107
Berchtesgaden, the Berghof
Bavarian Alps
AT HIS MOUNTAINSIDE COMPOUND in Berchtesgaden, Adolf Hitler leaned over a table full of battle maps, surrounded by his generals and field marshals in their gray uniforms. He stared at the maps, with their different colors and symbols to signify the advance and retreat of various columns of troops, with disbelief. The tide had turned against the Nazis.
It had been a tactical mistake to commit three million soldiers to the Russian front. Nazi forces had bogged down and stagnated during the brutal Russian winter.
In Italy, Axis ally Mussolini, whom Hitler had revered as an inspirational leader, was deposed and arrested.
They’d lost the Battle of Britain. And the Allies had initiated a counteroffensive, American and British forces intensifying bombing raids that pummeled German cities. Half the factories in Hamburg had been destroyed, and forty thousand people died.
This was no longer an offensive war. The Nazis were now undeniably playing defense. And their resources and manpower were dwindling.
“We lost Leningrad,” Hitler said. “We lost Stalingrad. We lost Kursk. And now you tell me we are losing Kharkov and soon will lose Kiev? Is there no place in the Russian front where you have managed to win for your Führer?”
Hitler straightened with his question, as straight as his posture would allow. These days, he was stooped, typically curling his left arm behind his back to conceal the nearly constant tremor in his hand.
The generals and marshals stayed silent, taking it as a rhetorical question.
What remained unspoken was that Adolf Hitler, though a masterful politician and orator, thought far too highly of his skills as a military tactician.
What he laid at the feet of his military commanders were largely strategic mistakes of his own making.
“Leave us,” said Hitler.
The generals and field marshals wasted no time in saluting, then exiting the room, leaving Hitler only with Martin Bormann, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels.
“They have failed me,” said Hitler, pounding his right fist on the table. “Every last one of these incompetent fools has failed me!”
“Quite so, mein Führer,” said Bormann.
With a huff, Hitler trudged off with his hobbling, hunched gait into the parlor room, where he could enjoy a view of the Bavarian Alps. “I need Theo,” he said. “Tell him to bring me my medicine.”
For some time now, Hitler’s personal physician, Dr. Theodor Morell, had administered Hitler a cocktail that included amphetamines on a daily basis to boost Hitler both mentally and physically.
Hitler’s aides privately deemed Dr. Morell a quack and speculated that Hitler had developed an addiction.
It was not a subject they felt free to raise with the Führer, whose moods swung dramatically depending, in large part, on the status of his medication.
“And if this were not enough, I am all but confined,” Hitler complained, looking out the window.
“A prisoner. Confined to bunkers and armored cars. Constantly looking over my shoulder. Using body doubles and fake schedules, worried that I’ll be betrayed, fearing yet another attempt on my life.
” He pointed a finger in the air. “It is no kind of life!”
“The sacrifices you have made for your country know no bounds, mein Führer,” said Joseph Goebbels. “We are eminently honored and grateful.”
“I do have positive news, mein Führer.” Heinrich Himmler stood at attention.
“Please, Heinrich, please!” Hitler swept a hand.
“Our progress with the Jewish extermination camps has been excellent.”
“Must we have this conversation again, Heinrich?” Bormann threw up his hands. “We never say extermination. We say evacuation. We are evacuating the Jews.”
“Evacuation to the east for forced labor,” said Goebbels.
“Or resettlement, if you like. But never extermination, Heinrich. Never annihilation. Good God, we’ve enough trouble with outside perception as it is.
Our citizens want us to eradicate the Jews, but they do not want to hear the gory details. We must protect them and ourselves.”
“And can you imagine, Heinrich,” said Bormann, “how difficult it would be to get the Jews on those trains if they knew they were traveling to their deaths?”
“You’ve lectured me before. I know this.
But I don’t have to like it.” Himmler shook his head.
“These euphemisms. As if we must apologize for ridding the world of this vermin. Though I must admit, I’d love to see the looks on their faces when they go for their ‘showers.’ They look up expecting hot water and instead get cyanide gas or carbon monoxide. ”
Goebbels chuckled. “All the more reason to take care in our public comments.”
“Heinrich.” Hitler put a hand on Himmler’s shoulder.
“Your mission is noble. Your commitment is unwavering. But we mustn’t give our enemies any more ammunition against us.
Outside of this room, for the purpose of maintaining order, for the purpose of mitigating public perception—do as they say.
This is what I want. Never again speak of exterminating or liquidating or eradicating or killing these Jewish parasites.
We are evacuating them to labor camps in the east.”
“Understood, mein Führer,” Himmler sighed.
“Good, Heinrich.” Hitler patted him on the back. “And those evacuations? Do them fast, my boy. Do them fast.”
Thus what began as an operation of persecution, forced relocation, and ghettoization now turned into a systematic campaign of extermination—what the Nazis termed the Endlosung der Judenfrage, the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.
In Russia, Nazi death squads followed behind German troops, first targeting men of military age but later killing all Jews, either by gunfire or with mobile vans filled with poisonous gas.
The Nazis developed extermination sites throughout occupied Poland, setting up secret camps in Chelmno, Belzec, Majdanek, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Sobibór.
In a single day as many as twelve thousand to fifteen thousand people would arrive at these six camps, and nearly all were put to death immediately after being lured into the showers.
It is estimated that in the death camps alone, the Nazis murdered at least 2.7 million Jews.