[Zeitzler then recounts an anecdote whose purpose is to denigrate
the importance of General Staff training.]
Hitler. Yes, one has to take brave, daring people who are willing
to sacrifice their lives, like every soldier. What is life? Life is
the nation. The individual must die anyway. Beyond the life of the
individual is the nation. But how anyone can be afraid of this moment
of death, with which he can free himself from his misery, if his duty
doesn't chain him to this Vale of Tears? Na!
[There is then some discussion of the official attitude to be
taken concerning the surrender. Zeitzler leaves.
Enter Christian, Buhle, Jeschonnek, Jodl, and Keitel. Following
the reading of situation reports from Africa and the Balkans, the
subject of Stalingrad comes up.]
Jodl. In regard to the Russian communiqué, we are checking
that to see if there isn't some kind of error in it. Because a single
mistake—for instance, a general who couldn't have been
there—would prove that everything they published was taken from
a list they captured somewhere.
Hitler. They say they have captured Paulus as well as Schmidt and
Seydlitz.
Jodl. I'm not sure about Seydlitz. It isn't quite clear. He may be
in the northern pocket. We are ascertaining by radio which generals
are in the northern pocket.
Hitler. Certainly he was with Paulus. I'll tell you something. I
can't understand how a man like Paulus wouldn't rather go to his
death. The heroism of so many tens of thousands of men, officers, and
generals is nullified by such a man who lacks the character to do in
a moment what a weak woman has done.
Jodl. But I am not yet certain that that is correct—
Hitler. This man and his wife were together. Then the man fell
sick and died. The woman wrote me a letter and asked me to take care
of her children. She found it impossible to go on living, in spite of
her children. Then she shot herself. That's what this woman did. She
had the strength—and soldiers don't have the strength. You'll
see, it won't be a week before Seydlitz and Schmidt and even Paulus
are talking over the radio.
[The first broadcast was on 28th May, 1943. But Hitler misjudged
Schmidt.]
They are going to be put in the Lubianka, and there the rats will
eat them. How can one be so cowardly? I don't understand it.
Jodl. I still have doubts.
Hitler. Sorry, but I don't.
[A grumble follows about Paulus' promotion, similar to that
expounded to Zeitzler.]
I don't understand that at all. So many people have to die, and
then a man like that besmirches the heroism of so many others at the
last minute. He could have freed himself from all sorrow and ascended
into eternity and national immortality, but he prefers to go to
Moscow. What kind of choice is that? It just doesn't make sense—it
is tragic that such heroism is so terribly besmirched at the last
moment.
Jeschonnek. [Hans Jeschonnek, General of the Luftwaffe; Chief of
Staff of the Luftwaffe 1942-43.] I consider that it is possible that
the Russians have reported this on purpose. They are such clever
devils.
Hitler. In a week they'll be on the radio.
Jeschonnek. The Russians would even manage to let someone else
speak for them.
Hitler. No, they themselves will speak on the radio. You'll hear
it soon enough. They'll speak personally on the radio. They'll ask
the people in the pocket to surrender, and they'll say the most
disgusting things about the German Army—
Here the fragment ends. As so often in his recorded conversation
Hitler seems coarse, superficial, and vindictive. But this, surely,
is no more than smoke blowing from the chimney stacks; what of the
inner furnaces of this satanic genius?
What were Hitler's private convictions, which he turned over in
his own mind, in the darkness of his bedroom, concerning the state of
the war and the prospects of the Reich? The last chance of winning a
total victory had gone. The "will," whose mystique he had
invoked with mixed success in the past, and which he was to press
with manic fervour when defeat loomed close, was now at a discount.
It was a time for reason. Time was required to develop new weapons,
diplomacy to exploit the stalemate which the new weapons could
achieve. Now, for a brief period, as he saw the boundaries of his
victory contracting—in Africa as in the East—Hitler was
prepared to allow his generals to trade space for time. In a
conversation with Jodl at this period he said, "Space is one of
the most important military factors. You can conduct military
operations only if you have space. . . .
