The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (163 page)

For one of the very few times in his stormy life, Adolf Hitler conceded defeat. “The long and short of the tedious Spanish rigmarole,” he wrote Mussolini, “is that Spain does not want to enter the war and will not enter it. This is extremely tiresome since it means that for the moment the possibility of striking at Britain in the simplest manner, in her Mediterranean possessions, is eliminated.”

Italy, not Spain, however, was the key to defeating Britain in the Mediterranean, but the Duce’s creaky empire was not equal to the task of doing it alone and Hitler was not wise enough to give her the means, which he had, to accomplish it. The possibility of striking at Britain either directly across the Channel or indirectly across the broader Mediterranean, he now confessed, had been eliminated “for the moment.” Though this was frustrating, the acknowledgment of it brought Hitler relief. He could now turn to matters nearer his heart and mind.

On January 8–9, 1941, he held a council of war at the Berghof above Berchtesgaden, which now lay deep in the winter’s snow. The mountain air seems to have cleared his mind, and once more, as the lengthy confidential reports of the meeting by Admiral Raeder and General
Halder
⁵²
disclose, his thoughts ranged far and wide as he outlined his grand strategy to his military chiefs. His optimism had returned.

It was true, he conceded, that the direct invasion of Britain was “not feasible unless she is crippled to a considerable degree and Germany has complete air superiority.” The Navy and Air Force, he said, must concentrate on attacking her shipping lanes and thereby cut off her supplies. Such attacks, he thought, “might lead to victory as early as July or August.” In the meantime, he said, “Germany must make herself so strong on the Continent that we can handle a further war against England (and America).” The parentheses are Halder’s and their enclosure is significant. This is the first mention in the captured German records that Hitler—at the beginning of 1941—is facing up to the possibility of the entry of the United States into the war against him.

The Nazi warlord then took up the various strategic areas and problems and outlined what he intended to do about them.

At this point he cautioned his military leaders about divulging German plans.

Support for Italy, Hitler declared, would consist of antitank formations and some Luftwaffe squadrons for
Libya
. More important, he would dispatch an army corps of two and a half divisions to buck up the retreating Italians in
Albania
—into which the Greeks had now pushed them. In connection with this, “Operation Marita”
†
would be pushed. The transfer of troops from Rumania to
Bulgaria
, he ordered, must begin at once so that Marita could commence on March 26. Hitler also spoke at some length of the need to be ready to carry out “Operation
Attila
”—the German cover names seem almost endless—which he had outlined in a directive
of December 10, 1940. This was a plan to occupy the rest of France and seize the French fleet at
Toulon
. He thought now it might have to be carried out soon. “If France becomes troublesome,” he declared, “she will have to be crushed completely.” This would have been a crude violation of the Compiègne armistice, but no general or admiral, so far as Halder and Raeder noted—or at least recorded—raised the question.

It was at this war conference that Hitler described Stalin as “a cold-blooded blackmailer” and informed his commanders that Russia would have to be brought to her knees “as soon as possible.”

Such were the thoughts of the German dictator on global strategy as 1941 got under way. Two days after the war council, on January 11, he embodied them in Directive No. 22. German reinforcements for
Tripoli
were to move under “Operation
Sunflower
”; those for
Albania
under “Operation
Alpine Violets
.”
⁵⁴

Mussolini was summoned by Hitler to the Berghof for January 19 and 20. Shaken and humiliated by the Italian debacles in Egypt and Greece, he had no stomach for this journey.
Ciano
found him “frowning and nervous” when he boarded his special train, fearful that Hitler, Ribbentrop and the German generals would be insultingly condescending. To make matters worse the Duce took along General Alfredo Guzzoni, Assistant Chief of Staff, whom Ciano in his diary described as a mediocre man with a big paunch and a little dyed wig and whom, he thought, it would be positively humiliating to present to the Germans.

To his surprise and relief, Mussolini found Hitler, who came down to the snow-covered platform of the little station at
Puch
to greet him, both tactful and cordial and there were no reproaches for Italy’s sorry record on the battlefields. He also found his host, as Ciano noted in his diary, in a very anti-Russian mood. For more than two hours on the second day Hitler lectured his Italian guests and an assembly of generals from both countries, and a secret report on it prepared by General
Jodl
⁵⁵
confirms that while the Fuehrer was anxious to be helpful to the Italians in Albania and
Libya
, his principal thoughts were on Russia.

Though he hinted at what he intended to do with his “powerful means,” he did not disclose his plans to his partner. These, however, were sufficiently far along to enable the Chief of the Army General Staff, who was responsible for working out the details, to present them to the Supreme Commander at a meeting in Berlin a fortnight later.

