, whatever its reservations, fulfil its duty. The division of the generals, coupled with their p.r.o.nounced sense of duty even when they held a course of action to be disastrous, was. .h.i.tler's strength.

Nothing could stop the western offensive. Hitler was by now obsessed with 'beating England'. It was purely a matter of when, not if, the attack on the West would take place. After further short-term postponements, on 16 January 1940 Hitler finally put it off until the spring.

The war was set to continue, and to widen. Also set to escalate was the barbarism that was an intrinsic part of it. At home the killings in the asylums were mounting into a full-scale programme of ma.s.s murder. In Poland, the grandiose resettlement schemes presided over by Himmler and Heydrich were seeing the brutal uprooting and deportation of tens of thousands of Poles and Jews into the 'dumping-ground' of the General Government. Not least, the centre-point of the 'racial cleansing' mania, the 'removal' of the Jews, was farther from solution than ever now that over 2 million Polish Jews had fallen into the hands of the n.a.z.is. In December Goebbels reported to Hitler on his recent visit to Poland. The Fuhrer, he recorded, listened carefully to his account and agreed with his views on the 'Jewish and Polish question'. 'The Jewish danger must be banished from us. But in a few generations it will reappear. There's no panacea.'

Evidently, no 'complete solution' to the 'Jewish problem' was yet in sight. The constant quest to find such a 'panacea' by n.a.z.i underlings working directly or indirectly 'towards the Fuhrer' would nevertheless ensure that, in the conquered and subjugated territories of the east, a 'solution' would gradually begin to emerge before long.

18.

Zenith of Power

I.

Hitler had placed the Reich in a quandary. The war could not be ended. That was now a decision out of Germany's control, unless Britain could be forced to the conference table or militarily defeated. But neither militarily, as the chiefs of the armed forces made plain, nor economically, as every indicator demonstrated, was Germany equipped at this stage to fight the long war with which, it was known, the British were already reckoning. The Wehrmacht had entered into hostilities in autumn 1939 with no well-laid plans for a major war, and no strategy at all for an offensive in the West. Nothing at all had been clearly thought through. The Luftwaffe was the best equipped of the three branches of the armed forces. But even here, the armaments programme had been targeted at 1942, not 1939. The navy's operational planning was based upon a fleet that could not be ready before 1943. In fact, the 1939 Z-Plan halted at the start of the war would leave Germany with severe limitations at sea until 1946. And within the confines of that plan, the building of U-boats necessary for an economic blockade of Britain was deliberately neglected by Hitler in favour of the interests of the army. However, the army itself lacked even sufficient munitions following the brief Polish campaign (in which some 50 per cent of the tanks and motorized units deployed were no longer serviceable) to contemplate an immediate continuation of the war in the West.

Hitler had to gamble everything on the defeat of France. If Britain could be kept from gaining a foothold on the Continent until this were achieved, Hitler was certain that the British would have to sue for peace. Getting Britain out of the war through isolation after a German defeat of France was. .h.i.tler's only overall war-strategy as the abnormally icy winter of 1940 gradually gave way to spring. Ranged against Germany at some point, Hitler was aware, would be the might of the USA. Currently still dominated by isolationism, and likely to be preoccupied by the forthcoming presidential elections in the autumn, early involvement in a European conflict could be discounted. But as long as Britain stayed in the war, the partic.i.p.ation at the very least through benevolent neutrality of the USA, with its immense economic power, could not be ruled out. And that was a factor that was out of Germany's reach. It was all the more reason, objectively as well as simply in Hitler's manic obsession with time, to eliminate Britain from the war without delay.

The East was at this point at the back of Hitler's mind though not out of it. In his memorandum the previous October he had already remarked that Soviet neutrality could be reckoned with at present, but that no treaty or agreement could guarantee it in the future. 'In eight months, a year, let alone a few years this could all be different,' he had said. 'If all treaties concluded were held to,' he told Goebbels, 'mankind would no longer exist today.' Hitler presumed that the Russians would break the non-aggression pact when it suited them to do so. For the time being they were militarily weak a condition enhanced by Stalin's inexplicable purges; they were preoccupied with their own affairs in the Baltic, especially the troublesome Finnishwar; and they posed, therefore, no danger from the East. They could be dealt with at a later stage. Their current disposition provided still further evidence for Hitler that his attack on the West, and the elimination of Britain from the war, could not wait.

