Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler and the Crushing of a City. Alexandra Richie

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ to talk ourselves.’ Hitler seemed to turn in upon himself, sitting in his rooms isolated from the rest of the world. According to his doctor, Morell, who by now had him hooked on various drugs, Hitler had developed a kind of ‘bunker mentality’. ‘It was the only place he felt at home … the only place he could work and think.’⁴⁷

      Claus von Stauffenberg’s failed attempt on Hitler’s life at the Wolf’s Lair on 20 July was to have dire consequences for the fate of the Warsaw Uprising. First, Hitler came out of the destroyed conference room believing that he had been saved by divine providence, and was destined to snatch Germany from the jaws of defeat. According to Christa Schroeder, he had had a premonition about the attack the night before. ‘Nothing must happen to me,’ he had told her. ‘There is nobody who can carry on the business.’ Just after the blast, Morell heard him shout, ‘I’m invulnerable! I’m immortal!’ Albert Speer found Hitler ‘triumphant’ in the days after the attack, believing that he had discovered the true reason for his failure to win the war: the treachery of his own generals. ‘Now at last the great positive turning point in the war had come. The days of treason were over, new and better generals would assume the command.’ Hitler, who had previously referred to the barbarity of the Soviet dictator, now praised Stalin for the Terror, claiming that by eliminating the former commander-in-chief of the Red Army, Tukhachevsky, and liquidating his General Staff he had ‘made room for fresh, vigorous men’, free of the tainted ideas of Tsarist times. Hitler even toyed with the preposterous notion that there had been ‘treasonous collaboration’ between the Russian and German general staffs. ‘Now I know why all my great plans in Russia had to fail in recent years. It was all treason! But for those traitors we would have won long ago!’⁴⁸

      He continued to rant against the generals and the officer corps, becoming ever more paranoid until his death in the Berlin bunker in April 1945. As the US Strategic Bombing Survey later put it, the attempt on his life ‘set in motion in the mind of that evil and uncertain man a chain of psychological reactions that separated the Führer from his advisers and friends and gradually undermined his psyche. In the end, these reactions trapped Hitler in the maze of his own obsessions and left him with self-destruction as the only escape.’⁴⁹

      The German commanders scrambled to outdo one another in the proof of their loyalty. Model was the first to write a note of condolence to the ‘great man’: ‘Mein Führer,’ he said, ‘we soldiers of Army Group Centre and Army Group Nordukraine have just heard with outrage and hatred of the criminal attempt against your life. We thank the Almighty that He kept you, and all of Germany through you, from unimaginable disaster.’⁵⁰ All the other generals followed suit, probably more to divert suspicion than out of genuine feelings of relief. They tried to ingratiate themselves in other ways, too. General Walter Warlimont, deputy chief of operations for the OKW, remembered how Keitel and Göring had announced that ‘as an indication of the unshakeable loyalty to the Führer and of the close bonds of comradeship between Wehrmacht and Party, the Party salute is to be made obligatory for all members of the Services’.⁵¹ The order was duly given. ‘The traditional salute of touching the cap with the right hand was now forbidden, and the Nazi Party salute, thrusting an outstretched right arm forward, was made mandatory. This was observed with contempt and resentment by soldiers who honoured military tradition,’ recalled Warlimont, ‘and the order was taken as an insult … it was not uncommon to observe entire companies carrying their mess tins in their right hands to avoid being compelled to demonstrate their “loyalty to the party”.’ Later, many soldiers would claim that the assassination attempt had ‘not caused a tear to be shed’ among their colleagues. They had fought on not out of loyalty to Hitler, but because they felt ‘bound to our duty by the oath we had sworn as soldiers of Germany; to swear, with weapons in hand, to defend our country even to the sacrifice of our lives. Not even a change in command or policy could free us from this oath.’⁵²

