Hitler's Charisma (34 page)

The only practical way the flow of goods from America could be stopped, of course, was by sinking merchant ships as they crossed the Atlantic. And here too the Germans faced problems. The U-boat programme had been neglected for years as the emphasis of the German navy building programme had shifted to a long-term plan to create a giant surface battle fleet. By the start of the war the German navy had less than three dozen U-boats able to challenge the Allied merchant convoys in the north Atlantic. And only twenty additional U-boats had been constructed by the time of the fall of France in June 1940.
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In discussions with his generals, Hitler attempted to deal with the threat from America by logic which—even for him—was tortured. He argued that if Russia was defeated then this would allow the Japanese to more easily focus on their own territorial expansion in Asia and the Pacific, thus causing conflict between the Americans and the Japanese. The Americans, by implication, would then be occupied protecting their interests on the other side of the world. In addition, Hitler asserted, even if the Americans wanted to fight in Europe, it would take several years for them to be battle ready, by which time the Nazis would be in control of mainland Europe and, benefiting from the raw materials drawn from their new eastern empire, impregnable to attack.
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It was a strategy built on hope. Hitler hoped the Americans would be unable to support the British war effort if, as he hoped, the Japanese forced a conflict with them in the Pacific. Simultaneously, he hoped the British would make a compromise peace once the Soviets were defeated. Hope piled on hope piled on hope. Even Hitler could not conceal the fact that he could not actually make any of this happen. He could not order the German army across the Atlantic to defeat the Americans, he could not, it appeared, even order them across the English Channel to defeat the British. Moreover, as a central European by birth and inclination, Hitler had never shown any sign of embracing naval conquest. He believed Germany should expand on mainland Europe.

Yet despite all of this, no one seriously questioned Hitler’s analysis in the summer of 1940. The charismatic aura around him had intensified—now anyone approaching him did so with the knowledge of his recent success. Hitler had said Germany could defeat France and those that had doubted him had been proven wrong. Now he claimed Britain and America could be defeated by attacking the Soviet Union. And according to confidential SD reports monitoring public opinion towards the end of 1940, many in the general population—as yet ignorant of Hitler’s exact plans for the future—were happy to put their faith in his judgement. “When the Führer speaks, all doubts fall away …”
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was one remark from a citizen of Schwerin in northern Germany, judged “typical” by the SD. Another report, from the summer of 1940 said that Hitler’s speech on his return from France “was perceived with emotion [
Ergriffenheit
] and enthusiasm everywhere” with one person capturing the prevailing mood with the words, “The Führer’s speech seemed like a cleansing thunderstorm.”
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Such an attitude was also made possible by the sense of superiority that had been drummed into the Germans, a feeling confirmed by the victory over France. “We had been taught that only the Germans were valuable human beings,” one student at the time later remembered. “There was a little booklet called ‘German inventors, German poets, German musicians,’ nothing else existed. And we devoured it, and we were absolutely convinced that we were the greatest. And we would listen to the news flashes and we were incredibly proud and moved and frequently many people would shed tears of pride. You have to imagine it—I cannot understand it today—but it was just like that … even my sceptical father said ‘we,’ now he suddenly said ‘we,’ whereas before, when he was telling us stories from the war and so on, he would use ‘I,’ but now it was suddenly ‘we.’ ‘We’ are splendid fellows!”
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Hitler’s decision to turn on the Soviets tapped into a mix of memory, practicality and romance—a potent combination that Hitler knew how to manipulate. Ever since the Teutonic Knights had gained land in the Baltic states in the thirteenth century, tales of chivalry and conquest had been told about the German conquest of the “East.” More recently, the Germans who had fought in the army on Soviet territory in the First World War, and in the
Freikorps
in the Baltic states in the war’s immediate aftermath, had formed their own opinion of this vast space to set against the myths of old. “Deepest Russia, without a glimmer of Central European
Kultur
[culture], Asia, steppe, swamps, claustrophobic underworld,” recalled one German soldier, “and a godforsaken wasteland of slime.”
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Another saw the Germans as a civilising force in this wild landscape, as “pioneers of
Kultur
” and “thus, whether aware or not, the German soldier becomes a teacher in the enemy land.”
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Moreover, current German military planners knew that they relied on imports from the Soviet Union—particularly of oil and grain—to be able to carry on fighting the war. What if Stalin threatened to stop supplying this vital material? Why not, instead, fight to gain permanent and secure access to these raw materials once and for all?