It became clear in early 1940 that, before the western offensive could be launched, it was imperative to secure control over Scandinavia and the northern sea pa.s.sages. A key consideration was the safeguarding of supplies of Swedish iron-ore, vital for the German war-economy, which were mainly s.h.i.+pped through the port of Narvik in the north of Norway. Hitler had acknowledged to Raeder as early as 1934 how essential it would be for the navy to guarantee the iron-ore imports in the event of war. But he had shown no actual strategic interest in Scandinavia until the first months of 1940. Alongside the need to secure the supplies of ore went, in Hitler's mind, the aim of keeping Britain off the European continent. The navy itself had developed no operational plans for Scandinavia before the outbreak of war. But as the prospect of war with Britain began to take concrete shape in the later 1930s, naval planners started to weigh up the need for bases on the Norwegian coast.

Once war had started, the navy leaders.h.i.+p, not Hitler, took the initiative in pressing for the occupation of Denmark and Norway. In October, and again in early December 1939, Raeder, elevated the previous April to the rank of Grand-Admiral, stressed to Hitler the importance to the war-economy of occupying Norway. Increasingly worried by the possibility of being pre-empted by British occupation (under the pretext of a.s.sisting the Finns in the war against the Soviet Union), Raeder continued to lobby Hitler for early action. Hitler became seriously alerted to the danger of Allied intervention in Norway after the Altmark Altmark, carrying around 300 Allied merchant seamen captured in the south Atlantic, had been raided on 16 February in Norwegian waters by a boarding-party from the British destroyer Cossack Cossack, and the prisoners freed. Now the matter became urgent for him. On 1 March Hitler put out the directive for 'Weserubung' ('Weser Exercise'). Two days later, he underlined the urgency of action in Norway. He wanted an acceleration of preparations, and ordered 'Weser Exercise' to be carried out a few days before the western offensive. As fears of a British occupation mounted throughout March, Raeder finally persuaded Hitler, towards the end of the month, to agree to set a precise date for the operation. When he spoke to his commanders on 1 April, Hitler closely followed Raeder's lines of argument. The next day, the date for the operation was fixed as 9 April. Within forty-eight hours it was learnt that British action was imminent. On 8 April British wars.h.i.+ps mined the waters around Narvik. The race for Norway was on.

The Allied mine-laying gave Germany the pretext it had been waiting for. Hitler called Goebbels, and explained to him what was afoot while they walked alone in the grounds of the Reich Chancellery in the lovely spring suns.h.i.+ne. Everything was prepared. No worthwhile resistance was to be expected. He was uninterested in America's reaction. Material a.s.sistance from the USA would not be forthcoming for eight months or so, manpower not for about one and a half years. 'And we must come to victory in this year. Otherwise the material supremacy of the opposing side would be too great. Also, a long war would be psychologically difficult to bear,' Hitler conceded. He gave Goebbels an insight into his aims for the conquest of the north. 'First we will keep quiet for a short time once we have both countries' Denmark and Norway 'and then England will be plastered. Now we possess a basis for attack.' He was prepared to leave the Kings of Denmark and Norway untouched, as long as they did not create trouble. 'But we will never again give up both countries.'

Landings by air and sea took place in Denmark in the early morning of 9 April. The Danes swiftly decided to offer no resistance. The Norwegian operation went less smoothly. Narvik and Trondheim were taken. But the sinking of the Blucher Blucher, by a single sh.e.l.l from an ancient coastal battery that landed in the ammunition hold of the new cruiser as it pa.s.sed through the narrows near Oscarsborg, forced the accompanying s.h.i.+ps to turn back and delayed the occupation of Oslo for the few hours that allowed the Norwegian royal family and government to leave the capital. Despite st.u.r.dy resistance by the Norwegians and relatively high naval losses at the hands of the British fleet, air superiority, following the swift capture of the airfields, rapidly helped provide the German forces with sufficient control to compel the evacuation of the British, French, and Polish troops who had landed in central Norway by the beginning of May. The Allies eventually took Narvik later in the month, after a protracted struggle, only to be pulled out again by Churchill in early June on account of the mounting danger to Britain from the German offensive in the west. The last Norwegian forces capitulated on the tenth.

'Weser Exercise' had proved a success. But it had been at a cost. Much of the surface-fleet of the German navy had been put out of action for the rest of 1940. Running the occupied parts of Scandinavia from now on sucked in on a more or less permanent basis around 300,000 men, many of them engaged in holding down a Norwegian population bitterly resentful at a German administration that was aided and abetted by Vidkun Quisling's collaborationist movement. And there was a further consequence which would turn out to be to Germany's disadvantage and have major significance for the British war-effort. Indirectly, the British failure led to the end of the Chamberlain government and brought into power the person who would prove himself Hitler's most defiant and unrelenting foe: Winston Churchill.

