Hitler's Private Library Page 20
“Kannenberg was not only an excellent cook but also an excellent one-man-show who was literally blessed with that Berlin wit and humor,” Christa Schröder once recalled. “He charmed his audience through his rounds of folk songs and clowning which he often accompanied on the accordion.” Schröder compared him to a court jester possessed of the “freedom of the fool”—Narrenfreiheit—in Hitler’s presence. “Evening with the Führer for dinner,” Goebbels once wrote in his diary. “We argue about military-political questions. Kannenberg tells his war stories. They are very strange.” Hitler liked the Kannenberg style, though. He also trusted Kannenberg’s judgment implicitly. When Kannenberg complained about one of Hitler’s adjutants, Hitler fired the man on the spot. When Hitler’s chief adjutant, Wilhelm Brückner, protested, insisting that Kannenberg’s complaints were unjustified, Hitler fired Brückner, despite more than a decade of loyal service.
Kannenberg could be arrogant, garrulous, calculating, and ruthless but never imprudent. He knew when to interrupt and upstage Hitler, but also when to pander. Thus when Kannenberg inscribed the Schlieffen book to “my Führer” and quoted Hitler to himself, he guilefully repeated their “motto,” this time in blue grease pencil, in the same crude hand, on the last page of the book, after underlining Rochs’s closing sentence: “You will find your way again, you German folk, and a great man from the realm of genius will again become your leader—from darkness into light—all will be well.” It was Kannenberg’s way of letting Hitler know that he was fully aware of his place in Hitler’s life and of Hitler’s place in the world.
In his survey of Hitler’s private library, Frederick Oechsner reported that nearly half the Nazi leader’s collection, “some 7,000 volumes,” was devoted to military matters. According to Oechsner, Hitler had books on the “campaigns of Napoleon, the Prussian kings, the lives of all German and Prussian potentates who ever played a military role; and books on virtually all of the well-known military campaigns in recorded history.” Oechsner notes that the books on Napoleonic campaigns “are extensively marginated in his own handwriting,” and that a collection of “400 books, pamphlets and monographs on the United States armed forces” given to Hitler by Gen. Werner von Blomberg also appear to have been studied. Specifically, Oechsner mentions the presence of Theodore Roosevelt’s account of the Spanish-American War and a book by Gen. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben on his experiences training George Washington’s troops during the American Revolution. “There are exhaustive works on uniforms, weapons, supply, mobilization, the building-up of armies in peacetime, morale and ballistics,” Oechsner says. “In fact, there is probably not a single phase of military knowledge, ancient or modern, which is not dealt with in these 7,000 volumes, and quite obviously Hitler has read many of them from cover to cover.”
By Hitler’s own account, his interest in military matters dates from his youth, when he came across a copy of Heinrich Gerling’s two-volume illustrated history of the Franco-Prussian War, as Hitler explains on page 7 of Mein Kampf:
Rummaging through my father’s library, I had come across various books of a military nature, among them a popular edition of the Franco-German War of 1870–71. It consisted of two issues of an illustrated periodical from those years, which now became my favorite reading matter. It was not long before the great heroic struggle had become my greatest inner experience. From then on I became more and more enthusiastic about everything that was in any way connected with war or, for that matter, with soldiering.
Hermann Esser, one of Dietrich Eckart’s early recruits for the Nazi cause, remembered that during the 1920s, Hitler’s book buying changed, especially after his release from Landsberg Prison. “In these years Hitler spent more money than previously to acquire books on military history . . . not only of Prussian history, but also in particular Austrian military history and French,” Esser recalled. “He sort of bought up just about anything that was available in Munich, whatever he heard about or happened to find in the bookstores he passed on his occasional strolls or walks to the Café Heck.” In those years before the Nazi Party established its Schelling Street headquarters in Schwabing, Munich’s student quarter, Hitler rarely if ever visited the countless bookshops near the university, preferring instead to browse the antiquarian bookstores near the Café Heck. Hitler had a particular passion, Esser recalled, for annual “almanachs” of military equipment. “He bought them for every year,” Esser noted. “Then for comparison he had the English, then the French and Russian.”
