The War Aims and Strategies of Adolf Hitler

529 Pages·2005·47.51 MB·English

by  Oscar Pinkus

Table of Contents
Preface
List of Terms, Code Names and Abbreviations VII
PART ONE: THE WRONG WAR 5
1 • The Leader 7
2 • The Program 14
3 • The Bloodless Conquests 19
4 • Gate to the East 43
5 • The September Weekend 64
6 • Blitzkrieg in Poland 68
7 • Sitzkrieg in the West 81
8 • The Occupation of Denmark and Norway 88
9 • The Collapse of France 98
10 • The Aftershocks 117
11 • The Turnabout 131
12 • The Wrong Enemy 135
13 • Fortress Europe 153
PART Two: THE HOLY WAR 167
14 • Barbarossa 169
15 • The Black and the Red 185
16 • Untermensch and Obermensch 207
17 • Death of Barbarossa 224
18 • December 1941 242
19 • The Subhuman East 261
20 • The Russian POWs 271
v
vi Table of Contents
21 • The Final Solution 276
22 • Stalingrad 287
P ART THREE: THE SMART WAR 307
23 • The Reluctant Allies 309
24 • British Strategy 326
25 • The Bombing of Germany 331
26 • Ultra-Secret 341
27 • African Laurels 344
P ART FOUR: ANNUS IRAE 1943 355
28 • From Kursk to Kiev 357
29 • The Fall of Italy 365
30 • Defeat of the U-Boats 385
31 • Satan as Prophet 393
PART FIVE: EXTINCTION 411
32 • Barbarossa in Reverse 413
33 • Liberation of France 428
34 Loss of the Balkans 445
35 • Raking the Ashes 450
36 • Invasion of Germany 469
37 • Self-Immolation 478
38 • The Finale in Berlin 485
39 • Unconditional Surrender 498
Epilogue 507
Appendix: Names and Positions of Key Personnel 523
Bibliography 527
Index 535
List of Terms, Codes
and Abbreviations
Abwehr-Wehrmacht intelligence agency Lucy-Spy ring run by Rudolf Roessler
ADC-aide-de-camp Luftwaffe-German air force
AGC-Army Group Center (i\'1itte) Maquis-generic term for French resistance
AGN-Army Group North (Nord) MUR-Mouvements Unis de Resistance
AGS-Army Group South (Slid) NSDAP-National Socialist German Workers
AK-Armia Krajowa, West-oriented Polish Party (Nazi)
underground OKH-(Oberkommando des Heeres) supreme
AL-Armia Ludowa, Soviet-oriented Polish German army command
underground OKL-(Oberkommando der Luftwaffe)
Anschluss-annexation of Austria supreme Luftwaffe command
BEF-British Expeditionary Force OKM-(Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine)
supreme German naval command
Berghof-Hitler's home near Bertchesgaden
OKW-(Oberkommando der Wehrmacht)
CiC-commander in chief
supreme command of German armed
Dichtung-Hitler's smokescreen for his true
forces (Wehrmacht)
intentions
Ostheer-German army on Russian front
EAM-Communist-oriented underground in
OUN-Ukrainian Nationalist Organization
Greece
Overlord-(D-Day) invasion of Normandy in
EG-Einsatzgruppe - Execution Battalion
June 1944
ELAS-Communist guerrillas in Greece
Panje wagon-Russian horse cart
Feldherr-warlord
Panzer-tank or armor
FTPF-Franc-Tireur et Partisans Francais
PM-Prime Minister Churchill
(Communist)
FHO-Fremde Heer Ost: Army Intelligence: Politruk-political commissar in Red Army
East PPR-Polish Workers' Party (Communist)
F1ak-anti-aircraft artillery PQ-Allied convoys bound for Murmansk or
Archangielsk
GG-Generalgouvernement (German-occu
pied Poland) RAF-Royal Air Force
Gestapo-German secret police Rasputitsa-fall and spring mud period in
Russia
GrOfaz-Grasster Feldherr Aller Zeiten: nick
name for Hitler meaning Greatest War RSHA-(Reichssicherheitshauptamt) SS secu
lord of All Times rity main office
Gulag-Soviet slave labor camp ROlludup-plan for a cross-Channel invasion
in 1943
Izba-Russian peasant room
SA-Nazi storm detachment
Katyusha-Russian rocket battery
SAWC-Supreme Allied War Council
LSD (T)-Landing Ship Dock (Tank)
vii
viii List of Terms, Codes and Abbreviations
5D-55 security service USAAF-US Army Air Force
Sitzkrieg-phony war in France, 1939-40 USSR-Union of Socialist Soviet Republics
Sledgehammer-plan for a cross-Channel (Soviet Union)
invasion in 1942 Wehrmacht - German armed forces
SS-(Schutzstaffel) Nazi guard detachment Weltanschauung-world view (philosophical)
5tavka-Red Army headquarters Wolfschanze-Wolf's Lair, Hitler's headquar-
Stuka-Ju-8? dive bomber ters in East Prussia
Torch-Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942
Preface
The main purpose of this work is to set down the nature and shape of Hitler's war,
more than the war's course. It intends to show that the conflict's many seeming inconsis
tencies were but the logical consequence of a simple if unique master plan: the conquest
of the vast landmass lying to the east of Germany up to, and perhaps beyond, the Urals.
