Thus Adolf Hitler set out, aged fifty-two, to conquer Joseph Stalin’s Russia .

In a terrible, unceasing onslaught his grey legions of Wehrmacht and Waffen SS troops fought forward across the drab and wind-swept plains, over the glowing yellow fields of Ukrainian sunflower crops, the swamps around Lake Ilmen, the barren steppe, and the rocky deserts and inhospitable tundra, humming with myriads of unseen mosquitoes, until the spent Nazi tide finally lapped the Caucasus Mountains .

Within a few days Field Marshal Leeb’s armoured spearheads had reached Dvinsk (Daugavpils);  Field Marshal Bock’s tanks were encircling a long ovalshaped pocket from Bialystok to Minsk in which eventually 350,000 Russian prisoners would be taken .  Within a month Smolensk itself would be in German hands and Rundstedt would be at the gates of Kiev .  As the Germans advanced, they found Russian trains still laden with grain and raw materials destined for Germany .

Yet there were disturbing auguries .  Stalin had proclaimed a ‘patriotic war,’ and this was a slogan of dangerous magnetism .  Moreover, his tanks and aircraft were significantly more plentiful than Hitler had been told .  Most ominous of all was the frightening tenacity of the Soviet soldier .  He was willing to die; he was brave and dogged .  Frederick the Great once said, ‘You’ve got to shoot every Russian dead twice, and still turn him over to make sure .’  Chief of Staff Halder wrote on July 16, 1941 :  ‘The Russians drive their men forward into counterattacks without the least artillery support, as many as twelve waves one after another ;  often they are raw recruits, who just link arms and — their muskets on their backs — charge our machine guns, driven by their terror of the commissars and their superiors .

Sheer weight of numbers has always been Russia’s forte, and now the Russian command is forcing us to slay them, because stand aside they won’t .’  A more fundamental obstacle to the invasion was the nature of the Russian terrain .  Hitler had been undaunted by the distances involved, since unlike Napoleon he had the internal combustion engine and the airplane .  In the months to come however he was to learn that horses did have certain advantages over mechanical transport .  As General Guderian would write on the last day of October 1941 :  ‘You might say that we’re no longer fighting against the Russians but against the weather and the bottomless and uncultivated land; and this is a very tough fight indeed, costly in both men and time .’ 

The whole campaign was a gamble .  Hitler was attacking Russia with only ten or fifteen divisions in reserve .  Each day brought fresh revelations .  When Ribbentrop came on June 27, Hitler exclaimed that he now felt like the horseman who having unwittingly ridden across the frozen Lake Constance died of horror when he learned what he had done :  ‘If I had had the slightest inkling of this gigantic Red Army assemblage I would never have taken the decision to attack .’  But the gamble seemed to have come off .  On the very next day Joseph Stalin is now known to have dictated a secret memorandum recommending that they contact the departing German ambassador at once, to sue for peace and offer Hitler a new ‘Brest-Litovsk,’ formally recognising Germany’s claim to the Baltic states and the Ukraine .

The Ukrainians warmly greeted Hitler’s invading troops, as Guderian wrote in a private letter on June 2 :  ‘Today there is a Thanksgiving service in the local Orthodox churches, as we are regarded as liberators .  I hope they don’t get let down .’  Two days later he added, ‘The first Russian villages — we were in Poland until now — make a pretty dismal impression .  The inhabitants, White Ruthenians, are friendly enough and don’t care much if the Soviets collapse .  But there are some who think differently, especially among the troops, and they’re putting up a stiff and courageous fight .’