Hitler’s well-thumbed copy of Heigl’s 1935 manual on tanks. His library contains numerous manuals on military vehicles, naval vessels, and aircraft.
Today, the Hitler library preserves this specialized passion of Hitler’s in nearly a dozen “almanachs” on naval vessels as well as aircraft and armored vehicles—several published by Julius Lehmann. Some date from these early years, such as a 1920 edition of The Conquest of the Air: A Handbook of Air Transport and Flying Techniques, with an introduction by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin; some are later acquisitions, such as a 1935 copy of Heigl’s Handbook of Tanks, which provides both a detailed analysis of the “origins” of armored vehicles as well as an “identification guide”; several books on naval vessels, including a 1935 handbook, The Navies of the World and Their Fighting Power, with an introduction by retired admiral Walter Gladisch; and a 1940 edition of Weyer’s Handbook of War Fleets, written by Alexander Bredt. This latter volume is especially well thumbed.
Hitler’s oldest extant military volume is a 111-page appeal to militant nationalism, written by the early German patriot Ernst Moritz Arndt, and published in 1815, titled Catechism for the Teutonic warrior and defender, in which is taught how to be a Christian warrior and how to enter battle in the company of God, with a personal inscription to Hitler from Arndt’s great-granddaughter. There is also a well-worn 1902 history of the fortifications of Strasbourg, “from the reconstruction of the city after the great migrations to the year 1681.”
The Hitler library also contains a few biographies, including a 1921 profile of Julius Caesar by Matthias Gelzer and a dozen or so books on Frederick the Great, and those of two Prussian military heroes from the Napoleonic era, Karl von Stein and Friedrich Wilhelm von Bülow, though not a single book on Napoleon or his campaigns. A collection of essays by Karl von Clausewitz, War and State, subtitled War Philosophy and Political Writings, in a 1936 edition, is inscribed to Hitler by the editor, but appears never to have been perused. In Hitler’s one book on Helmuth von Moltke (the Elder), the pages remain uncut. Similarly, a book on Alfred von Schlieffen by Karl Justrow, The Field Marshal and the Techniques of War: Studies on the Operational Plans of the Count von Schlieffen and Lessons for Our Rearmament and National Defense, published in 1933, also shows no sign of having been read. However, another book on the legendary Prussian general, the one given to Hitler by Kannenberg, has not only been read but also bears extensive marginalia.
In the early morning hours of Friday, May 10, Hitler journeyed to the Felsennest—translated variously as the “craggy eyre” or “nest on the cliff”—a wooded, hilltop command post deep in the forests of the Eifel, twenty miles southwest of Bonn and a dozen or so miles from the Belgian border. He arrived there after an intentionally diversionary nighttime train ride—the train set off north from Berlin toward Hamburg then, shortly before midnight, reversed course toward the southwest, arriving in the town of Euskirchen, near the Belgian border, at 4:25 a.m. He was met there by a column of military vehicles, which then drove half an hour to the Felsennest. The post, a cluster of wooden huts and underground bunkers, looked more like a summer camp than a military headquarters. The “situation room” was a one-story wooden structure with a peaked, camouflaged roof, a small terrace with a wooden balustrade, and a room-length shuttered window that could be opened for natural light when the weather permitted. Hitler was quartered in a low-lying subterranean bunker with a grass roof and an angled entrance that opened outward like cellar doors.
An
interior photograph of Hitler’s bedroom shows a cramped, spartan space furnished with a striped sleeping sofa and a simple writing table. An electric heater shares wall space with a four-legged wicker stool. A clutter of more than thirty books in several piles takes up room at the far end of his bed; two orderly stacks, one with four volumes and another with three, are at the near end. A large magnifying glass lies on a side table. Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel remembered that the interior walls were so thin—hellhörig—that he could hear Hitler turning pages at night.
Hitler’s quarters near the Belgian border, with nighttime reading. In an adjacent room, Field Marshal Keitel could hear Hitler turning pages through the thin walls.