Hitler wanted no conflict with the West, in particular none with England. All this is not
entirely new and has been proposed by Trevor-Roper, Hill gruber, and others. What is
attempted here is to show that prior to and throughout the six years of war Hitler never
wavered in his central aim and that all his shifts and convolutions were directly linked to
it. Thus events that in most histories are presented as puzzling - Hitler's frustration after
he was granted his wishes in Munich; the Germans' vacillation to invade the British Isles
or their lack of interest in Malta, Gibraltar, and the Middle East; and the unfathomable
"mistake" of hurling himself against Russia, without attempting to defeat the enemy still
facing him in the West - all of these and other such mysteries were but manifestations of
a specific kind of war Hitler planned and waged until his last days. Likewise such
historiographical distortions as that the fight in Libya against two or three German divi
sions spawned more books in the West than the apocalyptic four-year struggle in Russia
will be shown to be compensatory Western self-congratulation. Given the specific orien
tation of this book much will be omitted that otherwise would have required more atten
tion. In essence this will be a history of the triangular confrontation between Germany,
England and Russia, later to be joined by the United States, which buttressed, where it did
not actually replace, the British side of the triangle.
Since Hitler's true objective was a crusade against the East with little interest in the
Western powers, we shall next consider the means he employed in fighting the war. We shall
see that even after he became embroiled in a war with both East and West, the tools and
attitudes he employed in each case remained implacably welded to his original vision.
Though it was France and England who declared war on him and it was British and Amer
ican bomber fleets that turned his cities into rubble, Hitler treated their soldiers and civilians
better than had the kaiser in the First World War, whereas in the Slavic countries-Poland,
Yugoslavia and above all in Russia - both the POWs and the populations were butchered
en masse. For to Hitler this was no ordinary war: It was to be a geoethnic cataclysm in
which the Eastern peoples were to be half-exterminated and half-converted into serfs to
toil in a vast Teutonic empire ruled by settled Nazi barons.
The book's second major theme is that from the winter of 1941-42 on, when the cam
paign against Russia had faltered and the United States had entered the conflict, Hitler
knew that he had lost the war. In keeping with his stance of "all or nothing" - he would
2 Preface
either have his way or he would drag the world into the abyss-Hitler's main exertions
turned to implementing the second half of his agenda. This view was first advanced by
Sebastian Haffner, and this volume documents that from 1942 onward, all of Hitler's demo
graphic, political and even military decisions were geared to the goal of inflicting the max
imum wreckage and bloodshed on friend and foe alike. This culminated in Hitler's known
decision in the last months of the war - the Nero order - to turn Germany itself into a
wasteland and doom the Germans to perdition. Having failed to win the war for him, they
did not deserve to survive.
Finally, it will be seen how the hysteria of Hitler's schemes overwhelmed his own
efforts at success, in that military victory was not kept as the main objective of his war.
Hitler's ideological and personal obsessions took precedence over political, economic and
military requirements, bringing defeats where there might have been victories. These were
not errors in judgment or strategy, but deliberate acts undertaken with foreknowledge of
their disastrous consequences-yet adhered to because of the pathological compulsions
inherent in Hitler's personality. While the events will demonstrate Hitler's familiar role in
imparting to World War II its genocidal dimension, the book will also show that the fiihreJ
had a potent ally without whose dedication and zeal none of the horrors of the war coule
have been implemented. That ally, that necessary condition for the success of the crimina
record of the Third Reich, was the character of the German people as it had developed ove
the first half of the 20th century, perhaps reaching back to the mid-18th century whel
Prussia ,,,reaked its havoc on all its neighbors. It was a partnership of leader and natio
sustained in times of triumph and defeat rarely encountered in recent history.
Since the goal of this work was to elucidate the overall shape of World War II, the mai
effort lay in understanding the dynamics of the conflict, the aims and motivations th.
fueled the events of the six-year conflict. The labors involved in this task took close to ha
a century, and yielded substantial benefits. As time went on the 30 or 50 years' morator
on archival records lapsed, and the unexpected demise of the Soviet Union opened i
wartime files. Thus, while at the end of the war the death toll in the USSR was given as •
million and during Gorbachev's glasnost close to 30 million, Soviet archives revealed t
awesome loss of life to be closer to 50 million - numbers rounded off in tens of millior
Another advantage this author enjoyed was that, willingly or unwillingly, he had becor
familiar with half a dozen languages. In the 50 years it took to complete the present w(
use was made of memoirs and documents written in Polish, German, Russian, Itali.
Hebrew and Yiddish, the bulk of which had never been translated into English. That
often parochial, these sources revealed facts and facets of the war that had never appea
in the professional literature.
