Heinrich Himmler probably echoed Hitler’s views most closely in a November speech to Party officials in which he pinpointed the frontier between Europe and Asia. People suggested it was the Ural Mountains, but the Mongol strains permeated the people both sides of that barrier too strongly to escape Himmler’s racialistic scrutiny : That is why this Russian people will never make a purely European or even a pure Asiatic race.
It must be treated as a potpourri of races and kept within its frontiers. By brute force if by no other means. At present there is no need for that ; we have our friendship pact with Russia. But this friendship pact is not a love affair ; it’s a pact designed to meet the most elementary requirements of our two nations.
Up to now, by means of this pact Russia has subjugated entire countries and nations, apart from Finland, without drawing her sword from its scabbard ; she has annexed large territories on her western and southern frontiers. Her appetite threatened to grow gigantically, so it became necessary for us to map out our mutual interests to each other afresh. In his long overdue visit to Berlin, Molotov has been given the necessary instructions.
If what I have heard is true, then Stalin is not permitted to start any wars for the moment, or any fighting, as otherwise he will be dealt a sharp rebuke by our own guns. This order holds good both for her [Russia’s] evil designs on Finland and for any she may have in the south or southeast. She is permitted to launch military operations only with the Fhrer’s express permission.
To put muscle into our orders, we have based enough troops along our eastern frontier for the Red czar in Moscow to take them seriously. Anyway, as I said in my last speech, Russia is militarily quite harmless. Her officer corps is so poor that they do not even bear comparison with our NCOs ; her army is as badly equipped as trained. They cannot possibly be any danger to us. Before ten days had passed, it was clear the Russians’ aims were irreconcilable with Hitler’s.
Ribbentrop had submitted to Moscow a draft treaty embodying in secret protocols the substance of Hitler’s oral offer to Molotov : Germany’s territorial expansion would take place in Central Africa ; Italy’s in north and northeast Africa ; Japan’s in the Far East ; and the Soviet Union’s toward the Indian Ocean.
On November 25, Molotov submitted the four conditions on which Russia would sign. The first two—a demand that Hitler evacuate from Finland the troops sent in August 1940, and that Bulgaria conclude a pact with Russia granting her military bases within range of the Bosphorus—were wholly unacceptable to Hitler. He instructed Ribbentrop to make no reply at all. Hitler for his part did nothing to strengthen the French people’s affection for Laval.
He authorized Gauleiter Josef Brckel, the civil administrator of Lorraine, to expel a hundred thousand hostile French citizens from the province, and later in November nearly seven thousand German Jews from Baden and the Palatinate were on Hitler’s orders transported into Vichy France. Both actions aroused Ptain’s indignation. Meanwhile the Franco-German talks on military collaboration were conducted desultorily at the German embassy in Paris.
The fact that Hitler appointed only Major General Walter Warlimont, Jodl’s deputy, as Germany’s representative showed how little importance he attached to them. Hitler ordered Keitel to ask by what date Spain could be ready ; Canaris replied from Madrid that Spain could only join in the war if Britain was on the brink of collapse.
The alacrity with which Hitler now abandoned “Felix”—though in later years he again toyed more than once with this idea—suggests that his instinct was screaming warnings against accepting obligations toward a second Latin nation. In the immediate aftermath of Franco’s rebuff he lamented this further proof that Mussolini’s misadventures in the Balkans had undermined the awe in which the world held the Axis.
He also greatly regretted forfeiting the psychological bonus the capture of Gibraltar would have bestowed. Hitler’s strategic timetable took shape. He would execute “Marita” early in March. Of course, if the Greeks saw the light and showed their British “guests” the door, he would call off “Marita” altogether—he had no interest whatever in occupying Greece. Then he would attack Russia during May. “In three weeks we will be in Leningrad !” Schmundt heard him say.
Hitler’s motives for seizing the Baltic coast first were clear. The admiralty attached particular importance to restoring peace in the Baltic as soon as possible. The Baltic was the navy’s training ground and the route Germany’s ore supplies from Scandinavia must take ; besides, when the Russians had been destroyed in the Baltic countries, great forces would be released for other operations.
The Russian campaign would be a short one ; indeed, it must be settled together with all other continental problems before 1941 was over—for from 1942 onward the United States would be capable of intervening. His eyes were now fixed on Russia.