At exactly 5:35 a.m. on the tenth, the invasion began. Gathering his entourage before his bunker, with birds chirping in the surrounding trees, Hitler announced, “Gentlemen, the offensive against the Western allies has just now begun.” For the next nine days, Hitler monitored the progress of the military operation, often in the open air, tracking one German triumph after another.
By Sunday, the nineteenth, there was “good news” on all fronts. “After the elimination of final resistance on the island of Walcheren, all of Holland including its islands is now in hand,” the daily log for the German High Command records. “In north Belgium our troops, who have already captured Antwerp as reported earlier, are pressing the remaining enemy troops who are still fighting ever farther to the west.” West of Antwerp, the German forces had crossed the Schelde River, and had reached the east bank of the Dendre River, west of Brussels. The news from northern France was equally encouraging. The Oise and Sambre rivers had been crossed. Le Cateau and Saint-Quentin were in German hands. Along the Maginot Line, the French had surrendered a major stronghold, Position 505, northwest of Montmédy. “The numbers of prisoners and captured weapons continue to rise,” the log concludes. “Until now 110,000 captured without counting the Dutch army and numerous artillery pieces up to 28 caliber.” Kannenberg punctuated the spirit of that Sunday with his triumphant salutation, “Sieg Heil!”
When kannenberg inscribed the Schlieffen biography, Hitler was a few weeks short of being hailed by the Wehrmacht’s chief of staff, Wilhelm Keitel, as the “greatest field marshal of all time.” In seven brief months, Hitler had unleashed a series of lightning attacks against Poland and Scandinavia, and now France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, snatching Luxembourg along the way. His dramatic victories left friend and foe alike in awe of the German juggernaut and half of Europe under Nazi domination.
At first glance, Kannenberg’s Sunday inscription can be seen indeed as a salute to German victory, a nod to his boss’s battlefield prowess, but it may also smack of Kannenberg’s famously subtle mendacity, a hint at the undercurrent of tension chilling the hilltop euphoria that weekend. On Friday, Hitler had clashed with Franz Halder after doing something he had never done before: intervening in a tactical military decision. Until then, Hitler’s role in the battlefield operations had been primarily decorative. He was omnipresent on the battlefield and in the public eye, especially when the newsreel cameras were whirring: conferring with his generals, studying maps, surveying the battlefield, touring the front lines, chatting with war-wearied but jubilant soldiers. But when it came to operational matters, the generals either ignored or resisted his involvement.
In the summer of 1938, Hitler had clashed with Halder over the draft invasion plan for Czechoslovakia. Instead of a concerted assault on Prague, as Halder recommended, Hitler proposed dividing the German army for twin attacks on Prague and Pilsen. Halder argued that the German forces were not strong enough for a two-pronged assault. When Hitler insisted, Halder handed him the maps and told him to make the changes himself. Hitler returned to Berlin, made his amendments, and forwarded the revised plan to Halder. A few weeks later, Hitler inquired of Halder about the changes. He was told they had arrived too late to be incorporated into the plan. Hitler was furious, and summoned Halder and his senior staff. The men battled over the plan for the next several hours. Halder would not relent. Finally, toward three o’clock in the morning, Hitler had had enough. He ordered Halder to make the changes. With icy composure, Halder took his leave.
“What does he want?” Halder fumed to Keitel in the hallway.
“If you haven’t figured that out,” Keitel replied, “I feel sorry for you.”
The Munich Agreement rendered the disagreement moot, but four months later, when Hitler announced his intention to invade Poland, Halder and his staff again resisted, responding to Hitler’s suggestion with an “iron phalanx” of skepticism. Once the fighting began in Poland, Hitler almost never intervened. “I recall only two such cases,” Keitel later noted. “Once when Hitler ordered reinforcements for the north flank which was attacking from East Prussia, and a second time when he intervened into the operations of Blaskowitz’s army because he had serious concerns. Otherwise, Hitler restricted himself to exchanging opinions and meetings with the chief of staff, as well as suggestions, without ever interfering with actual orders.”
When Hitler did attempt to intervene, his generals resisted. Immediately after the fall of Poland, Hitler ordered Halder to turn west and invade France. Halder said no. The German soldiers were exhausted, he told Hitler, and their equipment in need of repair. He also said that Hitler’s proposed invasion plan was “an unimaginative knockoff”—ein fantasieloser Abklatsch—of the Schlieffen Plan, whose deficiencies had already been demonstrated during the First World War.
