Barbarossa (59 page)

We had been warned to expect resistance from
pak
[fixed
antitank guns] and some tanks in static positions, also the
possibility of a few independent brigades of the slower KV type. In
fact we found ourselves taking on a seemingly inexhaustible mass of
enemy armour—never have I received such an overwhelming
impression of Russian strength and numbers as on that day. The clouds
of dust made it difficult to get help from the
Luftwaffe
, and
soon many of the T 34's had broken past our screen and were streaming
like rats all over the old battlefield . . .

By the evening the Russians were in possession of the battlefield,
with its valuable lumber of disabled hulks and wounded crews. A sharp
counterattack on Knobelsdorff's left had recaptured Berezovka, and
the exhausted
Gross Deutschland
had to go straight back into
action to prevent the 3rd panzer from being cut off. The following
day Hitler sent for Manstein and Kluge and told them that the
operation should be cancelled forthwith. The Allies had landed in
Sicily and there was a danger of Italy's being knocked out of the
war. Kluge agreed that it was impossible to continue, although
Manstein, with a most uncharacteristic lack of judgment, asserted ".
. . on no account should we let go of the enemy until the mobile
reserves which he had committed were decisively beaten."

Hitler, however, overruled him (in an exceptional reversal of
their customary roles), and that evening the Germans began slowly to
withdraw to their starting line. Guderian, who had seen his cherished
Panzer arm shattered in ten short days, retired to his bed with
dysentery. Only the indefatigable Tresckow persisted in his activity.
Seeing in this disastrous defeat fertile soil in which to sow his
intrigues among the generals, he had approached Kluge and suggested
to the Field Marshal that he and Guderian resolve their differences
and work together "to reduce the powers of Hitler as Supreme
Commander," an exceedingly loosely worded objective, which
covered everything from assassination to mild constitutional reform.
Kluge, characteristically, agreed, provided that Guderian would "take
the first step." Tresckow therefore approached Guderian, who was
by that time in a hospital, awaiting an operation on his intestines.
However, the Inspector General declined to have anything to do with
the idea as

My very exact knowledge of Field-Marshal von Kluge's unstable
character prevented me from accepting . . .

So it was that the private jealousies and suspicions of the
generals played their part in obstructing internal "reform,"
just as they had vitiated the possibility of success by force of
arms.

In the short life of the "Thousand-Year Reich" eight
more months had passed by.

eighteen
| THE AFTERMATH

One member of the Nazi hierarchy, at all events, was not deluded.
Heinrich Himmler saw that the failure of the
Zitadelle
offensive meant that the war was lost. The question which now
exercised him was how to moderate defeat and save his own skin, and
as on the two previous occasions which we have already recorded, his
mind began to toy with the idea of a palace revolution.

Although he seems to have relished the terror he could inspire in
his fellow Germans, Himmler never fully comprehended the hatred in
which he was held abroad. To foreigners and neutrals the head of the
SS liked to posture as an executive, a senior bureaucrat
characterised by his steadfast opposition to Communism—one, in
short, who was ideally suited by his position to preserve order in
the country during any period of "difficulty" and, were an
international agreement to be formulated, to lead Germany
punctiliously back into "the family of nations." In his
domestic circle, where, as a family man Himmler found it easier to
strike such an attitude, he had an old acquaintance, a Dr. Carl
Langbehn, whose respectable record made him an ideal piece to
introduce onto the board at this stage.

Langbehn was a close neighbour of the Himmlers' on the Walchensee,
and their daughters went to school together. Once, in the past,
Langbehn had approached Himmler on behalf of his old law tutor, a
Professor Fritz Pringsheim, when the latter had been thrown into a
concentration camp (because of his Jewish ancestry). Himmler had
obliged, and not only ordered Pringsheim's release but authorised a
permit with which the old man was able to leave the country.