On December 18, Jodl brought him the final version of the campaign directive, retyped on the large “Fhrer typewriter.” “Fritz,” Lossberg’s code name for the coming campaign, was replaced by the more majestic-sounding “Barbarossa,” the name by which the first Emperor Friedrich had gone into history eight hundred years before as the founder of a mighty empire.
Partly the handiwork of Jodl, a master stylist whose spoken German was very clear and simple, and partly the product of Hitler’s pen, the eleven-page document instructed the Wehrmacht to be prepared to “overthrow Soviet Russia in a rapid campaign even before the war with Britain is over.” The Luftwaffe would have a purely support role, rather than one of strategic bombardment.
All preparations were to be complete by mid-May 1941 ; he, Hitler, would give the word for the necessary troop concentrations to begin eight weeks before the chosen date “if Russia should fail to change in her attitude toward us.” Nine copies of the directive were signed for the commanders in chief and the OKW ; those let into the dreadful secret were to be kept to an absolute minimum, and every single phase was to be camouflaged against Russian scrutiny.
In the early hours of December 14 the text of a personal letter from Marshal Ptain reached Hitler. He thanked the Fhrer for his honorable intentions in transferring to Les Invalides in Paris the mortal remains of Napoleon’s beloved son, the Duke of Reichstadt, which had since 1832 reposed in Vienna ; but he also advised Hitler that he had dismissed Pierre Laval, the deputy premier with whom the German leaders had so recently conferred at Montoire, and replaced him by Admiral Jean Franois
Darlan who would continue the policy of cooperation and in whom Vichy had greater confidence. In vain Ribbentrop tried to secure Laval’s restoration ; the luckless minister was held incommunicado on Ptain’s orders. Even greater was the further affront to Hitler of Ptain’s refusal to attend the ceremony at Les Invalides. The marshal initiated the rumor that this was just a German trick to lure him to Paris and kidnap him—a canard which enraged Hitler.
He again withdrew the hand he had extended toward France. Who needed France anyway ? A vision still haunted him—the possibility of signing a peace with Britain, but this time at France’s expense. Keitel, Halder, and much of Jodl’s staff had gone on leave. Protected by extra antiaircraft trains, Hitler set out with his personal staff on a Christmas tour of the western front.
He wanted to inspect the big gun batteries which Todt’s organization had installed to command the Channel coast—the sites had names like “Great Elector,” “Siegfried,” and “Gneisenau”—and he wanted to celebrate the holiday with the aircrews of Gring’s fighter and bomber squadrons. (Gring himself was spending a comfortable Christmas and New Year at his Rominten estate, some twenty miles from the Russian frontier in East Prussia.)
Only one frosty interview with Admiral Darlan, Ptain’s “crown prince,” chilled the atmosphere of Hitler’s special train ; Darlan recounted how his family had always hated the British and had been fighting them now for three hundred years—a perhaps inappropriate confidence, given Hitler’s present mood. One of Hitler’s secretaries wrote to a friend : “We have not stopped moving since December 21. Christmas on the French coast—Calais and Dunkirk.
As we were eating dinner in the dining car of our special train on the twenty-third at Boulogne, the British came and started bombing, and our antiaircraft roared back at them. Even though we were shunted into a safe tunnel”—guarded by antiaircraft trains at each end—“I couldn’t help feeling ‘a bit queer’. . . . On New Year’s Eve the mood was more than painful….”Hitler had returned to the Berghof to spend New Year with Eva Braun and his “family” of adjutants and staff.
Goebbels would be making the traditional speech to the Reich. Hitler had already seen and approved the script, and marked it with spidery ink amendments of a trivial, grammatical nature, except for one : where Goebbels had wanted to proclaim “Never will we capitulate, never will we tire, and never will we be despondent,” Hitler had expunged the first four words.(3)1 She joined
on March 1, 1941, simultaneously with the entry of the first German divisions.2 Much to the annoyance of the British foreign office, who had prepared to reap propaganda capital.
See Sir Alexander Cadogan’s Diary.3 In June 1943 he again censored a Goebbels speech in the same sense.Notesp. 185 German records on the British operational plans in Ireland will be found in Etzdorfs file (“Misc.”) and the diaries of the OKW, the naval staff Tippelskirch, and Halder.p. 188 Hitler still smarted under Franco’s rebuff three years later.