That was the misfortune of the French. In a single drive last year
we occupied more territory than in our whole Western offensive.
France was finished off in six weeks, but in this huge space one can
hold on and on. If we had had a crisis like this last one, on the old
German border along the Oder-Warthe curve, Germany would have been
finished. Here in the East we were able to cushion the blow. We have
a battlefield here that has room for strategical operations."
These "strategical operations" Hitler was now to submit,
for several months, to the almost uninterrupted direction of his
professional military advisers. And they, starting well enough, were
to bring the German Army, before the campaigning season was half
over, to its third and most serious defeat.
On 6th February, Hitler's personal Kondor aircraft touched down at
the Stalino airfield with a summons for Manstein to attend a
conference at the
Wolfsschanze
. The army group headquarters
had been established there only five days, and during that period
Manstein had been adjusting his front with an almost reckless
disregard for the old
Diktate
of rigid defence which were
still (theoretically) mandatory. To cut through the indecision at OKH
and Hitler's own habit of not replying to a request to which he did
not care to accede, Manstein had evolved the formula of attaching a
report that in default of a directive from OKH by a particular time
or date (on whatever subject was at issue) the army group would act
at its own discretion. This discretion, moreover, was resulting in a
defence of remarkably elasticity. Russochska, Kantemirovka,
Millerovo, had all been abandoned as the northern end of the German
line was pulled back to the Donetz.
As if to accentuate the autocratic way in which he was handling
his army group, Manstein had sent another memorandum to OKH
"demanding" that a withdrawal to the Mius be authorized
forthwith and attaching a number of secondary points. These ranged
from lavish supply requirements and the drawing off of further
reinforcement from the supine Kluge to barely veiled sarcasm
regarding the prospects of the SS corps in a counteroffensive that
OKW had planned for them.
Manstein would have been justified, therefore, in expecting a
reception at the
Wolfsschanze
which might range from the
chilly to the hysterically abusive. In fact, Hitler was at his most
irresistible. He started by coming as close as he ever could to an
apology. The responsibility for the tragic end of the 6th Army, he
told Manstein, was exclusively his.
... I had the impression [Manstein wrote] that he was deeply
affected by this tragedy, not just because it amounted to a blatant
failure of his own leadership, but also because he was deeply
depressed in a purely personal sense by the fate of soldiers who, out
of faith in him, had fought to the last with such courage and
devotion to duty.
[This impression contrasts with the stenographic report of
Hitler's reaction on first hearing the news, although of course it is
not incompatible with his suffering remorse later.]
The two men then had a long discussion concerning the advisability
of withdrawing from the eastern Donetz basin. Hitler, naturally,
argued against it; but he seems to have done so calmly and
rationally, switching with fluency from the economic and political
plane to matters of detail—where he displayed "his quite
astonishing knowledge of production figures and weapon
potentials"—and back again.
Throughout the interview Hitler was courteous and reasonable. He
took no special umbrage at Manstein's assessment of the SS corps'
abilities, agreed that the Luftwaffe field divisions had proved a
"fiasco," and concluded by granting permission for
withdrawal to the Mius.
Emboldened by this atmosphere, Manstein proceeded to raise that
most delicate of subjects—the Supreme Command. Would this not
be a good moment, he asked Hitler, to ensure "uniformity of
leadership"; to appoint a Chief of Staff,
whom he must trust
implicitly
; such a person to be vested with "the appropriate
responsibility and authority"? It is some measure of Hitler's
new mood that these suggestions, too, were received calmly. He had
had "disappointments," Hitler explained. Blomberg, and
after him Brauchitsch, had been found wanting at moments of crisis.
There were some responsibilities that could not be delegated.
Furthermore, he had already appointed Goering as his successor;
Manstein would not feel, surely, that the Reichsmarschall was an
appropriate person to fill the post of Chief of Staff? Yet it would
clearly be unworkable if the Reichsmarschall were now to be
subordinated to an appointment filled from the ranks of the
professional, non-Party military.
