Goering becomes a trembling, whipped child when Hitler yells at him,
despite fanciful newspaper stories about Goering’s disputing with der
Fuehrer. The Army prefers Goering to any other Nazi leader except
Hitler, because Goering is the only soldier and the only gentleman by
birth among the Nazi chiefs. Yet when one has reviewed all the points
in favor of Goering’s position, it becomes more and more obvious that
the war has made a successor to Hitler almost unthinkable. Hitler has
the power now more than ever, but the power now is the Army; it is no
longer, as it was until September 1939, the Party. If Goering were to
take over automatically, after Hitler’s death, how long could he keep
the apparatus running; what would the Army do; how would the German
people and the people of Europe respond to their new and obviously so
immensely inferior master? The more one considers the condition of
Germany today the more it seems that Hitler is indispensable to German
success. His successors would probably succeed one another with Blitz
speed.
Q. _What about Karl Haushofer, who is said to be his one-man brain
trust?_
A. Haushofer is one of the men Hitler consults. Hitler likes
Haushofer’s theory of what they call _Geopolitik_ because it fits
in with Hitler’s own theory that politics should always go ahead
of economics, which is his particular way of proving the Marxists
wrong. But Haushofer has no more influence than perhaps half a dozen
of Hitler’s advisers. Hitler hates experts, because they advance
objections to his projects. The only experts who have a chance with
him are yes-men, except in the Army. He listens to technical advice
from generals he respects, although even from them he would tolerate no
shadow of opposition to his grand strategy. You may be sure Haushofer
has never said no.
Q. _Is Hitler also in the military sphere the real war lord? Does he
actually direct his battles as did Napoleon?_
A. Hitler is the nearest thing to Napoleon since Napoleon. I remember
just before the beginning of the war, in August 1939, I asked a Colonel
of the French General Staff if they had heard that Hitler had taken
over active command of the Army, in fact, and that when war began he
would direct the fighting. The French Colonel said yes, that the French
General Staff knew that was true. Then he surprised me by saying that
they did not like it.
I had expected him to rub his hands and exclaim over French good
luck in having an amateur at the head of the German Army. Not at
all. This French Colonel went on to explain that Hitler had already
demonstrated the most miraculous sense of timing, and this was perhaps
the most important talent a field marshal could have, and that with
the technical advice of his generals, Hitler might prove a formidable
adversary indeed. Less than a year later the French Colonel who had
foreseen so well was one of the vast army of military refugees fleeing
before the New Napoleon.
I do not mean to say that Hitler blueprints each battle and determines
where each division is to go. He simply determines the grand strategy,
names the objective, and sets the time. For instance, in the case of
Poland, some time before the German attack, Hitler called his General
Staff together and said, “Gentlemen, I want you to work out a plan for
the crushing of Poland as swiftly as possible. The problem is how to
knock out Poland before the French and British can bring any help or
alleviation by attacking in the West. Now, how many divisions can we
have fully mobilized within a month? So, and how many do we need to
hold the French? So. That will leave us so and so many for the Polish
campaign. Now, gentlemen, at how many different points can we attack
Poland, from every available entrance? You say five, including East
Prussia. All right, now within forty-eight hours I want you to bring me
a sketch plan of attack, with the outline of the number of divisions to
attack at each point.”
With these data in hand Hitler orders the general disposition of the
troops. Then he waits, and takes into account each of a score or
hundred other factors besides military factors that may enter into
the supreme decision to choose the exact time to strike. He considers
the attitude of all the powers involved, the British and French
morale, their military strength, the weather, the attitude of Poland’s
neighbors, the Polish preparations, and finally when he is ready he
gives the fateful order to march at 2 A.M. on September 1, 1939. Before
the order reaches the commanding generals probably not more than half a
dozen men in the world know the time.
He may meet technical criticism from his generals; he often does. But
unlike Mussolini, whose staff is so subservient and sycophantic that
they say “Yes” when the Duce has outlined some impossible campaign such
as his fiasco in Greece, the German generals voice their objections.
If the objections are valid, Hitler may change his plans. As a rule,
however, Hitler’s grand strategy is seldom affected, because the great
sweeping decisions are based upon Hitler’s appreciation of the problem,
the campaign, the scene as a whole. His generals will be thinking of
the local problem, and their opinion in this respect carries weight.
But Hitler will be thinking in terms first of the whole war, second of
the whole campaign, as against Poland. To these great decisions the
generals invariably bow.
Q. _Why? How has this man who was able to become only a corporal in
the last war suddenly obtained such an ascendancy over the German Army
and in particular over the General Staff? I always understood that
the General Staff of the German Army was one of the proudest, most
professionally capable, and vain and exclusive organizations in the
whole world._
A. How has Hitler done it? By being always right. Well, nearly always.
He has so far made two mistakes, either or both of which may prove
fatal, or not, as destiny will have it. The first was when, instead of
launching an all-out assault on Britain immediately after Dunkirk, he
pursued the crumbling French Army, which as he later learned, could not
have been a danger to him; thus he postponed too late his attack on
Britain.