It cannot be imagined that the relations of the two men were very
close, for Langbehn, who practiced as a constitutional lawyer, would
indulge periodically in ostentatious gestures of opposition to the
regime. At the time of the Reichstag Fire Trial he had offered to
defend the Communist leader, Ernst Togler. Later Langbehn undertook
the defence of Dr. Günther Gereke, the Labour Minister under the
Papen government, whom the Nazis were trying on a variety of
fabricated charges. Emboldened, perhaps, by the friendship and
protection of his powerful neighbour, Langbehn assumed prominence in
the circle of "the conspirators," and consorted with
Goerdeler and Johannes Popitz, to whom he propounded the importance
of engaging Himmler in the plot.

If the National Leader felt any embarrassment at his neighbour's
treasonable activities he bore it manfully. On at least one previous
occasion Himmler had gone so far as to communicate his own doubts
about the future to Langbehn, and fortified by this recollection, the
lawyer now began to raise, as tactfully as possible, the notion of a
meeting with Popitz.

No agenda for this meeting was ever formalised, which is hardly
surprising, but its purpose was twofold. First, to test the reaction
of the National Leader to the idea of a palace revolution; second, if
Himmler was willing, to discuss in general terms the basis of an
approach to the Western Allies for ending the war. It would seem that
both sides started with the intention of double-crossing each other.
The conspirators hoped to use the SS to get rid of Hitler, then turn
on it with the full weight of the Army. Himmler simply intended to
use Popitz and Langbehn as a respectable "front" for the
opening of negotiations. If the suggestion (of ending the war in the
West) should be favourably received, there would be no difficulty
over Himmler's assuming the executive authority to implement it, for
Treuer Heinrich
—the cognomen had been bestowed on him by
Hitler personally in recognition of his perfect loyalty—had at
his command the most perfect machinery for a
coup d'état
that has ever existed, in the police, the Gestapo, the SD, and the
SS.

Coups
—always a sensitive, indeed a traumatic subject
in totalitarian circles—were occupying much of the business at
the Führer's headquarters at this time. While the first cautious
approaches were being revived between Himmler and the conspirators in
Berlin, Hitler's own entourage had been thrown into alarm by events
in Rome. On 25th July, Mussolini had been deposed and Marshal
Badoglio had taken over the government. For several days the collapse
of his ally dominated Hitler's thoughts, to the exclusion of regular
military business and in particular to the detriment of the close
direction of
Zitadelle
, now grinding wearily to a halt on its
old starting line.

Several fragments of the daily conference transcripts over this
period have been preserved, and extracts from them will show the
state of excitement and confusion which prevailed:

Hitler:
[after a long, speculative back and forth with
Keitel and Jodl about alternative political developments in Italy] .
. Although that bugger [Badoglio] declared immediately that the war
would be continued, that won't make any difference. They have to say
that, but it remains treason.

But we'll play the same game while preparing everything to take
over the whole crew with one stroke, to capture all that riffraff.
Tomorrow I'll send a man down there with orders for the commander of
the 3rd
Panzergrenadier
Division to the effect that he must
drive into Rome with a special detachment and arrest the whole
government, the King and the whole bunch, right away. First of all to
arrest the Crown Prince and to take over the whole gang, especially
Badoglio and that entire crew. Then watch them cave in, and in two or
three days there'll be another
coup
.

How far are they [presumably the 3rd
Panzergrenadier
Division] from Rome?

Jodl:
About a hundred kilometres.

Hitler:
A hundred? More like sixty. That's all they'll
need. If he drives in with motorised troops he'll get in there and
arrest the whole works right away.

Keitel:
Two hours.

Jodl:
Fifty to sixty kilometres.

Hitler:
That's no distance.

Waizenegger:
[an Oberstleutnant on the OKW staff] The
division has forty-two assault guns, my Führer.

Hitler:
Are they down there with the division?

Waizenegger:
Yes, with the division.

Hitler:
Jodl, work that out right away.

Jodl:
Six battalions.

Keitel:
Ready for action. Five only partially ready.

Hitler:
Jodl, work out the orders for the 3rd
Panzergrenadier
Division to be sent down, telling them to
drive into Rome with their assault guns without letting anyone know
about it, and to arrest the government, the King and the whole lot. I
want the Crown Prince above all.