While the opening of archival material was a great boon to the documentation of
war's history one ought not to exaggerate its importance; to paraphrase Proust, who i
that when a diplomat looks at you it is to stress that he has not seen you, one may like.
say that governments often produce documents not in order to tell but to hide the tn
Perhaps greater relevance to the present volume is that this author was an eyewitnes
events that to this day remain subject to dispute and argument. For example, an}
exposed to Polish history knew that the "Corridor," so much peddled by diplomats
historians as the possible causus belli, was no corridor but ancient Polish land; it w
have been more correct to call East Prussia an incursion into Slav territory than to call
ish Pomorze a corridor. After the war there was much hand-wringing about the born
of Germany by the British and American air forces. But for those who lived throug]
Preface 3
German-Polish war in 1939 there was no doubt as to who had initiated and practiced this
sort of civilian slaughter. This writer lived in a small town in central Poland in which there
was not a single industrial workshop, not a squad of soldiers, yet on September 9 German
Heinkels bombed and strafed the town, setting it on fire and killing SO civilians. The same
thing happened in all surrounding towns, not to speak of Warsaw with its tens of thou
sands buried under the ruins. To this author, whose hometown was located next to the
1939 German-Soviet demarcation line, Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union could not have
been considered a surprise by any twist of argument, as it is still being mooted in various
quarters. In the days preceding the attack, every German soldier and every child in town
knew that the attack on Russia would start at dawn on Sunday, June 22, 1941. In the four
years spent under German occupation subject to the sadism of German civilians and sol
diers, one learned firsthand of their total devotion to the Fuhrer and of their readiness to
do his bidding, whatever that bidding implied. The author's postwar participation in a
Nazi trial in West Germany only confirmed the kind of outlook the Germans harbored
when committing the most odious acts in the occupied East. When in 1944 the Soviet army
swept the Germans from eastern Poland the sight of the oncoming Russian troops and the
tales they told spoke a lot about the ordeal they had endured. These soldiers were not jubi
lant but rather subdued, sad that their victory had been bought with landscapes of deso
lation and butchery. They were terrified of what still lay ahead before reaching Berlin and
the end of the killing. These personal experiences related in the author's two previously
published war memoirs (The HOl/se of Ashes and A Choice of Masks) are not included here,
but they did shed much light on the understanding of the history of the period.
Readers will benefit from knowledge of a few general conventions that are utilized
throughout the text. Except for familiar place names, for example Warsaw and Munich,
most localities are referred to by their native spellings. Upon first mention, the full name
and position of individuals will be given; subsequently only their last names will be used.
An appendix of names and ranks is included for further reference. The citation DGFP
within the text is an abbreviation for Documel!ts of German Foreign Policy, series D; DDR
stands for Das Dritte Reich; and FNC is an abbreviation of Fahrer's Naval Conferences; all
are included in the bibliography. The terms USSR, Soviet Union and Russia are used some
what interchangeably.
Part One
THE WRONG WAR
• CHAPTER 1 •
The Leader
Historians have long disputed whether it is circumstance or an individual that acti
vates major historical events. The story of the Second World War should satisfy both camps:
its outbreak is rooted both in the First World War and in an individual, Adolf Hitler. That
is not to say that they had an equal input. Without Hitler there would have been no Sec
ond World War; but it is questionable whether without the legacy of World War I he would
have been able to launch it.
The consequences of the Great \Var for Germany - the Versailles and St. Germain
treaties, the installation of a republic, reparations, economic woes-all of these have been
exhaustively argued in numerous works. However, they were not responsible for the out
break of\Vorld War II, for, by the late '30s, most of these constraints had been abolished,
including the Weimar Republic itself. There was, however, one aftereffect of the years
1914-18 that did help propel Europe toward a new war; it overwhelmed the statesmen, the
generals, and the man in the street. That dynamic stemmed from the historical memory of
the Great War.
The conventional understanding of the impact of the Great War is of the legacy it
bequeathed to the Germans. But this is a severe delimitation of the role it played. While it
undoubtedly left the seeds of another war in the hearts and minds of the German people,
the Great War also had a profound impact on the \Vestern Allies. In the Germans as well
as in the French and the British, the Great War conditioned attitudes and reflexes that drove
both sides on a converging course toward a new conflagration.
The Great War lasted four years, cost some 10 million lives, and ended with the defeat
of Germany. A strange flip-flop mood settled over the opposing camps with the end ofhos
tilities. The defeated Germans looked back on the war as a vigorous experience, a life
enhancing test of national will. Its veterans felt nostalgia for the days of combat when, as
the German saying went, Im Felde, da ist doch der Mann llOch etwas wert, whereas the post
war period was a letdown compared to the exhilaration and vigor of the fighting days.
Moreover, they did not feel they had been defeated. Some nefarious conspiracy, a "stab in
the back" perpetrated by traitors, had cheated them of victory. They tore at the leash for
another round.
On the French and British the war left a sense of horror and revulsion at what had
taken place in the pits and trenches of the battlefields. There was grief for the dead, and
the memories of Flanders and Verdun were a nightmare for the living. Even though they
were the victors, in the French and British consciousness the whole experience loomed as
a depravity; victory achieved at such a price was not a victory. This postwar trauma was,
of course, deeper in France than in England. The French, having lost 1.5 million men (plus
7