Hitler's 'Wolf Lair’ was just outside Rastenburg in East Prussia .  The cluster of wooden barracks and single-story concrete blockhouses was invisible from the air, concealed by camouflage netting suspended from the treetops .  A few hundred yards away, on the other side of the road, Jodl’s operations staff occupied a similar encampment .  Hitler predicted that ‘this whole headquarters will one day become a historic monument, because here is where we founded a New World Order’ ;  Jodl dryly replied that it would be better suited as a garrison detention centre for Rastenburg .  It had in fact been built in one of the marshiest places in Masuria .  ‘No doubt some government department found the land was cheapest here,’ sighed Hitler .  Jodl’s staff diarist complained in a private letter dated June 27 :  ‘We are being plagued by the most awful mosquitoes .  It would be hard to pick on a more senseless site than this — deciduous forest with marshy pools, sandy ground, and stagnant lakes, ideal for these loathsome creatures .’ 

Secretary Christa Schroeder wrote a worm’s-eye view :

The blockhouses are scattered in the woods, grouped according to the work we do .  Our sleeping bunker, as big as a railway compartment, is very comfortable-looking, panelled with a beautiful light-colouredwood; .  .  .  As the air-conditioning noise bothered us .  .  .  we have it switched off at night with the result that . . . we walk around with leaden limbs all next day .

Despite all this it is wonderful except for an appalling plague of mosquitoes .  The men are better protected by their long leather boots and thick uniforms; their only vulnerable point is the neck .  Some of them go around all day with mosquito nets on .  Wherever a mosquito turns up, it is hunted down .  In the first few days this led to immediate problems of jurisdiction, as the Chief [Hitler] says it should be the Luftwaffe’s job only .  They say the small mosquitoes are replaced by a far more unpleasant sort at the end of June .  God help us !

It is almost too cool indoors .  .  .  .  The forest keeps out the heat: you don’t notice how much until you go out into the street, where the heat clamps down on you .

Shortly after ten a.m. we two [Gerda Daranowski and I] go to the canteen bunker — a long whitewashed room sunk half-underground, so that the small gauze-covered windows are very high up .  A table for twenty people takes up the entire length of the room; here the Chief takes his lunch and supper with his generals, his General Staff officers, adjutants, and doctors . 

At breakfast and afternoon coffee we two girls are also there .  The Chief sits facing the maps of Russia hanging on the opposite wall .  Now he makes a clean breast of his apprehensions, again and again emphasising the enormous danger bolshevism is for Europe and saying that if he had waited just one more year it would probably have been too late . . . .

We wait in this No. 1 Dining Room each morning until the Chief arrives for breakfast from the map room, where meantime he has been briefed on the war situation .  Breakfast for him, I might add, is just a glass of milk and a mashed apple: somewhat modest and unpretentious .

Afterward we go at one p.m. to the general situation conference in the map room . . . .  The statistics on enemy aircraft and tanks destroyed are announced — the Russians seem to have enormous numbers, as we have already annihilated over 3,500 aircraft and over 1,000 tanks including some heavy ones, forty-tonners .

They have been told to fight to the end and to shoot themselves if need be .  For example, at Kovno (Kaunas) this happened: our troops sent a Russian prisoner into a Russian bunker to tell the Russians there to surrender, but he seems to have been shot himself by the commissar in there .  Then the entire bunker was blown up by its own occupants .  In other words, perish rather than surrender .  There is a GPU commissar attached to each unit, and the commanding officer has to bow to him .  Away from their leadership, the troops are just a rabble; they are absolutely primitive, but they fight doggedly on — which is of course a danger of its own and will lead to many a hard struggle yet .  The French, Belgians, and so on were intelligent and gave up the fight when they saw it was pointless, but the Russians fight on like lunatics, trembling with fear that something will happen to their families if they surrender .

If there is nothing important to be done, we sleep a few hours after lunch so we are bright and breezy for the rest of the day, which usually drags on till the cows come home .

Then, around five p.m., we are summoned to the Chief and plied with cakes by him .  The one who grabs the most cakes gets his commendation !  This coffee break most often goes on to seven p.m., frequently even longer .  Then we walk back to No. 2 Dining Room for supper .  Finally we lie low in the vicinity until the Chief summons us to his study where there is a small get-together with coffee and cakes again in his more intimate circle . . . .  I often feel so feckless and superfluous here .  If I consider what I actually do all day, the shattering answer is :  absolutely nothing .  We sleep, eat, drink, and let people talk to us, if we are too lazy to talk ourselves . . . .