Q. _Why didn’t he attack England at that time?_
A. Because Hitler did not expect France to collapse as speedily as she
did. Neither he nor anyone else in the world expected it. He may say
he did but the best proof that he did not is the fact that he failed
to take advantage of it. When the German armies broke through the
Low Countries, and began to press upon the French line at the famous
“hinge” at Montmedy, they were like a man who is pressing hard on a
locked and bolted door when suddenly the bolt breaks, the door flies
open, and the man pitches forward into the room.
So the German armies pitched forward into France when they broke across
the Meuse and staggered on, almost losing their balance for lack of
the opposition they had expected to find. They lurched on until at the
end of five weeks the French Army had dissolved; the French government
had surrendered; the nation of France had ceased to exist. Then Hitler
pulled his army together, turned it around, started it for the Channel
ports. But it takes time to turn an army around; it takes time to
establish air bases and collect the thousands of flat-bottomed vessels
to ferry an army across the channel.
The time required was fifty-five days from June 17, the day the French
asked for an armistice, to August 8, when the Germans made their first
mass air attack on Britain as preliminary to invasion. It was those
fifty-five days which saved Britain. I arrived in London on June 20,
full of the apprehension that Hitler’s army was about to sweep the
world. After all it is impressive to have believed all your life that
the French Army was the best in the world and then to witness it
disappear in thirty-seven days of fighting.
It is more impressive to become a refugee. I had established in Paris
the first home I had had in twenty years of vagabond newspaper work.
As the German armies came closer to the French capital I congratulated
myself that I could now live at home and motor daily to the front. Then
one night around midnight the American military attaché, my old friend
Colonel Horace M. Fuller, our wisest professional observer of the war
abroad, and Lieutenant-Commander Hillenkoetter, our naval attaché,
veteran submarine expert, called on me and said: “Knick, you must leave
tonight; the Germans will be here by morning.”
In Edgar Mowrer’s overfull Ford, followed by Lilian Mowrer valiantly
driving her tiny Simca, we left Paris about three o’clock in the
morning, passing through empty streets, the great boulevards stretching
wide and forlorn without so much as a policeman in sight, while fog
eddied above the paving. We passed through the gates of the city where
not even a sentry stood.
Paris was already broken, already humiliated. We fled on down, stopping
with the demoralized government at Tours, and then on to Bordeaux
where with 1,600 other refugees I found a place on the British India
Line S.S. _Madura_, built to accommodate 160. On the way from Paris
to Bordeaux we had traveled with six to eight million other refugees,
the largest number of fugitives ever to assemble on the roads of the
Western World. Flight, flight, flight! Anything to get away! That was
the panic spirit which had gripped the whole population of France, as
of the Low Countries.
The German Army could not even come in contact with the main body
of refugees, except in the contact of murder when the Luftwaffe
machine-gunned the roads. From the moment, eleven days after the grand
assault began, when the Germans reached the sea at Abbeville, May 21,
from that moment on French resistance disappeared. But Hitler could
not begin to attack England until the British Expeditionary Force and
the Northern French Army were destroyed. Actually the B.E.F. escaped
from Dunkirk June 4, and from that date on Hitler was free to turn in
either direction, and many observers believed he would drive straight
at England.
Instead, he chose to pursue the French Army another thirteen days,
until it surrendered. If Hitler, immediately after Dunkirk, had
concentrated every resource on invading England, nobody can say what
would have happened. Dunkirk had shocked the British more deeply than
anything in 100 years, but the French capitulation shocked them worse.
By the time I arrived at Falmouth, after four days on deck with my
fellow refugees, the British were still dazed, dismayed, not panicky,
but desperately aware that they stood closer to national destruction
than ever in 1,000 years. The truth was they had no army, or rather
their army had no weapons. The B.E.F., which had possessed about 75 per
cent of all the weapons possessed by all the British Land Forces, had
been compelled to leave behind at Dunkirk all their tanks, cannon, and
most of their machine guns and even their rifles. It was terrifying to
stand on the curb in London and watch battalions of the Guards march by
with only half a dozen rifles to a battalion.
The British Land Forces immediately after Dunkirk were practically
weaponless. The R.A.F. which was soon to give so gallant an account of
itself, needed reorganization; all the units which had been in France
had to be brought back and reintegrated for the defense of the island.
If ever the German invasion could succeed, it could have succeeded
then, but Hitler did not move until the night of August 8, when he sent
over his first mass of 400 bombers and fired the docks of London in a
blaze so high I was able to read a newspaper by its light on the roof
of the Ministry of Information building, eight miles from the fire. Had
that attack been launched June 8 or even June 18, instead of August 8,
who knows what the result would have been? By August 8 the British had
been transformed.