This war conference, attended by the top generals of OKW and of the Army High Command (OKH), lasted from noon until 6
P.M
. on February 3. And though General Halder, who outlined the Army General Staff’s plans, contended later in his book
⁵⁶
that he and Brauchitsch raised doubts about their own assessment of Soviet military strength and in general opposed
Barbarossa
as an “adventure,” there is not a word in his own diary entry made the same evening or in the highly secret OKW memorandum of the meeting
⁵⁷
that supports this contention. Indeed, they disclose Halder to have made at first a businesslike estimate of the opposing forces, calculating that while the enemy would have approximately 155 divisions, German strength would be about the same and, as Halder reported, “far superior in quality.” Later, when catastrophe set in, Halder and his fellow generals realized that their intelligence on the Red Army had been fantastically faulty. But on February 3, 1941, they did not suspect that. In fact, so convincing was Halder’s report on respective strengths and on the strategy to be employed to annihilate the Red armies
*
that Hitler at the end not only expressed agreement “on the whole” but was so excited by the prospects which the General Staff Chief had raised that he exclaimed:

“
When Barbarossa commences, the world will hold its breath and make no comment!
”

He could scarcely wait for it to commence. Impatiently he ordered the operation map and the plan of deployment of forces to be sent to him “as soon as possible.”

Before Barbarossa could get under way in the spring the southern flank, which lay in the Balkans, had to be secured and built up. By the third week in February 1941, the Germans had massed a formidable army of 680,000 troops in Rumania, which bordered the
Ukraine
for three hundred miles
between the Polish border and the
Black Sea
.
⁵⁸
But to the south, Greece still held the Italians at bay and Berlin had reason to believe that British troops from
Libya
would soon be landed there. Hitler, as the minutes of his numerous conferences at this period make clear, feared that an Allied front above
Salonika
might be formed which would be more troublesome to Germany than a similar one had been in the First World War, since it would give the British a base from which to bomb the
Rumania
n oil fields. Moreover, it would jeopardize Barbarossa. In fact, the danger had been foreseen as far back as December 1940, when the first directive for Operation
Marita
had been issued providing for a strong German attack on Greece through
Bulgaria
with troops assembled in Rumania.

Bulgaria, whose wrong guess as to the victors in the first war had cost her dearly, now made a similar miscalculation. Believing Hitler’s assurances that he had already won the war and bedazzled by the prospect of obtaining Greek territory to the south which would give her access to the Aegean Sea, her government agreed to participate in Marita—at least to the extent of allowing passage of German troops. An agreement to this effect was made secretly on February 8, 1941, between Field Marshal List and the Bulgarian General Staff.
⁵⁹
On the night of February 28 German Army units crossed the Danube from Rumania and took up strategic positions in Bulgaria, which the next day joined the Tripartite Pact.

The hardier Yugoslavs were not quite so accommodating. But their stubbornness only spurred on the Germans to bring them into camp too. On March 4–5, the Regent, Prince Paul, was summoned in great secrecy to the Berghof by the Fuehrer, given the usual threats and, in addition, offered the bribe of Salonika. On March 25, the Yugoslav Premier, Dragisha Cvetković, and Foreign Minister
Aleksander Cincar-Marković
, having slipped surreptitiously out of
Belgrade
the night before to avoid hostile demonstrations or even kidnaping, arrived at
Vienna
, where in the presence of Hitler and Ribbentrop they signed up
Yugoslavia
to the Tripartite Pact. Hitler was highly pleased and told
Ciano
that this would facilitate his attack on Greece. Before leaving Vienna the Yugoslav leaders were given two letters from Ribbentrop confirming Germany’s “determination” to respect “the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia at all times” and promising that the Axis would not demand transit rights for its troops across Yugoslavia “during this war.”
⁶⁰
Both agreements were broken by Hitler in what even for him was record time.

The Yugoslav ministers had no sooner returned to Belgrade than they, the government and the Prince Regent were overthrown on the night of March 26–27, by a popular uprising led by a number of top Air Force officers and supported by most of the Army. The youthful heir to the throne, Peter, who had escaped from the surveillance of regency officials by sliding down a rain pipe, was declared King, and though the new regime of General Dušan Simović immediately offered to sign a nonaggression pact with Germany, it was obvious in Berlin that it would not accept the
puppet status for Yugoslavia which the Fuehrer had assigned. During the delirious celebrations in Belgrade, in which a crowd spat on the German minister’s car, the Serbs had shown where their sympathies lay.

The coup in Belgrade threw Adolf Hitler into one of the wildest rages of his entire life. He took it as a personal affront and in his fury made sudden decisions which would prove utterly disastrous to the fortunes of the Third Reich.

He hurriedly summoned his military chieftains to the Chancellery in Berlin on March 27—the meeting was so hastily called that
Brauchitsch
,
Halder
and Ribbentrop arrived late—and raged about the revenge he would take on the Yugoslavs. The Belgrade coup, he said, had endangered both
Marita
and, even more, Barbarossa. He was therefore determined, “without waiting for possible declarations of loyalty of the new government, to destroy Yugoslavia militarily and as a nation. No diplomatic inquiries will be made,” he ordered, “and no ultimatums presented.” Yugoslavia, he added, would be crushed with “unmerciful harshness.” He ordered Goering then and there to “destroy Belgrade in attacks by waves,” with bombers operating from Hungarian air bases. He issued Directive No. 25
⁶¹
for the immediate invasion of Yugoslavia and told
Keitel
and
Jodl
to work out that very evening the military plans. He instructed Ribbentrop to advise
Hungary
,
Rumania
and Italy that they would all get a slice of Yugoslavia, which would be divided up among them, except for a small
Croatia
n puppet state.
*

And then, according to an underlined passage in the top-secret OKW notes of the meeting,
⁶²
Hitler announced the most fateful decision of all.