This morning the Chief said that if ever the German soldier deserved laurels it was for this campaign .  Everything is going far, far better than he hoped .  There have been many strokes of good fortune, for example, that the Russians met us on the frontier and did not first lure us far into their hinterland with all the enormous transport and supply problems that would certainly have involved .  And again, that they did not manage to destroy their two bridges at Dvinsk .  I believe that once we have occupied Minsk our advance will surge forward .  If there are any isolated Communists left among our own ranks, they will definitely be converted when they see the ‘blessings’ of life on the other side . . . .

By June 30 the encirclement of Minsk was completed .  Army Group Centre had captured 290,000 prisoners, 25,000 tanks, and 1,400 guns .  Halder reflected the optimism at General Staff headquarters when he boasted on July 3 :  ‘It’s probably not overstating the case if I maintain that the campaign in Russia has been won in two weeks .  Of course that doesn’t mean it’s over .’  In a private letter on June 29, Jodl’s war diarist showed that the OKW agreed that things were going better than expected .  ‘With the capture of Dvinsk and Minsk we have covered in one week one third of the way to Leningrad and Moscow; at this rate we would be in both cities in another fourteen days — but we can assume it’ll be even sooner .’  Hitler shared this view .  Looking at the wall map in his dining room, he proclaimed to his secretaries, ‘In a few weeks we’ll be in Moscow .  Then I’ll raze it to the ground and build a reservoir there .  The name Moscow must be expunged .’

Hitler had every reason to scent victory throughout July 1941 .  On July 2 he was shown a decoded Turkish report quoting both Stalin and Marshal Timoshenko as privately conceding to foreign diplomats that they had already written off Leningrad, Minsk, Kiev, and even Moscow .  A decoded morale report from the American embassy in Moscow described air raid precautions there and anxiously noted the food situation and rumours that the Russians were already evacuating their Gold reserves to safety .

Over lunch with Ribbentrop on July 4, Hitler was already enlarging on his plans for colonising Russia .  The next day, with the Russian campaign seemingly drawing to a close, Hitler explained to the same select lunchtime audience why he had attacked Russia without a formal declaration of war or even the pretext of an ‘incident .’  ‘Nobody is ever asked about his motives at the bar of history .  Why did Alexander invade India ?  Why did the Romans fight their Punic wars, or Frederick II his second Silesian campaign ?  In history it is success alone that counts .’  He, Hitler, was answerable only to his people .  ‘To sacrifice hundreds of thousands [of troops] just because of the theoretical responsibility-issue [for starting the war] would be criminal .  I will go down in history as the destroyer of Bolshevism, regardless of whether there was a frontier incident or not .  Only the result is judged .  If I lose, I shall not be able to talk my way out with questions of protocol .’

Hitler Calculated that it would take until August to assemble his infantry for an attack on Moscow .  Meanwhile, his tank formations could ‘mop up’ in the north .  He was noticeably uncertain about how high to rank Moscow itself on his list of objectives; to him it was just a place-name, he said, while Leningrad was the very citadel of Bolshevism, the city from which that evil creed had first sprung in 1917 .

By this time the coalition was complete: Slovakia had declared war on June 23 ;  Hungary and Finland had decorously waited a few more days, until Russian aircraft attacked them, then they too declared war . 

The Vichy French government broke off diplomatic relations with the USSR, and thousands of Frenchmen responded to the Nazi call for volunteers to fight Bolshevism :  150 airmen also volunteered, among them 20 of France’s foremost bomber pilots .  From Denmark, Norway, Spain, France, Belgium, and Croatia came word of legions being formed to fight in Russia . 

Hitler directed that those from ‘Germanic’ countries were to be organised by the SS, while the Wehrmacht would attend to the rest .  All must swear allegiance to him .  Sweden and Switzerland remained the exceptions — ‘Nations on Furlough,’ as Hitler contemptuously called them .