Three things had happened to them which had not happened for over 100
years, since the time of Napoleon. First, they had become frightened;
second, they had become angry; third, they had been forced, again I
repeat, for the first time in 100 years, forced to go to work. Until
the fall of France the British had been as easygoing as we are now,
despite the fact they had been formally at war for eight months; but
after the fall of France every able-bodied human being in the United
Kingdom went to work at the rate of ten to twelve hours a day seven
days a week.
In a miraculously short time they tripled their production of weapons,
planes, ammunition; meanwhile we sent them 1,000 cannon, many machine
guns, and 750,000 rifles. The R.A.F. trained, reorganized, expanded,
laid out new fields. In short, when Hitler attacked he struck a new
Britain, aroused as never since 1066. It was a dazzling example of what
danger can do to a people. The British of August 1940 were not the
British of June 1940.
Historians will wonder why Hitler did not move earlier against England.
I suppose they will go on wondering why for centuries, even after
Hitler has explained it in his memoirs, for his own benefit, and to
the satisfaction of few. My estimate is that he simply overvalued the
French Army and undervalued the British spirit. Surprised by the French
collapse he was carried along by the momentum of his drive to destroy
the possibility of further French resistance before trying to invade
England. He lost thereby what may prove to have been his greatest
chance when he failed to throw his whole air force, army, and navy at
England in the moment of her greatest weakness.
Q. _What was Hitler’s second mistake?_
A. His second mistake was when he went into Russia, apparently
expecting the Red Army to fold up at least as fast as the French Army,
probably hoping to be able to turn around and launch a second attack
on Britain in 1941 before American aid became effective. The initial
effect of the invasion of Russia was a disappointment to Hitler,
however it may eventually end. So was the First Battle of Britain, but
the final outcome of both battles must be awaited to determine how they
will affect Hitler’s reputation as a master of war.
Meanwhile his generals have not had reason to change fundamentally
the judgment they formed on the basis of their experience with him
since 1933. That experience began when he took over the Presidency and
obtained the oath of allegiance which, as we have seen, laid at least a
legal foundation for his ascendancy over the armed forces. Then he set
out to build out of the 100,000-man Reichswehr the mightiest military
machine the world has ever known.
He denounced the military clauses of the Versailles treaty, and thus
relieved the Army of its crushing sense of being condemned forever to
inferiority. He boldly announced the creation of an Air Force, and
assigned to it the explosive energies of his first Paladin, Goering.
Thereafter, all the resources of the nation were poured into the armed
forces. Nothing was too good for the troops. They were given barracks
such as no European army had ever had, as good as anything the United
States Army has ever known. The food of the army and navy and air force
was improved until it was on the average far better, even in peacetime,
than anything the German soldier had to eat at home.
Discipline was kept at its highest point, but at the same time a new
spirit of comradeship came into the German armed forces. For the first
time in the history of the German Navy, officers and men would eat at
the same table. All this was bound to have its effect upon the services
and to make them think at any rate gratefully of Hitler, but of course
the test had still to come. What would this commander in chief order
his troops to do? Would he lead them into some impossible adventure
prematurely? Would this amateur after building his beautiful machine
sacrifice it in some vainglorious maneuver? It seemed as though he
would do just that.
The first test of Hitler’s fitness to command his army came on March 7,
1936, when he ordered it into the Rhineland to reoccupy that portion of
Germany adjoining France which had been demilitarized by the Versailles
treaty. France had insisted that Germany should promise never to
quarter troops on the right bank of the Rhine. This was to make up
for the fact that France had been prevented from occupying the right
bank of the Rhine, and for the fact that the United States in 1919 had
refused to join the proposed tripartite pact of France, England, and
the United States, to guarantee the French from invasion by Germany.
As long as the Germans kept out of the Rhineland, France was safe. If
the Germans ever reoccupied the Rhineland, it meant that they intended
sooner or later to use it as a jumping-off-place from which to attack
France. France therefore had insisted upon and had obtained this clause
in the Versailles treaty, and had thereafter frequently announced that
its violation would mean war. Nevertheless, Hitler toward the middle
of February 1936 informed his General Staff that in the first week of
March he intended to reoccupy the Rhineland. At that moment Hitler met
his first opposition from the Army. The generals protested that they
could not be responsible for what would happen, because if the French
mobilized and fought, the German Army was not strong enough--it would
have to retreat. Unspoken was the conclusion that if the German Army
retreated, it would mean the end of the Nazi regime, the end of Hitler.
Hitler replied that it was the duty of the Army to obey orders; it was
his duty as Fuehrer to give orders which could be successfully obeyed.
“I know,” he told them, “that the French will not mobilize. I know the
French will not fight. I know the English don’t want them to fight.
