It was no wonder that Hitler felt on top of the world, slapping his thigh for joy – his usual expression of exultation – and laughing in relief, when he was brought the news at Brûly-de-Pesche on 17 June that Marshal Pétain’s new French government had sued for peace. The end of the war seemed imminent. England would now surely give in. Total victory, Hitler imagined, was within his grasp.
Mussolini had brought Italy into the war a week earlier, hoping to cash in on the action just before it was all over, in time to win rich pickings and bask in the glory of a cheap victory. Hitler took no pleasure in greeting his new companion-in-arms when he flew to Munich to meet him on 18 June to discuss the French armistice request. He wanted lenient terms for the French, and swiftly dispelled Mussolini’s hopes of getting his hands on part of the French fleet. Hitler was anxious to avoid the French navy going over to the British – something which Churchill had already tried to engineer. ‘From all that he says it is clear that he wants to act quickly to end it,’ recorded Ciano. ‘Hitler is now the gambler who has made a big scoop and would like to get up from the table risking nothing more.’
Having won his great victory without any help from the Italians, Hitler was determined that the embarrassed and disappointed Mussolini, now forced to swallow his role as junior partner in the Axis, should not participate in the armistice negotiations with the French. Already on 20 May, when German tanks had reached the French coast, Hitler had specified that the peace negotiations with France, at which the return of former German territory would be demanded, would take place in the Forest of Compiègne, where the armistice of 1918 had taken place. He now gave orders to retrieve Marshal Foch’s railway carriage, preserved as a museum piece, in which the German generals had signed the ceasefire, and have it brought to the forest clearing. That defeat, and its consequences, had permanently seared Hitler’s consciousness. It would now be erased by repaying the humiliation. At quarter past three on the afternoon of 21 June, Hitler, accompanied by Göring, Raeder, Brauchitsch, Keitel, Ribbentrop, and Heß, viewed the memorial recording the victory over the ‘criminal arrogance of the German Reich’, then took his place in the carriage, greeting in silence the French delegation. For ten minutes, he listened, again without a word, though, as he later recounted, gripped by the feeling of revenge for the humiliation of November 1918. Keitel read out the preamble to the armistice terms. Hitler then left to return to his headquarters. The symbolic purging of the old debt was completed. ‘The disgrace is now extinguished. It’s a feeling of being born again,’ reported Goebbels after Hitler had told him of the dramatic events late that night on the telephone.
France was to be divided – the north and western seaboard under German occupation, the centre and south to be left as a puppet state, headed by Pétain, with its seat of government at Vichy. Following the signing of the Italian-French armistice on 24 June, all fighting was declared to have ceased at 1.35 a.m. next morning. Hitler proclaimed the end of the war in the west and the ‘most glorious victory of all time’. He ordered bells to be rung in the Reich for a week, and flags to be flown for ten days. As the moment for the official conclusion of hostilities drew near, Hitler, sitting at the wooden table in his field headquarters, ordered the lights put out and the windows opened in order to hear, in the darkness, the trumpeter outside mark the historic moment.
He spent part of the next days sightseeing. Max Amann (head of the party’s publishing concerns) and Ernst Schmidt, two comrades from the First World War, joined his regular entourage for a nostalgic tour of the battlefields in Flanders, revisiting the places where they had been stationed. Then, on 28 June, before most Parisians were awake, Hitler paid his one and only visit to the occupied French capital. It lasted no more than three hours. Accompanied by the architects Hermann Giesler and Albert Speer, and his favourite sculptor Arno Breker, Hitler landed at Le Bourget airport at, for him, the extraordinarily early hour of half-past five in the morning. The whistle-stop sightseeing tour began at l’Opéra. Hitler was thrilled by its beauty. The tourists moved on. They drove past La Madeleine, whose classical form impressed Hitler, up the Champs Elysées, stopped at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier below the Arc de Triomphe, viewed the Eiffel Tower, and looked in silence on the tomb of Napoleon in Les Invalides. Hitler admired the dimensions of the Panthéon, but found its interior (as he later recalled) ‘a terrible disappointment’, and seemed indifferent to the medieval wonders of Paris, like the Sainte Chapelle. The tour ended, curiously, at the nineteenth-century testament to Catholic piety, the church of Sacré-Coeur. With a last look over the city from the heights of Montmartre, Hitler was gone. By mid-morning he was back in his field headquarters. Seeing Paris, he told Speer, had been the dream of his life. But to Goebbels, he said he had found a lot of Paris very disappointing. He had considered destroying it. However, he remarked, according to Speer, ‘when we’re finished in Berlin, Paris will only be a shadow. Why should we destroy it?’
