On May 20, 1940, German troops reached the Channel and thus split the Anglo-French
forces in two. In Felsennest Adolf Hitler - probably the same evening - saw and approved a
new version of Der ewige Jude on the transportable film monitor which Goebbels had sent
him.
The day after he mentioned to general Halder the possibility of an attack on Russia, and
he dispatched Philipp Bouhler to Occupied Poland to get an updated appraisal of the
conditions in Poland in general - and of the Jewish Question in particular. Bouhler
returned and reported to the Fuehrer in the end of May, just in time to witness the
capitulation of Belgium on May, 28, 1940.
The Fuehrer spent the following days in visiting various headquarters near the front - and
in going to see his own battlefields of World War I. The last visit was the most
important.
On June 1, 1940, he paid two visits, which had a marked symbolic character. In the
afternoon he, as the victorious conqueror, received the homage of his soldiers at the huge
cemetery of Langemarck, where the fallen from the battle of November 10, 1914, were
buried.
The pictures taken on this occasion were to show to the German public that now the Fuehrer
had taken care that their sacrifice to the Fatherland had not been in vain. On one of
Hoffmann's photos he almost disappears in a massive circle of heil'ing soldiers.
After that he and his suite of high-ranking officers went on to La Montagne, just south of
Wervicq, the place where he for the first time lost his eyesight during a British gas
attack on the night between October 13 and 14, 1918. The visit took place around 6 P.M.,
and it was not filmed. The visit was probably of too private a character for that, but
Heinrich Hoffmann took eight photos; on one of them Hitler has stepped a few steps away
from his suite, and he stands alone, deeply absorbed in his own thoughts.
Does this photo indeed show the very moment when Adolf Hitler made the decision - to let
actions follow words - to carry into effect the proclaimed "extermination of the
Jewish race in Europe"?
We know that Adolf Hitler had great difficulties in making up his mind. He could for days
and months weigh for and against - and he often left it to Time or to others to make the
decision for him.
But we also know that he alone made the vital decisions in foreign affairs as in all
matters relating to war and anti-semitism. And we know that when the decisions had been
made, there was no doubts left in his mind that he had made the right decision.
There can be no doubt that in a man like Adolf Hitler, with symptoms of PTSD, the visit at
La Montagne must have aroused very strong emotions. The very same day he had received the
euphoric homage of his soldiers at Langemarck, and now he could literally - with his own
eyes -see, that he had accomplished what he had decided to do in Pasewalk on November 10,
1918. He had turned the Wheel of History back, and he could now no longer doubt tnat he
had been elected by Providence to complete everything that he had described in Mein Kampf.
He had also shortly before - with his own eyes - in viewing and approving the latest
version of Der ewige Jude been able to convince himself that it was necessary to take
action and remove the Root of All Evil.
Hitler's activities in the following days seems to confirm the hypothesis that this was
the time and place where he decided to order the genocide of the Jews in Europe. In this
connexion it is important to remember that Hitler considered the showdown with the
bolsheviks only as a part of his war on European Jewry - and already on June 2 the Fuehrer
had expressed to general von Rundstedt his hope that Britain would soon be ready for a
"reasonble peace settlement", so that he at last could get a free hand for his
"great and proper task: the showdown with bolshevism".
The day after, on June 3, 1940, similar developments occurred in the internal policy
towards the Jews of the Third Reich, in shape of a clarification of the judicial framework
of the forced labour of the Jews, which for a long time had been a controversial issue
between the various authorities implicated.
On June 4, 1940, the lapidary entry in the diary of the Supreme Command read:
"Dunkerque taken, the coast reached, the French gone".
The next day the Fuehrer issued an important decree, which for a time should be kept
secret. It may, however, be the conclusive written evidence that the Fuehrer had made a
decision, because this decree would in principle suspend all laws and statutory
instruments that could not be considered necessary for the conduct of war.
Considering the speed with which the German forces advanced in France, the time of its
issue cannot be explained in a satisfyingly logical way, if not as a signal of the next
and decisive phase in Hitler's war against the Jews. Such an assumption is confirmed by
the fact that the decree was renewed on December 20, 1940 - two days after the definitive
order for Operation Barbarossa - and at last it was made unlimited in duration on May 15,
1941, the original date for the attack on the Soviet Union.
The Fuehrer had secured a trump-card in his battle with the juridical system, which he
hated because it restrained his visions; but seemingly nobody grasped this. Attention was
focused on the final assault on Paris which had been opened in the morning hours of June
5.
This day Adolf Hitler spent in Felsennest, in a succession of tète-à-tète meetings,
among others with Goebbels and Ribbentrop. The Fuehrer had an almost overwhelming
religious effect on Joseph Goebbels, when he talked about his visits to his old
battlefields of World War I: "The Fuehrer stands towering above us. He is a
historical genius. What great times! What happiness to be permitted to work on in such
times".
From the diaries of Goebbels it is evident that it was more important for Adolf Hitler to
talk about these experiences than to come to a decision as to the rest of all the
"thousand questions" which they also talked about - among others the question of
the construction of a new Europe, the Jewish question and the relations to the churches:
"We will rapidly have finished with the Jews after the war. And the churches will
then drastically and straight away be told that in the state there will only be one
authority, from which all authority originates: The State itself".
