Killing Hitler (44 page)

The view of the aftermath presented by Hitler’s own propaganda machine was scarcely more comforting. “Not a German stalk of wheat is to feed the enemy,” one newspaper editorial warned, “not a German mouth to give him information, not a German hand to offer him help. He is to find every footbridge destroyed, every road blocked—nothing but death, annihilation and hatred will meet him.”
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The roots of this destructive urge have been much discussed. On one level, perhaps, Hitler was still trying to expunge the memory of the ignominious end to the First World War. His fanatical resistance in 1945 was, in part at least, a replaying of the defeat of 1918. His exhortations to hold out might be seen as a stratagem to avoid the shame of another “stab in the back.” As the historian Sebastian Haffner wrote:

[Hitler’s] determination never again to allow a November 1918 to happen was the main impulse that drove him to become a politician. Now [in 1945], in a sense, Hitler had reached his original goal: another November 1918 was just around the corner, and Hitler this time was in a position to prevent it. He was determined to do just that.
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There is certainly something in this. But there are also other factors that contributed to Hitler’s self-destructive mind-set in 1945. His nihilism was undoubtedly influential. But so, too, were his psychopathic and misanthropic tendencies, which, though always present, naturally came to the fore when disaster loomed. Mankind, he once stated, was nothing but a “ridiculous ‘cosmic bacterium.’ “
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Man’s suffering was nothing to him. He never visited the injured in hospitals, never toured the bombed-out cities, and never ventured into a concentration camp. His world consisted of enemies to be annihilated and allies to be exploited. There was precious little in between.

But these influences also fed into other, more complex belief systems. First, there was the “Valhalla mentality.” According to Nordic mythology, the end of the world would come when the gods confronted their enemies, approaching from all quarters, and died a hero’s death defying them. Thereafter, it was held that the sun would darken, the stars vanish, and the earth would sink into the sea. Though obscure, these myths had been popularized in Germany by the work of the composer Richard Wagner and had been successfully woven into the German nationalist psyche. They were frequently invoked by the Nazi élite: Göring, for example, recalled the related Germanic legend of deceit and slaughter by referring to Germany as “the Hall of the Nibelungs, built of fire and blood.”
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Hitler, too, was no less of an aficionado, being a regular visitor to the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth and an avid collector of original Wagner scores.
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He clearly viewed the composer’s opus almost as an ersatz religion.

But it appears that this interest went far beyond mere fashion or cultural curiosity. Some actually appeared to believe it. In the final days of the Reich, in April 1945, Gerda Bormann wrote to
her husband in the Chancellery, describing how Germany’s predicament reminded her of
Götterdämmerung
, the “twilight of the gods.” “The Giants and the Dwarfs,” she wrote,

the wolf Fenris and the snake Mitgard, all the powers of evil…are storming over the bridge of the gods…The citadel is tottering and all seems lost. But suddenly a new citadel rises, more beautiful than the one before, and Baldur lives again.
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Such was the mythological twaddle that sustained many of the leaders of the Third Reich in their final days.

Second, and perhaps most important, there was Social Darwinism. As is well known, Hitler viewed human existence as an exercise in the survival of the fittest. Naturally, he extended that concept to apply to nations as well. Thus, Germany was involved in a “fight for life,” not only with its own internal “bacillus”—the Jews—but also with the other perceived lesser races of Europe. This struggle necessitated not only the thoroughgoing extermination of racial enemies but also the careful nurturing of the “best” of the German race, hence the bizarre reliance on pseudo-science, eugenics, and SS “breeding” programs.

The dark corollary to this racist claptrap was that the German race was constantly testing itself in warfare with its rivals. Hitler could encourage and cajole and, he thought, get the best out of them, but if they should fail, the laws of Social Darwinism were unequivocal—like their earlier victims, they would be scheduled for destruction. On this point, Hitler was merciless. “If the German people should lose the war,” he once said, “then it would indicate that it did not possess the internal value that had been attributed to it, and [I] would have no sympathy with [it].”
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On another occasion, his message was bleaker still:

If the war is lost then the nation will be lost also. There is no need to show any consideration for the foundations which the German nation needs for its most primitive survival. On the contrary, it is better to destroy those things ourselves. Because this nation has shown itself the weaker, and the future belongs exclusively to the stronger nation from the East. In any event, what remains after this struggle are only the inferior, for the good have died in battle.
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By 1945, therefore, Germany’s “fight for life” had been lost, and—in Hitler’s view at least—Germany did not deserve to survive.

Naturally, there were many—even among hardened Nazis—who disagreed with this worldview. Göring was said to have found it “disappointing,”
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while Goebbels, usually Hitler’s most rabid cheerleader, bemoaned the “totally mistaken assumptions” that had brought it about.
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One of its more vociferous opponents, however, was the then minister for armaments, Albert Speer.

Speer had begun his career as an architect. As a student in Berlin in 1930, he had been inspired by hearing Hitler speak and had applied to join the Nazi Party. Within two years, he had made the acquaintance of Karl Hanke, then the party head of the Berlin West district, and had begun to get his first commissions. His organizational and architectural talents were soon noticed, and in 1933 he was given responsibility for the planning of Nazi events. Thereafter he moved swiftly into Hitler’s inner circle, his path smoothed by Hitler’s love of architecture and his own successful completion of numerous high-profile commissions, including the new Reich Chancellery in Berlin and the party rally grounds at Nuremberg.