The reception awaiting Hitler in Berlin when his train pulled into the Anhalter-Bahnhof at three o’clock on 6 July surpassed even the homecomings after the great pre-war triumphs like the Anschluß. Many in the crowds had been standing for six hours as the dull morning gave way to the brilliant sunshine of the afternoon. The streets were strewn with flowers all the way from the station to the Reich Chancellery. Hundreds of thousands cheered themselves hoarse. Hitler, lauded by Keitel as ‘the greatest warlord of all time’, was called out time after time on to the balcony to soak up the wild adulation of the masses. ‘If an increase in feeling for Adolf Hitler was still possible, it has become reality with the day of the return to Berlin,’ commented one report from the provinces. In the face of such ‘greatness’, ran another, ‘all pettiness and grumbling are silenced’. Even opponents of the regime found it hard to resist the victory mood. Workers in the armaments factories pressed to be allowed to join the army. People thought final victory was around the corner. Only Britain stood in the way. For perhaps the only time during the Third Reich there was genuine war-fever among the population. Incited by incessant propaganda, hatred of Britain was now widespread. People were thirsting to see the high-and-mighty long-standing rival finally brought to its knees. But mingling with the aggression were still feelings of fear and anxiety. Whether triumphalist, or fearful, the wish to bring the war to a speedy end was almost universal.
Hitler had meanwhile changed his mind about delivering his Reichstag speech on the Monday. On 3 July British ships had sunk a number of French warships moored at the naval base of Mers-el-Kébir, near Oran, in French Algeria, killing 1,250 French sailors in the process. Churchill’s move, a show of British determination, was to prevent the battle-fleet of his former allies falling into Hitler’s hands. For Hitler, this brought a new situation. He wanted to await developments. He was uncertain whether he ought to go ahead and appeal to England. ‘He is still not ready for the final blow,’ remarked Goebbels. ‘He wants to think over his speech again in peace and for that reason go to the Obersalzberg.’ If London should refuse the last offer, then Britain would be ‘immediately following dealt an annihilatory blow. The English apparently have no idea what then awaits them.’
While he was at the Berghof, Hitler had talks with his military leaders about a possible invasion of Britain, should his ‘peace offer’ be rejected. Raeder had advised Hitler in June that a naval landing could only take place once the Luftwaffe had secured air superiority over southern England. He repeated this precondition when he met Hitler on 11 July on the Obersalzberg, advocating ‘concentrated bombing’ to begin forthwith. But naval ambitions went far beyond a presumed British surrender, thus obviating the need for what Raeder, as well as Hitler, saw as the risky venture of invading Britain. Germany would need a big navy to defend its colonial empire, in particular against the looming threat of the United States. Taking the opportunity to push the interests of the navy, Raeder held out, therefore, the prospect of building up a great battleship fleet to combat any potential Anglo-American naval allia
nce. The next day Jodl outlined for Hitler initial thoughts on operational plans for a landing. On Saturday, 13 July, it was Halder’s turn to travel to the Berghof to report on operational plans. But a landing was to be a last resort. ‘The Führer is greatly puzzled by Britain’s persisting unwillingness to make peace,’ Halder noted. ‘He sees the answer (as we do) in Britain’s hope on Russia and therefore counts on having to compel her by main force to agree to peace.’
On 16 July Hitler signed ‘Directive No. 16 for Preparations of a Landing Operation against England’. The preamble ran: ‘Since England, in spite of its militarily hopeless situation, still gives no recognizable signs of readiness to come to terms, I have determined to prepare a landing operation against England and, if need be, to carry it out. The aim of this operation is to exclude the English motherland as a basis for the continuation of the war against Germany, and, if it should be necessary, to occupy it completely.’ Operational plans followed. But the qualifications in the preamble – ‘if need be’, ‘if necessary’ – indicated Hitler’s half-heartedness.