The eventual success of 'Weser Exercise' concealed to all but the armed forces' leaders.h.i.+p Hitler's serious deficiencies as a military commander. The lack of coordination between the branches of the armed forces; the flawed communications between the OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht High Command of the Armed Forces) and the heads of the navy and, especially, army and Luftwaffe (leading to the need for alterations to directives already signed and issued); Hitler's own reluctance, in larger briefing meetings, to oppose either Raeder or Goring, though advocating a tough line in private; and his constant interference in the minutiae of operations control: all provided for serious complications in the execution of 'Weser Exercise'. On this occasion, the crisis soon pa.s.sed. Hitler could bask in the glory of another triumph. But when the victories ran out, the flaws in his style of military leaders.h.i.+p would prove a lasting weakness.

For now, however, he could turn his full energies to the long-awaited western offensive.

The repeated postponements of 'Case Yellow' (as the western offensive had come to be called) provided not just the opportunity to build up the army after the Polish campaign but also time to rethink operational plans. In Poland, Hitler had kept out of involvement in military operations. Now, in the preparation of the western offensive, he intervened directly for the first time. It set the pattern for the future. Already in the autumn he was uneasy about the directives coming from the Army High Command. Some of the top commanders were equally unconvinced. The plans seemed too conventional. They were what the enemy would expect. Even after modifications they remained less than satisfactory. They envisaged the decisive thrust coming from the north, either side of Liege. Hitler wanted something more daring, something which would retain the crucial element of surprise. His own ideas were still embryonic. They favoured a main line of attack further south though the Army High Command thought this too risky since it involved attacking across the difficult wooded terrain of the Ardennes, with obvious problems for tank operations. Hitler did not know for some weeks that similar ideas were being more thoroughly worked out by Lieutenant-General Erich von Manstein, chief of staff of Army Group A. Manstein was among those generals concerned at the unimaginative strategy of the Army High Command. Discussions with Heinz Guderian, the general with greatest expertise in tank warfare, led him to conclude that the Ardennes posed no insuperable barrier to a panzer thrust. General von Rundstedt, Manstein's immediate superior, also supported the bolder plan. However, Manstein was unable to persuade Army High Command to adopt his plan. Brauchitsch was adamantly opposed to any alteration to the established strategy and not even prepared to discuss Manstein's plan. Halder at least agreed to take all operational proposals into account in a series of war games. These eventually, by February, were to make him more amenable to the Manstein plan. In January, however, Brauchitsch still refused to take Manstein's operational draft to Hitler, and had the persistent general moved to a new command post in Stettin. Hitler had, even so, been made aware of the basic lines of Manstein's plan in the second half of December. The postponement until spring of 'Yellow' that followed in January then gave him the opportunity to state that he wanted to give the operation a new basis, and above all to ensure absolute secrecy and the element of surprise.

In mid-February the operational plan for 'Yellow' was still not definitively agreed. Hitler was said to have described the existing planning of the Army High Command as the 'ideas of a military cadet'. But nothing had as yet taken their place. At this point, Hitler's Wehrmacht adjutant Rudolf Schmundt took the initiative and arranged for a meeting with Manstein on 17 February. By this time, Jodl had been informed that Hitler favoured a thrust of the motorized units on the southern flank, towards Sedan, where the enemy would least expect them. The army leaders.h.i.+p, taking these wishes of Hitler on board and also bearing in mind the outcome of the war games, had already adjusted its strategic thinking when, on 18 February, Hitler spoke of the favourable impression he had gained of Manstein's plan the day before. The die was now cast. By chance, the basic thoughts of the amateur had coincided with the brilliantly unorthodox planning of the professional strategist. Further refined by the OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres High Command of the Army), the Manstein plan gave Hitler what he wanted: a surprise a.s.sault in the most unexpected area which, though not without risk, had the boldness of genius. The famous 'sickle cut' though the designation was not a contemporary one was incorporated in the new directive of 24 February. While the Allied forces countered the expected German attack through Belgium, armoured units of Army Group A would rapidly drive through the Ardennes and into the lowlands of northern France towards the coast, scything through Allied forces and pus.h.i.+ng them into the path of Army Group B, advancing from the north.