He described Franco’s excuses as “threadbare” to Hewel, who wrote in a letter of February 1, 1944 : “At the time the Fhrer commented, ‘The man has missed the historic chance offered him by fate.
This he’ll never be able to make up for.’ ” In January 1944, Hewel supplied Hitler with a comparison of Spain’s 1940 “minimum existence” demands, and the actual supplies the Allies had since made to her, “which had enabled her not only to survive but to rebuild her economy.” Thus in 1940 Franco had demanded 103,000 tons of petroleum a month ; but in the whole of 1942 the Allies had supplied only 15,000 tons.p. 190
On January 21, 1941, Etzdorf recorded this note on German policy toward the U.S.: “Roosevelt made two speeches, one ‘fireside’ and one to Congress. [Fhrer] is not to reply, so as not to help Roosevelt fan the flames.
Roosevelt’s line is to provide maximum assistance to Britain short of war, with soonest possible provocations so we’ll declare war.”p. 190 The final “Barbarossa” directive of December 18, 1940, will be recognized as an awkward compromise between the OKW and General Staff proposals, which were in part incompatible.p. 193 Goebbels’s speech draft—amended in Hitler’s handwriting—is in BA file NS10/37.
Hitler had returned to the Berghof to spend New Year with Eva Braun and his “family” of adjutants and staff. Goebbels would be making the traditional speech to the Reich. Hitler had already seen and approved the script, and marked it with spidery ink amendments of a trivial, grammatical nature, except for one : where Goebbels had wanted to proclaim “Never will we capitulate, never will we tire, and never will we be despondent,” Hitler had expunged the first four words.(3) 1 She joined
on March 1, 1941, simultaneously with the entry of the first German divisions.2 Much to the annoyance of the British foreign office, who had prepared to reap propaganda capital.
See Sir Alexander Cadogan’s Diary.3 In June 1943 he again censored a Goebbels speech in the same sense.Notesp. 185 German records on the British operational plans in Ireland will be found in Etzdorfs file (“Misc.”) and the diaries of the OKW, the naval staff Tippelskirch, and Halder.p. 188 Hitler still smarted under Franco’s rebuff three years later.
He described Franco’s excuses as “threadbare” to Hewel, who wrote in a letter of February 1, 1944 : “At the time the Fhrer commented, ‘The man has missed the historic chance offered him by fate.
This he’ll never be able to make up for.’ ” In January 1944, Hewel supplied Hitler with a comparison of Spain’s 1940 “minimum existence” demands, and the actual supplies the Allies had since made to her, “which had enabled her not only to survive but to rebuild her economy.” Thus in 1940 Franco had demanded 103,000 tons of petroleum a month ; but in the whole of 1942 the Allies had supplied only 15,000 tons.p. 190
On January 21, 1941, Etzdorf recorded this note on German policy toward the U.S.: “Roosevelt made two speeches, one ‘fireside’ and one to Congress. [Fhrer] is not to reply, so as not to help Roosevelt fan the flames.
Roosevelt’s line is to provide maximum assistance to Britain short of war, with soonest possible provocations so we’ll declare war.”p. 190 The final “Barbarossa” directive of December 18, 1940, will be recognized as an awkward compromise between the OKW and General Staff proposals, which were in part incompatible.p.
193 Goebbels’s speech draft—amended in Hitler’s handwriting—is in BA file NS10/37. 2 Much to the annoyance of the British foreign office, who had prepared to reap propaganda capital.
See Sir Alexander Cadogan’s Diary.3 In June 1943 he again censored a Goebbels speech in the same sense.Notesp. 185 German records on the British operational plans in Ireland will be found in Etzdorfs file (“Misc.”) and the diaries of the OKW, the naval staff Tippelskirch, and Halder.p. 188 Hitler still smarted under Franco’s rebuff three years later.
He described Franco’s excuses as “threadbare” to Hewel, who wrote in a letter of February 1, 1944 : “At the time the Fhrer commented, ‘The man has missed the historic chance offered him by fate.
This he’ll never be able to make up for.’ ” In January 1944, Hewel supplied Hitler with a comparison of Spain’s 1940 “minimum existence” demands, and the actual supplies the Allies had since made to her, “which had enabled her not only to survive but to rebuild her economy.” Thus in 1940 Franco had demanded 103,000 tons of petroleum a month ; but in the whole of 1942 the Allies had supplied only 15,000 tons.p. 190
On January 21, 1941, Etzdorf recorded this note on German policy toward the U.S.: “Roosevelt made two speeches, one ‘fireside’ and one to Congress. [Fhrer] is not to reply, so as not to help Roosevelt fan the flames.