This conveyed itself to his army leaders. Rundstedt, Commander-in-Chief in the West, simply did not take ‘Sealion’ seriously – a feeling endorsed by Göring’s report of Hitler telling him privately that he did not intend to carry out the operation. He never even bothered to attend the amphibious landing exercises. To him and all who studied them, given the strength of the British navy, the logistic difficulties seemed insuperable.
If the British would only see sense, thought Hitler, it would be far more desirable than an invasion. After signing the directive, he fixed his Reichstag speech for the evening of Friday, 19 July.
The Reichstag had a military appearance that evening. Six seats, of deputies who had fallen in the western campaign, had laurel wreaths placed on them. In the front row were the gold-braided top brass of the military, their chests heaving with medals and decorations, many preening themselves on their new promotions to Field-Marshals and Colonel-Generals. (Hitler had a cynical view about promoting his military leaders. Through acts of generosity, as in ancient times, they would be bound all the more, whatever their political views, to their oaths of loyalty, and to him as the bestower of such gifts. He intended their salaries to be tax-free, and would not be miserly with donations of landed estates once the war was finally won. This altered nothing of his view that the army leadership – Brauchitsch and Halder in particular – had been found seriously wanting once more, and that his own judgement had again been proved right in the western campaign.)
The point of his speech, as he told Goebbels earlier that day, was to make Britain a brief but imprecise offer, indicating that it was the last word, and leaving the choice to London. A large part of the speech, which lasted no less than two and a quarter hours, was spent describing the course of the war, praising the military achievements of the commanders, and listing their promotions. As he came to the names of the twelve generals who were to be made Field-Marshals, Hitler saluted each of them. From their places in the balcony, they stood to attention and returned the salute. Special mention was made of Göring, now elevated to Reich Marshal. Göring was like a child with a new toy when Hitler gave him the accompanying insignia. Hitler then emphasized the strength of Germany’s position. Only in the last few minutes of his speech did he reach the point that everyone was waiting for: his ‘appeal to reason, also in England’. The ‘appeal’ came and went – in those words, and little besides. There was the usual accusation levelled at Churchill as the warmonger. There was the threat that Britain, and the British Empire, would be destroyed. There was a hypocritical expression of regret for the victims of continued war. And there was the victor’s ‘appeal to reason’. That was all. It was little wonder that the reaction, even among those around Hitler, was one of disappointment – especially when the British categorical rejection of the ‘offer’ was announced within the hour.
Hitler had misjudged the mood in Britain. And his speech had not been tuned to offer anything that might tempt the opponents of Churchill, who could have formed a peace-lobby. He was evidently still hoping for a diplomatic solution when he met the Commanders-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht on 21 July. ‘Crossing of Channel appears very hazardous to the Führer. On that account, invasion is to be undertaken only if no other way is left to bring terms with Britain,’ Halder reported. ‘Britain’s position is hopeless. The war is won by us,’ Hitler stated.
But Britain still put her hopes in America, and in Russia. There was the possibility, said Hitler, referring to rumours of crisis in London, that a cabinet including Lloyd George, Chamberlain, and Halifax might come to power and seek peace-terms. But, failing that, Britain would have to be reduced by an air-offensive combined with intensified submarine warfare to the state, by mid-September, when an invasion could be carried out. Hitler would decide within days, after hearing Raeder’s report in mid-week on naval operational logistics, whether the invasion would be carried out by autumn. Otherwise, it would be before the following May. The final decision on the intensity of submarine and air attacks would be left until the beginning of August. There was the possibility that the invasion might begin as early as 25 August.