As he had prophesied, the battle against Bolshevism was proving a rallying point for all Europe .  On July 10 Hewel observed of Hitler :  ‘He predicted it .  "I was forced into this fight step by step, but Germany will emerge from it as the greatest national Power on earth . " He believes that Churchill will topple all at once, quite suddenly .  Then in Britain an immense anti-Americanism will arise, and Britain will be the first country to join the ranks of Europe in the fight against America .’  And Hewel added jubilantly :  ‘He is infinitely confident of victory .  The tasks confronting him today are as nothing, he says, compared with those in the years of struggle :  particularly since ours is the biggest and finest army in the world .’

The Vatican also let it be known that they ‘welcomed the war’ with Russia .  That Churchill had broadcast his offer of aid to Russia on the first day of ‘Barbarossa’ did not surprise Hitler .  In private he mocked the strange spectacle of ‘Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt as fighters for freedom !’

Confident of Victory, on July 8, 1941 Hitler instructed Brauchitsch not to send any new tanks to the eastern front ;  the panzer divisions there were to be reduced in number, and idle tank crews were to be sent back to Germany to train fresh tank divisions .  On the thirteenth, he confirmed this in an OKW order: in addition to the twenty existing panzer divisions, the army was to establish by May 1, 1942 twelve more for the east and twentyfour for other tasks .  The next day, Hitler ruled that after the Soviet Union’s defeat, the Luftwaffe was to be expanded on a colossal scale .

Of his real future aims at this time we are only meagrely informed .  Hitler seems to have envisaged a future war — perhaps not in his lifetime — between the New World and the Old .  Later in July, gossiping one night about the Englishman’s innate sense of authority, he remarked, ‘I’m sure the end of this war’s going to mark the start of a lasting friendship with Britain .  But if we’re to live in peace with her, we shall have to give her a knockout blow first — the British expect that from anybody, if they are to respect him properly .

’ On July 15 Jeschonnek’s deputy, touring the conquered territories, wrote in his diary :  ‘The Red Army’s equipment staggers us again and again . . . .  They had laid out enormous fortifications, mostly still incomplete, to guard their Lemberg salient .  In this region, sixty-three huge airfields alone, each with two runways and all still incomplete, bear witness to the Russian attack preparations .’  The next day Stalin’s son Jacob, a lieutenant in a Soviet tank division, was captured near Vitebsk .  Among ‘other proof that the Russians were just waiting to get at the Germans’ was, according to the Luftwaffe’s General Wolfram von Richthofen, the huge number of artillery and tanks captured at Dobromysl .  ‘In part they come from the young Stalin’s tank division .  He has admitted that they were standing by for the big offensive .’  Hitler learned that a letter had been found on Jacob Stalin from a friend, mentioning that before their ‘outing to Berlin’ he was going to see his Anushka one more time .  Interrogation of Stalin junior and the dictator’s former secretary, also captured, revealed that Stalin planned to exploit the German intelligentsia to boost the Russian population’s calibre; Europe and Asia would then become the invincible bastions of Bolshevism .

Hitler was particularly awed by the new Soviet armoured fighting vehicles .  They crawled out of the forests like primæval monsters of whose existence his experts had breathed no word to him :  here was one tank of fifty-two tons, its armourplate so thick that only the Luftwaffe’s 88-millimetre anti-aircraft guns made any impression on it; and here, south of Dubno, were others, weighing a hundred tons .  On July 4, OKW war diarist Helmut Greiner confidently asserted :  ‘The Russians have lost so many aircraft and four thousand six hundred tanks that there can’t be many left .’  By mid-July however Hitler’s gunners had knocked out eight thousand Russian tanks and still they came .  At the end of July twelve thousand tanks had been captured or destroyed .  Visiting Army Group Centre on August 4, Hitler admitted to his panzer commander General Guderian :  ‘Had I known they had as many tanks as that, I’d have thought twice before invading .’