Yet despite his closeness to the epicenter of power in the Third Reich, and his personal affection and admiration for Hitler, Speer denied that he had ever been a convinced National Socialist. By 1940, he claimed already to have identified the dark heart of Nazism, its “boastful arrogance, its greed and the excesses of the bad winner.”
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For this reason, he always sought to keep the party at arm’s length and even refused an honorary rank in the SS. As court architect, he would stress, his role was a nonpolitical one. His was not the world of the concentration camps, the forced laborers, and the crude ideology of race—he was a manager, a technocrat, and an artist. If he did not personally take part
in such abominations, he thought, he could escape implication in them. It was a façade that he would seek to maintain for many years.

In 1942, however, the halcyon days of the court architect came to an end. Thanks to his managerial skills—and the mysterious death of his predecessor—Speer was appointed minister for armaments, with the unenviable task of shifting German industry onto a total-war footing. Despite the disruption caused by Allied bombing and domestic labor shortages, he presided over an impressive rise in production, reaching a peak in 1944.

By that time, however—for all his successes—Speer had already passed the zenith of his career. His stark, unglossed view of Germany’s predicament had ruffled feathers and he now found himself viewed with suspicion by the SS and out of favor with Hitler. He was intrigued against, sidelined by his rivals, and brusquely rebuked by the Führer; his memoranda were openly criticized and the presence of his deputy was often requested in his stead.
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In time, the pressure took its toll. In January 1944, Speer was committed to a sanatorium suffering from exhaustion and nervous collapse. When he returned to work that spring, he noted his own growing disenchantment with the party, the SS, the conduct of the war, even Hitler himself. As Speer put it, “the veil had been lifted.”
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Part of that disillusionment was doubtless due to his appreciation that the war was already lost. He saw Germany’s military potential being systematically degraded, and began to doubt that she could effectively defend herself. As he recalled in his memoirs:

I could see omens of the war’s end almost every day in the blue southern sky when, flying provocatively low, the bombers of the American Fifteenth Air Force crossed the Alps…. Not a German fighter plane anywhere in sight. No anti-aircraft fire…Total defencelessness.
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As a result, he contemplated resignation and then penned a number of memoranda to Hitler containing suggestions on how defeat might be postponed or at least ameliorated. But each of his
proposals was scorned as Hitler blindly refused to hear anything of defeat. For the most part, the memoranda went unread. Their author, though he continued at his post, began to feel increasingly alienated.

When the scorched-earth policy then materialized, Speer was, by his own admission, “aghast.” While he intended to salvage what was possible from the wreckage of the war for the benefit of its survivors, he saw his fellow ministers colluding in a program of unprecedented and, to him, unconscionable vandalism. He soon began to seek ways of circumventing and undermining the Nero Order. He forged numerous Wehrmacht orders, for example, demanding the preservation of a certain bridge or other item of infrastructure.
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But his most successful technique was what he called a “simple trick” to outwit Hitler.
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In his memoranda and his face-to-face meetings with the Führer, he would use Hitler’s own arguments and prejudices to get the outcome that he desired. He would argue that, given that the lost territories would inevitably be recovered by German forces, the ordered destruction of the infrastructure in those areas should be suspended so that order and military production could be restored by the returning German armies with a minimum of effort. Hitler, of course, was seduced by the prospect of his armies resuming the advance and reconquering lost territory, and readily agreed. Armed with the Führer’s consent, Speer could then set about convincing the regional
Gauleiters
and occupation authorities to paralyze rather than destroy all affected installations. “Plans must be made,” he wrote,

so that if…industrial regions fall into enemy hands, the factories will only be crippled temporarily; this is to be achieved by removing various elements and taking them along on the retreat…without damaging the factories themselves.
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Speer worked tirelessly, devoting the same energy to undermining Hitler as he had earlier given to assisting him. Between February and April 1945, he made seventy visits around what
remained of German-occupied territory, and hosted almost a hundred conferences.
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In this way, he scored some notable successes, committing as many as sixty acts of high treason in the process.
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He persuaded the German commander of Paris, von Choltitz, for example, to postpone all planned demolitions.
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And he undoubtedly influenced the decision of the
Gauleiter
of Hamburg, Karl Kaufmann, not to allow the old city to be completely obliterated. In total, it is thought, his intervention resulted in the preservation of the mines and factories of Belgium and northern France, the canals of Holland, the nickel mines of Finland, the ore mines of the Balkans, and the oil fields of Hungary.
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Yet by defying Hitler’s direct orders, he was risking his life. His break with the regime had begun.

Throughout this period, Speer continued to petition Hitler with numerous memoranda, still hoping that sanity would prevail. Though he was actively defying Hitler, he clearly did not yet see the Führer himself as the root of the problem. That attitude was to change.

Speer’s relationship to Hitler was a peculiar one. Speer himself was clear: “If Hitler had had friends,” he once stated, “I would have been his friend.”
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One author has gone further, however, describing the relationship as a “dreadful love,” and there does appear to be a curiously passionate element to it.
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Hitler, it has been suggested, was quite taken with Speer, attracted by his Nordic looks and impressed by his quiet confidence and erudition.
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Speer naturally reciprocated, intoxicated in part by his closeness to the epicenter of power, but also believing implicitly, and with all the enthusiasm of the acolyte, in Hitler and in Hitler’s supposed genius.

Yet by the time of his return after illness in early 1944, Speer appears to have had little passion left. Though he and Hitler would patch up their relationship and return to some semblance of friendship and camaraderie, the spell had been broken. Speer even found that Hitler suddenly appeared physically repellent to him. “My God, how could I never have seen how ugly he is?” he
recalled. “This broad nose, this sallow skin. Who is this man?”
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Indeed, when a colleague commented that Hitler “could no longer be regarded as normal,” Speer agreed without protest.
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It is highly likely that he had already arrived at the same conclusion.