Don’t ask me how I know. I know. It is my business to know.”
When I was in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, I learned under
unusual circumstances something of what went on inside the German
General Staff during those days of March 1936, which were to decide
the history of the continent. At Burgos, headquarters of Franco’s
government, I met Major von der Osten, who was ostensibly in charge of
certain economic investigations or negotiations, but as a matter of
fact was the chief of the German Gestapo in Spain. He was an agreeable
fellow, father of eight children, highly intelligent, amusing, and
it did not matter to me that some months before, his organization,
the Gestapo, had had me arrested and thrown into a death cell in San
Sebastian for thirty-six hours, whence I escaped by the determined
vocal and political efforts of my friend and fellow correspondent,
Randolph Churchill.
The Major knew that I knew that he was chief of the Gestapo and he knew
that I would do all I could to get information from him of value to me,
as I knew he would do likewise with me. So we got along famously, and
one day he included me in a picnic with several other correspondents.
There, on the banks of a clear stream while the Major’s soldier
servants served us grilled frankfurters and Rhine wine, I led the
conversation into discussion of what the Army thought of Hitler. The
theme reached the reoccupation of the Rhineland, and at this the Major
became enlightening.
“I was assigned to the Bendlerstrasse [headquarters of the General
Staff] then,” the Major said. “I can tell you that for five days and
five nights not one of us closed an eye. We knew that if the French
marched, we were done. We had no fortifications, and no army to match
the French. If the French had even mobilized, we should have been
compelled to retire.” He confirmed that the opinion of virtually the
entire General Staff was against Hitler; they considered the move
suicidal, and when they did move, it was only to obey orders, not
because they were convinced it was right.
“And what did they think after the thing was all over and Hitler had
been proved right? Did they think that Hitler had proved himself a
genius or that he just had extraordinarily good luck?”
The Major smiled. “We thought there was a good deal of kind fortune
concerned,” he said.
That was Hitler’s first brush with his army, and his generals may
well have put him down as lucky. He won, and later events proved how
tremendous his victory was. For the occupation of the Rhineland enabled
Hitler to build there his Siegfried line, and the Siegfried line
enabled him eventually to hold France until he was ready to fall upon
and destroy her as he did in 1940.
This first demonstration that he was “always right,” strengthened
his position with the General Staff enormously. The second test was
accordingly easier. It was Austria.
Just as in the case of the Rhineland, so in the case of Austria, France
had often declared that any German attempt to annex Austria would be a
cause of war. This made good sense, just as it had made good sense for
the French to have said they would go to war to prevent reoccupation
of the Rhineland. Once the Germans had the Rhineland and began to
fortify it, they made it difficult for the French to defend Austria.
Once the Germans had Austria they made it difficult for the French to
defend Czechoslovakia. Once the Germans had Czechoslovakia they made it
difficult for the French to defend France.
The German generals understood this series of steps as well as or
better than the French, and therefore they could not believe that the
French would allow each step to be taken without trying to stop it.
Therefore, as Hitler ordered each step taken, his generals protested,
since like all generals they did not want to start a war without the
certainty of winning.
They protested vigorously over the decision to go into Austria, but
once again Hitler said: “Gentlemen, it is your business to take the
action I direct. It is my business to direct only action which will be
successful. I can assure you now, as I assured you on the reoccupation
of the Rhineland, that now also France will not move, the British will
not move; we can do as we like.” He was right again, and now with two
major victories to his credit, he could face his generals with an even
more momentous and critical order--to occupy Czechoslovakia.
This third move, against Czechoslovakia, was the most critical,
because here France was pledged by her solemn word of honor to fight
for her ally, and because the possession of Czechoslovakia would make
it possible finally to attack France herself. These two facts were of
course amply known to the German generals and once more they assumed
that the French generals and the French government would now awaken
and fight for the life of their country.
So, in spite of the two lessons Hitler had given them, the German
generals once more pointed out the dangers. Their Siegfried line was
not nearly complete. If they threw crushing weight at Czechoslovakia,
they would have to weaken their West Front so badly that the French, if
they wished to plunge, might break through. Hitler this time was beside
himself. He not only knew the French and British would not fight if the
Czechs asked them to fight, but he believed, and I think he was right,
that the French and British would not have fought even if the Czechs
had fought.
So he wanted above all things at this juncture to meet a little
opposition to blood his sword. He wanted the Czechs to fight, and
knowing he would have them alone, he longed for a chance to show what
his vast army and air force could do with overwhelming odds on their
side. In my opinion it is just the opposite of true to say that Hitler
wanted another bloodless victory. He did not. He wanted a bloody one,
the blood of course, to be shed by the hopelessly outnumbered enemy.
It seemed to him absolutely idiotic that any of his generals should
object. They did, but feebly.