The arrival of the Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, in Berlin on 12 November 1940 served only to make that option all the more attractive for Hitler. Molotov had been invited to discuss the relationship between the Soviet Union and Germany, fifteen months after the signing of the non-aggression pact. The Soviet Foreign Minister’s style of leadership
was the opposite of Hitler’s. He was so adept at sitting through interminable meetings that he had earned the nickname “stone arse.” He dealt in practical, everyday concerns and was suspicious of ambitious flights of fancy. The antithesis of charisma himself, Molotov was the last person to be swayed by Hitler’s grand visions. And so it proved during their meetings in the Reich Chancellery on 12 and 13 November.

Hitler began by emphasising in his opening remarks to Molotov that he wanted to talk in “bold outline” about the relationship between the Soviet Union and Germany. Hitler thus sought to avoid “petty momentary considerations.” He then raised the “problem of America” implying that American aid for Britain was actually part of a cynical ploy to “further their own rearmament and to reinforce their military power by acquiring bases.”
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But it wouldn’t be until “1970 or 1980” that America would be in a position to “seriously endanger” other nations. In the meantime, Hitler suggested that perhaps the Soviet Union could participate in the Tripartite Pact, the recently signed agreement between Germany, Italy and Japan.

But Molotov demonstrated that “petty momentary considerations” were precisely what interested him. He brushed away Hitler’s desire to talk in broad terms and tried to focus the conversation on immediate practical issues like Germany’s intentions towards Finland. Hitler, having dealt swiftly with this question (“Finland remained in the sphere of influence of Russia”), conjured up a future world “after the conquest of England” when “the British Empire would be apportioned as a gigantic worldwide estate in bankruptcy of 40 million square kilometres. In this bankrupt estate there would be for Russia access to the ice-free and really open ocean.” But Molotov could not have been less interested in the future dismemberment of the assets of a country that had yet to be beaten—and indeed might not ever be beaten. At a later meeting on the same trip to Berlin he explicitly said to Ribbentrop that he was aware that the German plans for the future were based on the “assumption” that the war against Britain “had already actually been won.”

Molotov’s rejection—almost scorn—of Hitler’s charisma was predictable not only given his own personality but also Stalin’s contempt for this style of leadership. Stalin had beaten at least two “charismatic” rivals in the race to succeed Lenin—Zinoviev and Trotsky—and had achieved his success by cunning and the exercise of raw power. Hitler thrived on
rhetoric—it was the basis of his appeal—while Stalin had a totally different view of leadership. “One should distrust words,” he said. “Deeds are more important than words.”
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Not surprisingly, the talks with Molotov were unsuccessful, and on 18 December 1940, shortly after they ended, Hitler issued the formal directive for Operation Barbarossa (
Unternehmen Barbarossa
)—the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Meantime, events in Poland continued to demonstrate how the interrelationship between Hitler and his followers could create immense dynamism and destructiveness. Just as before the war, Hitler’s lack of definition of precise aims was a key factor in his leadership of his ideological supporters. In the words of Professor Norbert Frei, “The key to it was to be vague … you don’t get a consistent picture even if you are at the top of the hierarchy.”
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As Joseph Goebbels said on 5 April 1940 during a confidential briefing for the German press, “Today, when someone asks you how we conceive of the new Europe, we must say, we do not know. Certainly we have an idea. But if we dress it in words it will immediately create enemies and increase the resistance … Today we say
‘Lebensraum.’
Everyone can imagine what they want. We will know what we want when the time is right.”
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Amongst the new rulers of Poland this form of leadership was a recipe for the most astonishing level of violence and chaos. For example, Arthur Greiser, ruler of the newly created area called the Warthegau in Poland, and Arthur Forster, Nazis boss of Danzig/West Prussia, both exercised enormous individual power without reference to any other authority. Both were “Gauleiters,” or district leaders (the Reich was divided into “Gau” or “districts,” each with its own “Gauleiter”). These men—and they were all men—were appointed directly by Hitler and reported directly to him. Many had been with him from the beginning of the Nazi movement. Albert Forster, for instance, had become a Nazi stormtrooper in 1923 when he was twenty-one years old. Forster and Greiser had both been told by Hitler that “they had ten years to tell him that Germanisation of their provinces was complete and he would ask no questions about their methods.”
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As a result, since both felt free to complete their tasks however they liked, they each approached the job differently. Greiser, a close associate of Himmler, utilised approved Nazi methods in determining who was “German” in his area of Poland and who was not. Forster, equally brutal but rather more laissez-faire in his methods, thought it would be quicker
to work out which villages appeared Germanic and then “Germanise” the inhabitants en masse. In both cases the consequences for those not considered “German” could be catastrophic—deportation to the General Government, starvation and death was the fate that awaited many of them.