An Abwehr colonel apprehensively recorded on July 20 :  ‘C[anaris] has just returned from the Führer’s headquarters and describes the mood there as very jittery, as it is increasingly evident that the Russian campaign is not "going by the book ."  The signs are multiplying that this war will not bring about the expected internal collapse, so much as the invigoration of Bolshevism .  C. warns in particular that attempts are being made to brand the Abwehr as the culprits, for not properly informing people about the true strength and fighting power of the Russian army .  For example the Führer is said to have remarked that had he known of the existence of the superheavy Russian tanks he would not have waged this war .’  OKW war diarist Greiner wrote privately the next day :  ‘Nobody discussed this at lunch with the Führer yesterday .  At first he was very taciturn, and just brooded . . . .  Then he came to life and delivered a monologue of an hour or more on our brave and gallant Italian allies and the worries they are causing him . . . .  You can’t help being astonished at his brilliant judgement and clear insights .  He looks in the best of health and seems well, although he seldom gets to bed before 5 or six a.m.’

On July 3, Hitler had been brought the radio monitoring service’s transcript of Stalin’s first public broadcast since ‘Barbarossa’ began .  Stalin had by now recovered from his first shock at the Nazi onslaught .  In his speech, he referred to Hitler and Ribbentrop as monsters and cannibals, and claimed that Hitler’s ambition was to bring back the czars, and to destroy the independent constituent republics of the Soviet Union .  ‘He will Germanise them and turn them into the slaves of German princes and barons .’  Stalin appealed to patriotic Russians everywhere to destroy everything of value in the path of the advancing Wehrmacht — railway rolling stock, crops, fuel, and raw materials .  They were to form partisan units behind German lines, which were to blow up roads and bridges, destroy arms dumps and convoys, and hunt down and wipe out the enemy and his accomplices .  ‘This war with Fascist Germany must not be regarded as an ordinary war .’

The partisan war provided the SS task forces with a fresh rationale for their extermination drives, in which Russian Jews increasingly came to be regarded as ‘partisan material .’  On July 10 we find Hitler telephoning Brauchitsch about the pointlessness of committing panzer divisions to the assault on Kiev: 35 percent of the city’s population were Jews, he pointed out, so the bridges across the Dnieper would not be found intact .

Another factor now also weighed with Hitler: the vast, sprawling conurbations of Leningrad and Moscow would become death-traps if his precious tanks entered them .  Thus he eventually decided that both cities were to be destroyed by bomber aircraft and by mass starvation .  Two days after Stalin’s radio speech Hitler told his private staff that Moscow would ‘disappear from the earth’s surface .’  On July 8 he told Brauchitsch and Halder that its devastation was necessary to drive out its population, whom they would otherwise have to feed in the coming winter .  He ordered the Luftwaffe to disrupt Moscow with a terror raid .

Emotionally however Hitler was far more attracted to the destruction of Leningrad .  On July 16, Bormann noted :  ‘The Leningrad area is being claimed by the Finns .  The Führer wants to raze Leningrad to the ground — then he’ll give it to the Finns .’  On July 21, Hitler visited Leeb’s headquarters on the northern front .  The army group’s war diary records :  ‘The Führer emphasised that he expects a bitter enemy defence south of Leningrad, as Russia’s leaders fully realise that Leningrad has been held up to the nation as a showpiece of the revolution these last twenty-four years, and that given the Slav mentality, which has already suffered from the fighting so far, the loss of Leningrad might result in a complete collapse .’  As to the fact that this concentration on Leningrad would leave only infantry armies for the assault on Moscow, ‘The Führer is not concerned by this, since to him Moscow is only a geographical objective .’

It was a strategic decision hotly contested by the General Staff .  Halder wrote an irritable private letter on July 28: ‘He’s playing warlord again and bothering us with such absurd ideas that he’s risking everything our wonderful operations so far have won .  Unlike the French, the Russians won’t just run away when they’ve been tactically defeated; they have to be slain one at a time in a terrain that’s half forest and marsh; all this takes time and his nerves won’t stand it .  Every other day now I have to go over to him .  Hours of claptrap and the outcome is there’s only one man who understands how to wage wars . . . .’