'The Fuhrer presses for action as rapidly as possible,' commented Goebbels in mid-April. 'We can't and won't wait for long.' The attack was finally set for 10 May. Hitler was confident. To those who saw him at close quarters, he appeared calm and optimistic, as if the doubts of previous months had pa.s.sed, and he was now letting events take their course. He thought that France would capitulate after around six weeks, and that England would then pull out of a war which, to continue, would mean losing its Empire something wholly unimaginable. The balance of military forces was roughly even. What Hitler had not been fully informed about was the critical state of Germany's raw-material reserves: enough rubber for six months, enough fuel for only four months. Booty from the western campaign would prove crucial in securing the material base for continuing the war.

The level of secrecy maintained even in Hitler's closest entourage in the days leading up to the offensive was profound. When his special armoured train, code-named Amerika Amerika, pulled out of a small, secluded station on the outskirts of Berlin on the evening of 9 May, his press chief, Otto Dietrich, thought he was en route to visit s.h.i.+pworks in Hamburg, and Hitler's secretaries thought they were setting out for Denmark and Norway to visit the troops. After midnight, the train quietly switched in the vicinity of Hanover from the northbound tracks and turned westward. Even then, the destination was not disclosed. But by now there was no longer any doubt of the purpose of the journey. Hitler was in excellent spirits throughout. Dawn was breaking when they got down from the train at a little station in the Eifel, near Euskirchen. Cars were waiting to drive the company through hilly, woody countryside to their new temporary home: the Fuhrer Headquarters near Munstereifel that had been given the name Felsennest (Rock Eyrie). The accommodation was cramped and simple. Apart from Hitler himself, only Keitel, Schaub, and a manservant had rooms in the first bunker. Jodl, Dr Brandt, Schmundt, Below, Puttkamer, and Keitel's adjutant were in a second. The rest had to be accommodated in the nearby village. The woods around were filled with the springtime twittering of birds. But as his staff gathered in front of Hitler's bunker the peaceful sounds of the countryside in spring were broken by the distant rumble of sh.e.l.l-fire. Hitler pointed to the west. 'Gentlemen, the offensive against the western powers has just started,' he declared.

II.

That offensive proceeded with a breathtaking pace that stunned the world. Even Hitler and his military leaders scarcely dared hope for such a scale of early successes. On the northern flank, the Dutch surrender followed within five days, the Queen and government fleeing to exile in England. Before that, the terror-bombing of Rotterdam's old town had brought death and devastation from the skies. It was the trademark of the new type of warfare. Warsaw civilians had suffered it first; the people of British cities would soon come to dread it; and, later in the war, German citizens themselves would be exposed to its full horror. Belgian neutrality, for the second time in under thirty years, was breached along with that of the Dutch. On 28 May the Belgian army would surrender unconditionally, leaving King Leopold in effect a prisoner with the government in exile. Meanwhile, the 'sickle cut' plan was proving a brilliant and decisive success. Aided by the strategic and operational inept.i.tude of the French military command, German armoured units were able to sweep through the Ardennes, through Luxemburg and southern Belgium into northern France, breaking the thin line of French defence, and crossing the Meuse already on 13 May. Within ten days of the launching of the offensive, by the night of 2021 May, the advance had covered 150 miles and reached the Channel coast. The 'sickle cut' had worked. The Allied forces had been cut in two; vast numbers were now squeezed between the coast and the oncoming German divisions. On 26 May the War Office in London bowed to what had become increasingly inevitable, and ordered the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force, the bulk of it by then fighting a desperate rearguard action just east of Dunkirk, the last remaining Channel port in Allied hands. The next days would see almost 340,000 British and French soldiers the vast proportion of the Allied troops still in combat in north-west France carried to safety across the Channel in an improvised armada of small boats while the Luftwaffe pounded the harbour and beaches of the port.

The evacuation had been greatly helped by Hitler's decision, at 11.42 a.m. on 24 May, to halt the German advance with the spearhead a mere fifteen miles or so from Dunkirk. Post-war suggestions that Hitler was deliberately allowing the British troops to get away as an act of generosity to encourage Britain to come to the peace table with its armies intact are far-fetched. Hitler himself was alleged to have told his entourage a fortnight or so later that 'the army is the backbone of England and the Empire. If we smash the invasion corps, the Empire is doomed. Since we neither want to nor can inherit it, we must leave it the chance. My generals haven't grasped that.' Such sentiments, if they were indeed expressed in those terms, were no more than a self-justification for a military mistake. For the decision not to move on Dunkirk was taken for military reasons, and on military advice. According to his Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus von Below, 'the English army had no significance for him' at Dunkirk.