Manstein could not but agree, and the two men seem to have parted
on terms of mutual confidence. If the Führer's "intuition"
in military affairs had led him into some difficulty, it could not be
denied that he continued to show a masterly skill in his handling of
subordinates.
With Manstein satisfied, Hitler now proceeded to the next stage of
the reforms he was imposing on the German Army. He had decided on a
radical overhaul of the tank arm, in terms both of its constitution
and its equipment. And at the beginning of February, Schmundt,
Hitler's personal adjutant, had made a preliminary approach to
Guderian and asked him if he would undertake this task.
It is some measure of Guderian's political
savoir-faire
(of
which other examples will be seen) that he set out a number of
conditions of acceptance which would give him special powers—as
it is of Hitler's own anxiety that he accepted them. But before
discussing the start of the special relationship between these two
men, which was to survive many vicissitudes before rupturing in the
last hours of Germany's
extremis
, it is necessary to examine
the state and the recent history of the Panzer forces.
By the start of 1943 the Panzer force had got into very poor
shape. This decline was due as much to muddle and indecision on the
quartermaster and industrial side as to operational mishandling. In
terms of equipment the Germans were still relying entirely on the
PzKw III and IV, of which the former was totally and the latter in
many respects inferior to the Russian T 34.
[For the 1942 campaign the PzKw III had been regunned with a 50
mm., L 60 gun, which would penetrate the armour of the T 34 at short
and medium ranges. The PzKw IV had been fitted with the 75-mm. L 46,
which put it on equal terms with the 76-mm. L 42 of the Soviet tank,
although it remained inferior in terms of mobility.
These improvements applied to new tanks, and to those sent back to
Germany for refit, but there were many obsolete versions still in
service at the end of 1942.]
As long ago as November 1941 a team of designers had visited the
front to collect data on combat experience against the T 34, and to
evolve a solution to Russian technical supremacy, but the whole of
1942 had passed with very little being done to implement their
decisions, owing to a continuous stream of changes to the
specifications, and directives to develop new designs and variations.
At the time the inquiry started it had already been decided to
equip one battalion in every Panzer division with superheavy tanks of
sixty tons, and specifications for this model (the Tiger) were
already out for tender to Henschel and to Krupp, where Dr. Porsche
was employed. No provision, however, had been made for a
"general-purpose" tank, other than the upgunning of the two
standard types. Most of the officers interviewed by the commission
had recommended that the T 34 be copied, with only minor
modifications to allow for radio installation and a powered turret
traverse. Not unexpectedly, the natural vanity of the German
designers led them to reject this idea, and several precious months
slipped past while new plans were drawn and sent out for tender, this
time to M.A.N. and Daimler-Benz. The Ordance Office team had in fact
worked out two separate designs, one for a forty-five ton
general-purpose tank (Panther) and one for a light reconnaissance
tank (Leopard). Leopard never got beyond the prototype stage, but its
construction and trial absorbed much time during 1942.
In tracing the development of the second generation of Panzers,
one finds immediately the same pattern of conflicting personalities,
departmental overlap, and haphazard coordination which characterises
every facet of the Nazi war effort.
Foremost among the civilians is the shadowy figure of Dr. Porsche,
an automobile designer of some renown, who had Hitler's ear. That
Porsche was a genius of a kind cannot be denied. He had designed the
S and SS series of Mercedes sports racers in the 1920's, the only
vehicles (literally) of German prestige in that troubled era. When
Hitler gave him a free hand to make an invincible Grand Prix car in
1933, Porsche came up with the six-litre Auto-union—the most
powerful single-seater ever made, before or since, and a car which
only three men could handle (and two of them subsequently died doing
so). Porsche was an originator, not an analyst. He thought in
concepts rather than evaluating detail, and this made him an
"engineer" after Hitler's own heart when the Führer
was indulging in his expansive and unrealistic propensity to "table
talk."