On July 14, Hitler told Ambassador Oshima :  ‘We shall not lose our heads as we press onward; we shall not advance beyond what we can really hold on to .’  There seemed however no limit to his territorial ambitions .  Rundstedt wrote in a letter on the twentieth, ‘Today Halder was here with some very far-reaching plans, but one doesn’t like to think too far ahead .’  Hitler was overheard to remark: ‘I entered this war a nationalist, but I shall come out of it an imperialist .’  Once, he had been heard to brag :  ‘Mr .  Chamberlain likes to take weekends in the country ;  I shall take countries in the weekend !’

In the relaxed company of his private secretary, walking in the pitch darkness one night among the blockhouses, he made a bantering remark that again illustrated this .  She had left her flashlight on his desk and kept stumbling .  An orderly sent to fetch the flashlight reported it missing .  In mock-righteous tones Hitler assured her: ‘Look, I poach other people’s countries — I don’t pinch their flashlights !’  He added with a belly-laugh: ‘And that’s just as well, because it is the small fry that get strung up .  The big fish get away with it .’ 

at a five-hour conference with his chief minions — Rosenberg, Lammers, Keitel, Göring, and Bormann — on July 16, Hitler hammered home the point that Germany alone was entitled to benefit from defeating the Soviet Union .  As for their secret aims, while they must be concealed from the world at large they themselves must be in no doubt: just as Germany had adopted the pose of protector in Norway, Denmark, Holland, and Belgium — where Germany had already staked her territorial claims in secret, whatever she might publicly profess for tactical reasons — so she must act in Russia .  ‘But let there be no doubt in our minds that we shall never depart from these territories .  Never again must there be any military power west of the Urals, even if we have to fight a hundred years’ war to prevent it .  It shall never be permitted that anybody other than a German carries weapons !’

Since the Ukraine would be Germany’s granary for the next three years, Hitler wanted Gauleiter Erich Koch appointed as Reich commissar there: Koch, Göring’s protégé, was a tough, cruel viceroy who had shown his mettle in the economic management of East Prussia .  ‘About six p.m. they had a break for coffee,’ wrote Otto Bräutigam, Rosenberg’s army liaison officer, who was waiting outside, in his diary :  ‘The Reichsmarschall was in a brilliant mood .  The Führer voiced harsh criticism of the Swedes for the very meagre contingent they had provided for the struggle against Bolshevism, and even the Reichsmarschall described the Swedes as decadent .  The Finns on the other hand earned broad praise for their pluck .  After the break the negotiations were resumed .  About eight-thirty a final agreement was reached .  The Reichsleiter [Rosenberg] . . . told us how the talks had gone .  He had reached a compromise with the Reichsmarschall, who is directing the economy of the occupied eastern territories through the Economics Staff [Wirtschaftsstab] East, and with the Reichsführer SS [Himmler] who equally intends to direct the operations of his SS police units from his desk in Berlin .  [Rosenberg] also told us that serious objections had been raised to each and every candidate for the various Reich Commissar posts, but that all candidates were now in: Gauleiter [Hinrich] Lohse for the Reich commissariat [RK] Ostland [the Baltic countries]; Gesandter [Siegfried] Kasche for the RK Russia, with his seat in Moscow; Gauleiter [Richard] Kube for the RK Ukraine; and Stabsleiter [Arno] Schickedanz for the RK Caucasus together with Gesandter [Dr. Hermann] Neubacher as economic director . . . .  An addendum from the coffee-talk is that the Führer described the Germanising of the Crimea as vital, and expatiated at length on the strength of the Soviet armoured forces .  He said to Göring, “As you know, with this campaign I had my first pronounced misgivings because of our uncertainty as to the enemy’s strength, and I don’t know whether I would have taken the same decision if I had been fully informed as to the overall strength of the Soviet army and in particular its gigantic tank rearmament .”’