Hitler had flown that morning, 24 May, to Charleville, around 125 miles east of the Channel, to visit the headquarters of Colonel-General Gerd von Rundstedt, commander of Army Group A, which had made the remarkable advance in the 'sickle movement' along the southern flank. When Hitler arrived at half-past eleven, Rundstedt gave him a report on the situation. The suggestion to hold back the motorized units came not from Hitler, but from Rundstedt, one of his most trusted generals. Hitler agreed, adding that the tanks had to be conserved for the coming operations in the south and that a further advance would restrict the scope for action of the Luftwaffe. Hitler was keen to press on with the attack to the south without the delay that he thought would come about if they took a few days dealing with the surrounded Allied troops in Dunkirk. When Brauchitsch arrived next morning, the 25th, wanting to advance the tanks on to the plains, Hitler opposed him, arguing that the numerous ca.n.a.ls criss-crossing Flanders made it an unsuitable terrain for tanks. But he left the decision to Rundstedt, who rejected the suggestion because of the need to have the tanks recover for the operations to come in the south. Halder, as well as Brauchitsch, was dismayed. They would have to come to terms with a supreme commander of the Wehrmacht who intervened in the direction of operations. But there was no magnanimity in the decision to hold back the tanks. Hitler wanted to strike Britain a knock-out blow to force her to accept peace terms. He had no interest in allowing the British troops to escape captivity or destruction. He had been persuaded by Goring to let the Luftwaffe finish off the encircled enemy. He thought few of the British would escape.

In fact, the Luftwaffe could not deliver on Goring's promises. Despite its claims of success, bad weather and the Royal Air Force contrived to prevent the easy pickings Goring had imagined. Dunkirk did nothing to enhance the Luftwaffe's prestige. Within two days, Hitler realized that the halt order had been an error. On 26 May, he reversed his decision and finally ordered the advance on Dunkirk to prevent further evacuations. Few of the encircled troops had got away by then. But the delay of forty-eight hours proved vital in enabling the British to orchestrate the extraordinary retreat a masterpiece of improvisation accompanied by much good luck over the next days.

In military terms Dunkirk seemed, as one stunning success followed another, of secondary importance to Germany. It amounted in reality to a ma.s.sive defeat for Britain. But that the troops were brought back under such conditions to fight again another day was converted by the new British Prime Minister Churchill (who had come into office on the very day that the western offensive had begun), and by popular myth, into a symbol of the British fighting spirit the archetypal triumph in adversity. As such, the great setback at Dunkirk provided a boost to British morale at one of the lowest points in the nation's long history. In another way, too, Dunkirk was fateful. If the British Expeditionary Force had been lost, it is almost inconceivable that Churchill would have survived the growing pressure from those powerful forces within Britain that were ready to seek terms with Hitler.

Towards the end of the first week in June, Hitler moved his headquarters to Bruly-de-Pesche, in southern Belgium, near the border with France. The second stage of the German offensive was beginning. The French lines were rapidly overwhelmed. While the French had more guns and tanks than the Germans, they were hopelessly outmatched in air-power. Not just that: French weaponry and tactics were outdated, not attuned to the demands of modern, mechanized warfare. And, just as important, the French military leaders.h.i.+p conveyed their sense of defeatism to the rank-and-file. Discipline collapsed along with morale. Taking their lead from their fighting men, civilians fled from the big cities in their thousands. Some looked to astrology. The faithful placed their trust in prayer and the intercession of St Genevieve. Neither would be enough.

On 14 June German troops penetrated the Maginot Line south of Saarbrucken. That same day, less than five weeks since the launch of the western offensive, their comrades entered Paris. A generation earlier, the fathers and uncles of these soldiers had fought for four years and not reached Paris. Now, the German troops had achieved it in little over four weeks. The disparity in casualty figures mirrored the magnitude of the victory. Allied losses were reckoned at 90,000 dead, 200,000 wounded, and 1.9 million captured or missing. German dead numbered almost 30,000, total casualties just under 165,000.

It was no wonder that Hitler felt on top of the world, slapping his thigh for joy his usual expression of exultation and laughing in relief, when he was brought the news at Bruly-de-Pesche on 17 June that Marshal Petain's new French government had sued for peace. The end of the war seemed imminent. England would now surely give in. Total victory, Hitler imagined, was within his grasp.

Mussolini had brought Italy into the war a week earlier, hoping to cash in on the action just before it was all over, in time to win rich pickings and bask in the glory of a cheap victory. Hitler took no pleasure in greeting his new companion-in-arms when he flew to Munich to meet him on 18 June to discuss the French armistice request. He wanted lenient terms for the French, and swiftly dispelled Mussolini's hopes of getting his hands on part of the Frenc