      The failed assassination attempt would have a profound effect on the course of the Warsaw Uprising precisely because the German generals had been so deeply disgraced in Hitler’s eyes. Top Nazis now vied and plotted for influence. Kurt Zeitzler, who had told Hitler to his face that his ‘fortress city’ policy was madness, had a nervous breakdown. Heinz Guderian replaced him as Army Chief of Staff on 21 July; his promotion even earned him a cover picture on Time magazine. Goebbels used the attempt as an opportunity to push harder for ‘total war’: ‘It takes a bomb under his arse to make Hitler see reason,’ he wrote.⁵³ This would affect both the use of slave labour from Warsaw during the uprising and the creation of the Volkssturm, or ‘people’s army’, which was inspired in part by the Polish resistance.

      The most chilling outcome of the failed plot to kill Hitler, and the one which would have the most significant influence on the future of Warsaw, was the meteoric rise of Heinrich Himmler and the SS. Himmler was now presumptive commander-in-chief of the army, commander of the Reserve Army (a group of units of trainees and older soldiers not yet released from service) and chief of army armament, as well as commander-in-chief of the Volksgrenadier Divisions. His new position at the head of the Reserve Army, in particular, gave him great power. Himmler saw 20 July as a chance to imbue the military with the Nazi Party spirit, and to kindle the ‘fire of the people’s holy war’. At last the Waffen SS was to be accepted as an equal partner with the army, navy and air force. National Socialist political officers were appointed to all military headquarters – a direct copy of Soviet practice perfected by the NKVD. Thus, when the uprising broke out only eleven days after the attempt on his life, Hitler would not turn to the army for help, but to his trusted and ‘Treuer Heinrich’, Himmler.

      For his part, Stalin was elated when he heard about the attempt on Hitler’s life, and summoned Zhukov to share the good news. ‘If the mad dog isn’t dead already he soon will be,’ he said, tipping back a glass of champagne. For Stalin, Hitler’s death would have meant chaos in the Third Reich, a collapse of German morale and a much easier and quicker road to Warsaw and Berlin. When Zhukov returned to his headquarters after the meeting, he issued two orders to his senior staff: first, he was to be informed when Hitler’s death was confirmed; and second, the Red Army was to push even harder than before to defeat the Germans as quickly as possible.

      Speed was important. If the Third Reich was going to implode, Stalin knew that he would have to act quickly to position himself politically in Eastern and Central Europe. The Soviet dictator was now waging an all-out political, as well as military, war. As the last of the German stragglers were being hunted down in the forests around Minsk, Stalin summoned Zhukov and General A.I. Antonov to his summer house outside Moscow. ‘We are strong enough to finish off Nazi Germany single-handed,’ he declared triumphantly. Zhukov said that ‘no one had any doubt that Germany had definitely lost the war. This was settled on the Soviet–German front in 1943 and the beginning of 1944. The question now was how soon and with what political and military results the war would end.’⁵⁴ Later that afternoon they were joined by Foreign Minister Molotov and other members of the State Committee for Defence. Stalin asked Zhukov: ‘Can our troops reach the Vistula without a stop, and in what sector can we commit the 1st Polish Army, which has acquired combat efficiency?’ ‘Not only can our troops reach the Vistula,’ Zhukov replied, ‘but they must secure good bridgeheads which are essential for further offensive operations in the strategic direction of Berlin. As for the 1st Polish Army, it should be directed towards Warsaw.’ At this point, Warsaw was less than two hundred kilometres from the front.

      News of the assassination attempt only fuelled Stalin’s determination to set up the political structure he desperately needed before Germany collapsed completely or arranged a separate peace with the West. Always wary of his allies, he told the chief of the NKGB, Boris Merkulov, that ‘as long as Hitler is alive the Allies will not sign a separate peace with Germany. But they will sign a peace at once with a new government.’⁵⁵ It was a time of frenetic activity. The day after the attempt on Hitler’s life the 47th Guards Army reached the western Bug River. On the same day the Red Army formed the Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego (Polish Committee of National Liberation, PKWN) in Chełm. Stalin announced that this СКАЧАТЬ