The situation in Poland was rendered even more chaotic by the arrival of several hundred thousand ethnic Germans who, by agreement with Stalin, were able to emigrate to the “Reich” from areas like the Baltic States within the newly-expanded Soviet Union. It came as a shock to many of them to discover that the “Reich” in which they were now told to make their home was not within the pre-war boundaries of Germany but in the newly incorporated territories that until recently had been part of Poland. Some of the new immigrants were simply given flats and businesses expropriated from Poles who had been deported or Jews who were now imprisoned in ghettos. However, the majority of ethnic Germans did not find new homes but languished in reception camps waiting for the Nazi authorities to sort matters out.

Presiding over all of this human torment was Heinrich Himmler. He, in common with other Nazi rulers in Poland like Forster and Greiser, had been given enormous latitude by Hitler to use whatever methods he thought were necessary to reorganise Poland on racial grounds. And Himmler knew very well that Hitler would support the adoption of violent and radical measures to get the job done. Himmler, just thirty-nine years old in the summer of 1940, was still a veteran of the Nazi movement. He had taken part in the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 and then turned against his old patron, Ernst Röhm, at the Night of the Long Knives in 1934.

Moreover, Himmler was also a passionate believer in the prime importance of “race” in human history. “We need to be clear about one thing,” he told a gathering of Nazi gauleiters in February 1940, “we are firmly convinced, I believe it, just as I believe in a God, I believe that our blood, the Nordic blood, is actually the best blood on this earth … In a thousand centuries this Nordic blood will still be the best. There is no other. We are superior to everything and everyone. Once we are liberated from inhibitions and restraints, there is no one who can surpass us in quality and strength.”
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In pursuit of “the best blood” Himmler had been appointed as “Reich Commissar for the Strengthening of German Nationhood” by Hitler back in October 1939, and in this capacity he had been attempting one of the
largest ethnic reorganisations of human beings in history. Or, as Goebbels put it, writing in his diary in January 1940, “Himmler is presently shifting populations. Not always successfully.”
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A necessary precondition for the latitude which Himmler exercised over the violent actions in the East was, not surprisingly, Hitler’s confidence that Himmler was both intensely loyal to him and subscribed to his “charismatic genius.” Back in January 1923, even before he had experienced personal dealings with Hitler, Himmler wrote: “He is in truth a great man and above all a true and pure one.”
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But notwithstanding Hitler’s confidence in Himmler’s loyalty, the SS leader still had to push his desired changes through against other competing Nazi power interests in Poland. When, for example, Himmler objected to the lax manner in which Albert Forster implemented racial selection in Danzig/West Prussia he found he could do little to enforce his will, since Forster, as a gauleiter, had direct access to Hitler. Himmler also had problems with Göring who had pursued objections from Hans Frank, the Nazi ruler of the General Government, after Frank had complained to Göring, in his capacity as Head of the Four Year Plan, about the effect of mass deportations to his area of Poland made in pursuit of Himmler’s racial reorganisation.