Keitel:
He is more important than the old man.

Bodenschatz:
[General of the Luftwaffe, and liaison officer
between Goering and the Führer's headquarters]

This has to be organised so that they can be packed into a plane
and flown away.

Hitler:
Straight into a plane, and off with them.

Bodenschatz:
[laughs] Don't let the
Bambino
[i.e.,
the Crown Prince] get lost at the airfield.

Hitler:
In eight days the thing will be reversed again. Now
I want to talk to the Reichsmarschall.

Bodenschatz:
I will inform him immediately.

It is apparent from the repetitive and at times almost incoherent
quality of Hitler's speech (particularly noticeable in the piece with
which this fragment opens) that he was in a highly nervous condition.
As so often in times of stress, he wants to lean on Goering, from
whose placid and cynical outlook he would draw strength. And, as was
becoming more and more frequent, Goering was not there, and when
located, seems to have made only moderate sense. Finally the
Reichsmarschall was reached by telephone (it was still only 10 p.m.),
and there is a record of Hitler's part—though not, naturally of
Goering's—in the ensuing conversation:

"Hello, Goering? ... I don't know. . . . Did you get the
news? . . . Well, there is no direct confirmation yet, but there
can't be any doubt that the Duce has resigned and that Badoglio has
taken his place. ... In Rome it is not a question of possibilities,
but of facts. . . . That's the truth, Goering, there's no doubt about
it. ... What? ... I don't know, we are trying to find out. ... Of
course that's nonsense. He'll keep going, but don't ask me how. . . .
But now they'll see how
we
keep going. . . . Well, I just
wanted to tell you. Anyway, I think you ought to get over here right
away. . . . What? ... I don't know. I'll tell you about that when you
arrive. But try to adjust yourself to the fact that it's true."

Goering then rang off. Hitler said to the room at large, "We
had a mess like this once before. That was on the day the
coup
d'état
took place
here
." (The assumption is
that he was pointing on the map to Belgrade and referring to the
coup
by King Peter and General Simovic in March 1941.) "We changed
things there, too."

Two and a half hours later there was still no sign of Goering, and
it is evident that Hitler's temper had not improved. Walter Hewel, a
representative of the Foreign Ministry, suggested that some sort of
guarantee of the Vatican should be offered.

Hitler:
That doesn't make any difference. I'll go right
into the Vatican. Do you think the Vatican embarrasses me? We'll take
that over right away. For one thing, the entire diplomatic corps are
in there. It's all the same to me. That rabble is in there. We'll get
that bunch of swine out of there. Later we can make apologies. That
doesn't make any difference.

Hewel:
[changing his tack, it may be suggested, to the
Führer's mood] We will find documents in there.

Hitler:
There, yes, we'll get documents, all right. The
treason will come to light. A pity that Ribbentrop isn't here. How
long will it take him to draft the directive for Mackensen?
[Mackensen was the German Ambassador in Rome.]

Hewel:
It may be finished.

Hitler:
All right.

Hewel:
I'll check on it right away.

Hitler:
Will that be a journalistic essay of twelve pages?
I'm always afraid of that with you people. It can be done in two or
three lines.

Now, Jodl. I've been thinking of something else. If our people in
the East want to attack tomorrow or the day after—I don't know
if the units have been assembled yet—I would recommend letting
them do that. Because then
Leibstandarte
can still take part.
For if they have to wait for the stock anyway— [SS
Leibstandarte
was under orders to move to Italy, but was
stranded in Russia by shortage of rolling stock.]

Keitel:
The rolling stock.

Jodl:
There's something in that. It would be better if
Leibstandarte
consolidates its position before leaving.

Hitler:
Yes, that would be good. Then this one division,
the
Leibstandarte
, can be taken away. They must be moved
first, but can leave their stuff there. They don't have to take their
tanks along. They can leave them over there, and get them replaced
here. By getting Panthers here they will be perfectly well equipped.
That's obvious. By the time the division is here it will have its
tanks.