In Russia, he said, he would encourage neither schooling nor religion, a position on which he met the opposition of the strongly Catholic Franz von Papen .  Papen had sent him a long study urging that now was the right moment to reintroduce Christianity into Russia; Hitler would not hear of it .  In a private aside, he noted that he might eventually consider letting all in the Christian sects ‘so they can beat each other’s brains out with their crucifixes .’

In this new German empire, soldiers with twelve years of service would automatically inherit a farmstead complete with cattle and machinery .  He asked only that some of this new peasant breed should marry girls from the countryside .  They were to retain their weapons, so that they could answer any fresh calls to arms against the Asiatic hordes .  The NCOs were to manage the gasoline stations along the eastern autobahns .  This soldier-peasant would above all make a far better educator than the university-trained elementary school teacher, who would always be dissatisfied: not that Hitler planned to educate the Russians masses .  ‘It is in our interest that the people know just enough to recognise the signs on the road,’ he said .

On July 17 he signed the formal decrees putting these plans into effect, setting up an East Ministry under Alfred Rosenberg to handle the occupied territories .  Heinrich Himmler was given sweeping, indeed sinister, powers to police and exploit these new domains .

the nazi ‘final solution of the Jewish problem’ now took an unmistakable turn for the worse .

In some regions, particularly the Baltic countries, the ‘Jewish problem’ had solved itself .  The natives had already taken primitive revenge for ‘Jewish excesses’ after the Soviet invasion of Lithuania in 1940 .  Hitler was informed that the Red Army’s ‘Jewish commissars’ had rounded up the local businessmen one morning and shot them .  Actively encouraged by Heydrich’s units, the Latvians and Lithuanians had begun to liquidate every Jew they could lay hands on .  Leeb’s army group brought this to the attention of Hitler’s HQ on July 5; Colonel Schmundt replied that the German troops were not to intervene — it was ‘a necessary mopping-up operation .’  Visiting Kovno a few days later Otto Bräutigam was sufficiently disturbed to write in his diary on July 11 :  ‘While we turn a blind eye the Lithuanian auxiliary police are carrying out numerous pogroms against the Jews .’ 

The spirit inspiring Hitler in his war against the European Jews is clear from the entry in Hewel’s diary on July 10:

He says, ‘I feel like the Robert Koch of politics . . . .  It is I who have discovered the Jews as the bacillus and ferment that causes all decay in society .  What I have proved is this — that nations can survive without Jews . . . and in fact better .  That is the cruellest blow I have dealt the Jews .'

He reverted to this surgical imagery a few days later, explaining to the Croatian defence minister :  ‘If just one country tolerates one Jewish family in its midst, then this will become the seat of a fresh bacillus infection .  Once there are no more Jews in Europe the unity of the European nations can no longer be disrupted .  It is unimportant where the Jews are sent — whether to Siberia or to Madagascar .’  He planned, he said, to confront each country with this demand .

In 1939 Hitler had confided to a bemused General Friedrich von Boetticher, the German military attaché in Washington, that he possessed documents proving Roosevelt’s Jewish ancestry .  It was to these unidentified Jewish-Bolshevik influences that Hitler ascribed Roosevelt’s attempts to provoke a shooting war with Germany .  On July 13 the German diplomat Hasso von Etzdorf quoted Hitler as saying, ‘So long as our eastern operations are still running, we won’t let ourselves be provoked .  Later the Americans can have their war, if they absolutely have to .’  He quoted Hitler as telling Raeder he would do his utmost to prevent Roosevelt from entering the war for one or two more months, because the Luftwaffe was still committed to the Russian campaign .  Besides, as Raeder informed the naval staff :  ‘The Führer still presumes that a victorious Russian campaign will affect the posture of the United States .’  Hitler now forbade even the mining of Icelandic harbours .