Roosevelt’s line is to provide maximum assistance to Britain short of war, with soonest possible provocations so we’ll declare war.”p. 190 The final “Barbarossa” directive of December 18, 1940, will be recognized as an awkward compromise between the OKW and General Staff proposals, which were in part incompatible.p. 193 Goebbels’s speech draft—amended in Hitler’s handwriting—is in BA file NS10/37. 3 In June 1943 he again censored a Goebbels speech in the same sense. p.
185 German records on the British operational plans in Ireland will be found in Etzdorfs file (“Misc.”) and the diaries of the OKW, the naval staff Tippelskirch, and Halder.p. 188 Hitler still smarted under Franco’s rebuff three years later. He described Franco’s excuses as “threadbare” to Hewel, who wrote in a letter of February 1, 1944 : “At the time the Fhrer commented, ‘The man has missed the historic chance offered him by fate.
This he’ll never be able to make up for.’ ” In January 1944, Hewel supplied Hitler with a comparison of Spain’s 1940 “minimum existence” demands, and the actual supplies the Allies had since made to her, “which had enabled her not only to survive but to rebuild her economy.” Thus in 1940 Franco had demanded 103,000 tons of petroleum a month ; but in the whole of 1942 the Allies had supplied only 15,000 tons.p. 190
On January 21, 1941, Etzdorf recorded this note on German policy toward the U.S.: “Roosevelt made two speeches, one ‘fireside’ and one to Congress. [Fhrer] is not to reply, so as not to help Roosevelt fan the flames.
Roosevelt’s line is to provide maximum assistance to Britain short of war, with soonest possible provocations so we’ll declare war.”p. 190 The final “Barbarossa” directive of December 18, 1940, will be recognized as an awkward compromise between the OKW and General Staff proposals, which were in part incompatible.p. 193 Goebbels’s speech draft—amended in Hitler’s handwriting—is in BA file NS10/37. p. 188 Hitler still smarted under Franco’s rebuff three years later.
He described Franco’s excuses as “threadbare” to Hewel, who wrote in a letter of February 1, 1944 : “At the time the Fhrer commented, ‘The man has missed the historic chance offered him by fate.
This he’ll never be able to make up for.’ ” In January 1944, Hewel supplied Hitler with a comparison of Spain’s 1940 “minimum existence” demands, and the actual supplies the Allies had since made to her, “which had enabled her not only to survive but to rebuild her economy.” Thus in 1940 Franco had demanded 103,000 tons of petroleum a month ; but in the whole of 1942 the Allies had supplied only 15,000 tons.p. 190
On January 21, 1941, Etzdorf recorded this note on German policy toward the U.S.: “Roosevelt made two speeches, one ‘fireside’ and one to Congress. [Fhrer] is not to reply, so as not to help Roosevelt fan the flames.
Roosevelt’s line is to provide maximum assistance to Britain short of war, with soonest possible provocations so we’ll declare war.”p. 190 The final “Barbarossa” directive of December 18, 1940, will be recognized as an awkward compromise between the OKW and General Staff proposals, which were in part incompatible.p. 193 Goebbels’s speech draft—amended in Hitler’s handwriting—is in BA file NS10/37. p. 190
On January 21, 1941, Etzdorf recorded this note on German policy toward the U.S.: “Roosevelt made two speeches, one ‘fireside’ and one to Congress. [Fhrer] is not to reply, so as not to help Roosevelt fan the flames.
Roosevelt’s line is to provide maximum assistance to Britain short of war, with soonest possible provocations so we’ll declare war.”p. 190 The final “Barbarossa” directive of December 18, 1940, will be recognized as an awkward compromise between the OKW and General Staff proposals, which were in part incompatible.p. 193 Goebbels’s speech draft—amended in Hitler’s handwriting—is in BA file NS10/37. p.
190 The final “Barbarossa” directive of December 18, 1940, will be recognized as an awkward compromise between the OKW and General Staff proposals, which were in part incompatible.p. 193 Goebbels’s speech draft—amended in Hitler’s handwriting—is in BA file NS10/37. p. 193 Goebbels’s speech draft—amended in Hitler’s handwriting—is in BA file NS10/37.