Hitler’s general staff responded with their own revised plan. The final version did, in fact, use Schlieffen’s flanking route through the Low Countries, but with two significant enhancements: an invasion of the Netherlands to block any British landings and a drive to the French coast instead of toward Paris. By late autumn, the only unresolved question was the date of execution, which was left to Hitler. He postponed the invasion fifty-eight times throughout the winter and spring, checking the weather charts—and some say the astrological charts—daily, waiting for the perfect moment.
The period became known as the Sitzkrieg—the sitting war. The general staff was dismayed by Hitler’s indecision until the morning of Friday, May 10, when the German war machine was again set in motion. “My operation is running like a well-cut film,” Halder wrote to his wife that Monday. “By the undeserved grace of God.”
Initially, Hitler was content with monitoring the progress of battle, posing for Heinrich Hoffmann’s publicity stills, and engaging in his habitual late-night reading. But as he watched the dramatic German advances on the maps, he grew nervous. He worried that the panzer divisions were overstretching themselves. Halder, who was commuting daily to the front, assured Hitler that all was well. The Germans were making solid advances, and it would take the French a full week to mobilize a counterattack. Halder invoked General von Moltke, who during the decisive battle of Königgrätz, had calmly sat smoking a cigar as the fighting unfolded. A good battle plan did not need amendment.
But a week into the campaign, Hitler panicked. Fearing a counterattack from the south, he ordered the Twelfth Panzer Division, which was in a headlong drive for the coastal town of Dunkirk, to stop dead in its tracks. His intervention paralyzed the German High Command. That evening, shortly after eight o’clock, Halder received a call with explicit orders from Hitler to keep the Sixth Army in reserve. “[Gen. Walther von] Reichenau has the order to join the corps with the 4th Army via Mons,” Halder noted in his diary on the evening of May 17. “This is only possible by attacking. Now, he does not know what to do.” By the next morning, confusion had turned to chaos.
With the German flag flying over the city hall in Antwerp, the British systematically withdrawing from Belgium to establish a defensive line farther south, and the French still not able to mobilize their reserves effectively, Halder knew his assessment of the situation had been correct and that the Germans needed to press forward with all due speed. Every hour was “precious.” That morning, in a ten o’clock briefing, Halder cl
ashed with Hitler, who had developed an irrational concern for the southern flank. “He rages and yells that we are on the way to ruining the entire operation and are setting ourselves up for defeat,” Halder noted that morning. “He does not want the continuation of any operation to the west, let alone to the southwest.”
While Goebbels’s propaganda machine could trumpet Hitler’s military prowess to the German people and to the world, within the tight circles of the general staff, Hitler remained an intruder, an outsider, and, worst of all, a dangerous dilettante. The experience of the frontline corporal that had served him so well in his political career was a liability on the battlefield. “He lacked the thorough training of a military leader that allows one to take a high risk in an operation because he knows he is capable of mastering it,” one general later observed. Halder agreed. “The self-assuredness of the field marshal who can leave his subordinates the freedom of action in the context of a well-planned undertaking—a secret of the Moltke leadership style—was absent in Hitler.” Invoking a vocabulary that echoes across Hitler’s career and embeds itself in much of his reading, Halder spoke of an “inexperienced novice,” of a “will driven by dark intuition,” and, most notably, of an unmistakable “inner insecurity.”
Two decades earlier, when confronted with the dismissiveness of those better educated, better trained, and demonstrably more competent than he, Hitler had to turn and run. But now he held his ground. He had read his Clausewitz’s classic, On War, which had been among the books in his first apartment on Thiersch Street. During his 1924 trial, Hitler invoked Clausewitz in the closing remarks of his defense. “It is better if a people perish in an honorable struggle, for only after such a collapse can there be a resurrection,” he blustered, citing the Prussian general verbatim. “But woe to the people who willingly subject themselves to the shame of a dishonor and slavery! Such a people are lost.”