It was reported that the American navy had been ordered to fire without warning or provocation on any German warship; American commanders concerned were instructed to deny responsibility and to suggest that a British unit was involved .  Thus Roosevelt hoped to provoke countermeasures .  All these facts Hitler learned from intercepted U.S. naval code signals .  On July 20 Canaris reported: ‘A certain disenchantment is to be discerned with the Reich foreign minister von R[ibbentrop] .  Thus he himself now accepts America’s entry into the war as imminent, and for the first time he spoke disparagingly of the "journalistic" reporting of Thomsen and Boetticher .’

Ribbentrop’s stock with Hitler was currently at its lowest .  Hitler sometimes even egged on his his staff to make fun of the foreign minister .  In July the question arose as to whether Rosenberg or Ribbentrop should conduct propaganda in Russia; Hitler characteristically decided to allow both ministers a free hand .  On the twenty-eighth Ribbentrop picked a quarrel with Hitler about this, and even heaped scorn on his decision to attack the Soviet Union .  It was a stiflingly hot summer day .  Hitler was so enraged that he clutched his heart, collapsed into a chair, and gasped at the petrified Ribbentrop that he must never again challenge his decisions .  Ribbentrop, pale with fright, gave his word .  Hitler then charged Lammers to inform the foreign minister that the diplomatic service had to stand aside until the guns had finished speaking .

That summer, despite the heat and Hitler’s growing signs of a mysterious malaise, his conversations were monologues, delivered in a rich Austrian dialect to a handful of cronies assembled in his bunker, or over lunch or dinner at the long oblong table with Jodl at his left, an outside guest like Speer or Goebbels at his right, and his headquarters staff — the liaison officers, the younger adjutants, and secretaries — at their allotted places .

Sometimes Hitler would talk about the Nazi Party and Christianity .  ‘We must not try to combat religion,’ he dictated, ‘but let it wither away!’ Christa Schroeder, Hitler’s devoted secretary, wrote in mid-July 1941 :

In our evening discussions with the Chief, the Church plays a big part .  .  .  .  It is all so convincing, what the Chief says — when for example he explains how Christianity by its mendacity and hypocrisy has set back mankind in its development, culturally speaking, by two thousand years .

I really must start writing down what the Chief says .  It’s just that these sessions go on for ages and afterward you are just too limp and lifeless to write anything .  The night before last, when we left the Chief’s bunker, it was already light .  We did not turn in even then, as ordinary people would have, but made for the kitchen, ate a few cakes, and then strolled for two hours toward the rising sun, past farmyards and paddocks, past hillocks glowing with red and white clover in the morning sun, a fairyland on which you just could not feast your eyes enough; and then back to bed .  We are incapable of getting up before two or three p.m.

A crazy life . . . . The like of our strange profession will probably never be seen again :  we eat, we drink, we sleep, now and then we type a bit, and meantime keep him company for hours on end .

Recently we did make ourselves a bit useful — we picked some flowers, so that his bunker does not look too bare .

On August 4, Hitler visited Field Marshal von Bock at the headquarters of Army Group Centre .  The Battle of Smolensk was drawing to its end .  Another three hundred thousand Russian captives were already being marched westward, but it was clear that the Führer had not yet made up his mind on what next .  He was intoxicated by Bock’s ‘historic triumphs .’  ‘Now,’ he had exclaimed on leaving his headquarters early that morning, ‘we shall put things in order here for a thousand years .’  He was however falling ill .  And for another thing, what precisely was Russia’s ‘military strength,’ which he had to destroy ?  Halder himself now wanly admitted that everybody had underestimated the Soviet colossus .  ‘When we attacked, we assumed there were 200 enemy divisions to date, we have already counted 360 . . . .’

To Hitler, the key to victory lay in Russia’s raw material centres and particularly the Donets region beyond Kharkov :  ‘That is the entire base of the Soviet economy .’  To a diplomat he explained, ‘Soon we shall occupy the richest Russian economic regions, which yield 61 percent of their iron and 35 percent of their molybdenum; and when we cut off their oil supplies from the south, the fate of Bolshevism will be sealed .’