Hitler turned finally to the issue which had already started to bother him: the position of Russia. Stalin, he pointed out, had his own agenda. He was flirting with Britain to keep her in the war, tie down Germany, and exploit the situation to undertake his own expansionist policy. There were no indications of any Russian aggression towards Germany. ‘But,’ went on Hitler, ‘our attention must be turned to tackling the Russian problem and prepare planning.’ It would take four to six weeks to assemble the German military force. Its object would be ‘to crush the Russian army or at least take as much Russian territory as is necessary to bar enemy air raids on Berlin and Silesian industries’. He also mentioned the need to protect the Romanian oil-fields. Eighty to 100 divisions would be required. He contemplated attacking Russia that very autumn. Compared with what had been achieved in the west, Hitler had remarked to Jodl and Keitel already at the time of the French capitulation, ‘a campaign against Russia would be child’s play’.
It was an astonishing prospect that Hitler held out to his army leaders. He was, of course, not yet committing himself to anything. But the two-front war which had always been anathema was now being actively entertained. Paradoxically, having advocated since the 1920s a showdown with the Soviet Union to destroy Bolshevism and win Lebensraum, Hitler had now come back to the idea of a war against Russia for strategic reasons: to force his erstwhile would-be friend, Britain, now stubbornly holding out against the odds, to terms. The ideological aim of smashing Bolshevism, though apparently invoked by Hitler as part of his reasoning, was at this point secondary to the strategic need to get Britain out of the war. It was a sign of the difficulties that Hitler had manoeuvred himself into. Britain would not play his game. But the military lesson he kept saying she would have to be taught, and which the German public now awaited, would be, he knew, a hazardous affair. So he was now moving to a step he – and most of his generals did not disagree – thought less dangerous: an attack on the Soviet Union.
In fact, the army command, worried about the build-up of Soviet troops in southern Russia in connection with Stalin’s increasing pressure on the Balkan states, had already, in mid-June, added a further nine motorized divisions to the fifteen divisions previously designated for transfer to the east. And on 3 July Halder, without any orders from Hitler but following indications evidently passed on to him by Weizsäcker, in the Foreign Office, showed himself ready to anticipate the change in direction, to ‘work towards the Führer’, when he deemed it appropriate to have the possibilities of a campaign against the Soviet Union tested. The Chief of Staff, ahead of Hitler at this point, raised with his operational planners ‘the requirements of a military intervention which will compel Russia to recognize Germany’s dominant position in Europe’.
Hitler was still avoiding a final decision on Britain. But it was wit
h the impression that Lord Halifax’s official spurning of his ‘peace offer’ in a broadcast speech on the evening of 22 July amounted to ‘England’s final rejection’ that he left, for what was to prove the last time, for Bayreuth, to see next day a performance of Götterdämmerung. ‘The die is cast,’ wrote Goebbels. ‘We’re tuning press and radio to a fight.’ In fact, the die had not been finally cast. Hitler remained unsure how to proceed.
He had long since convinced himself of what German propaganda was trumpeting. It was he who wanted peace. Churchill, backed by the ‘Jewish plutocracy’, was the warmonger – the obstacle to the triumph. While in Bayreuth, Hitler saw the friend of his youth days, August Kubizek, for the last time. Hitler told Kubizek, as gullible as ever, that the war had hindered all his great plans for rebuilding Germany. ‘I did not become Chancellor of the Great German Reich in order to wage war,’ he said. Kubizek believed him. Probably Hitler believed himself.
He went from Bayreuth to the Obersalzberg. While he was there, the army leadership learnt from Raeder that the navy could not be ready for operations against England before 15 September. The earliest date for an invasion, depending on the moon and tides, was the 26th of that month. If that date proved impossible, the invasion would have to be put off until the following May. Brauchitsch doubted that the navy could provide the basis for an invasion in the autumn. (In fact, the navy had concluded that it was highly inadvisable to attempt to invade at any point that year, and was extremely sceptical about the prospects of an invasion at all.) Halder agreed with Brauchitsch in eliminating the notion of an operation during bad weather. But they foresaw disadvantages, military and political, in a postponement to the following year. They considered possibilities of weakening Britain’s overseas position through attacks on Gibraltar, Haifa, and Suez, support for the Italians in Egypt, and inciting the Russians to move on the Persian Gulf. An attack on Russia was rejected in favour of the maintenance of friendly relations.