Joseph Goebbels was fascinated by talking tète-à-tète with Hitler for so long, because
that meant that the Fuehrer "speaks to me almost as a human being". He went back
to Berlin, where he on June 8 made some corrections in the speak of Der ewige Jude, and it
was then sent to his arch-rival Alfred Rosenberg, partly to obtain his comments, partly to
commit him to the message of the film; Rosenberg's few comments came back on June 18.
The day after the meeting with his propaganda minister - June 6, 1940 - Adolf Hitler again
went into action against the Jews, when he introduced German criminal law in Occupied
Poland. This reform meant that Jews and Poles came to stand in an exceptional position
vis-à-vis the law; hereafter they would be sentenced to death if they used violence
against the German authorities or against Germans in general, or if they had knowledge of
or possessed weapons or explosives.
After that he left Felsennest to move closer to the front, and at his departure he ordered
the place to be sealed up. Nobody was allowed to touch anything, because it was to be made
into a future cult-place.
Even if the locality was both remote and nearer to the front than Felsennest, there was no
military reasons for choosing the small Belgian village of Bruly-le-Pêche for the new
headquarters, in which Hitler stayed during the rest of the campaign in France. He at once
renamed the headquarters Wolfschlucht (see p. xx) and moved in at the local inn, to which
he gave the name Wolfspalast.
A few days later he ordered Himmler to create a real National Socialist religion with
Hitler himself as the central figure, and the always systematical Himmler immediately
started to procure books about the religions of the world for the private library in his
armoured train Heinrich.
"Providence"'s confirmation of the justice of the Fuehrer's order was not late
in coming - and once again the confirmation of his self-assumed divine status was
photographed and filmed for the edification of present and future generations.
On June 21, 1940 - the day of the Nazi midsummer celebration - it was real Führerwetter
at the Compiègne Forest, to the North-east of Paris. Field Marshal Foch's old saloon car
had been fetched from its museum in Paris and placed at the same spot where the cease-fire
agreement had been signed in 1918. Here stood a block of granite with the inscription:
"Here the arrogance of the German Empire succumbed on November 11, 1918 - vanquished
by the free people which it attempted to enslave".
Now it was the arch-enemy France, which had the cease-fire conditions dictated by the
Germans. The American journalist William L. Shirer watched the proceedings, hidden behind
the trees some 50 metres from the block, when Adolf Hitler arrived with his suite at 3.15
P.M. in a large Mercedes, again after having visited old battlefields of World War I in
the morning:
"I saw his face. It was grave, solemn, yet brimming with revenge. There was also in
it, as in his springy step, a note of the triumphant conqueror, the defier of the world.
There were something else ... a sort of scornful, inner joy at being present at this great
reversal of fate - a reversal he himself had wrought.”
Together with his chiefs of army, navy and air forces and his deputy, the Fuehrer silently
walked up to the block, which was almost two metres high, and which he three days later
had demonstratively blown up. He then went into the saloon car, where he sat down in
Foch's chair.
The French delegation arrived five minutes later, and the cease-fire conditions were read
out to them. Hitler got up, stretched out his arm in the traditional Heil-greeting and
left the car, which was later, as a valuable, symbolic treasure, transported to Berlin.
When he went back to the Mercedes, a band played the national anthem Deutschland,
Deutschland, über alles and the Horst Wessel-hymn Die Fahne hoch. This was the symbolic
manifestation of the fact that the founder of the Millennium had personally wiped out the
"infamous Peace" of Versailles. Now the only thing the Fuehrer lacked would be
to turn the political doctrine into reality, which he as early as on September 16, 1919,
had formulated in a private letter: "The ultimative object must unswervingly be the
removal of the Jews".
On the way back to Wolfsschlucht Hitler probably passed by that place near Soissons where
he on August 4, 1918, had been awarded his Iron Cross. Soissons was the only theatre of
war which he had not visited during his pilgrimage to the battlefields of World War I in
May and June 1940 - and it seems improbable that he should not have visited this - to
himself - traumatic place as a part of his confirmation of himself and his rôle as
Fuehrer. At any rate, shortly after, he ordered the establishment of a new headquarters -
Wolfsschlucht 2 - at this place, although he only visited it for a single day during the
allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944; but at that time the Wolf-name had long lost its
magical power.
At 8 P.M. on June 21 he was back in Wolfsschlucht. He then called Goebbels and told
him that he expected France to accept the cease-fire conditions the next day. Goebbels
commented on the event in his diary:
"It is the Judgment of God which is here executed by us in the service of a higher
historical destiny. The Fuehrer is very human, quite touching and affectionate. He is the
greatest historical genius we have ever had. An honour to be allowed to serve him".
June 22, 1940, at 6.50 P.M., Adolf Hitler was informed that France had accepted in writing
the cease-fire conditions. Did he see anything symbolic in the date - 128 years after
Napoleon's attack on russia in 1812? At any rate, the very next morning - even before the
cease-fire agreement had become effective - Hitler flew to Paris with Albert Speer, his
photographer Heinrich Hoffmann and his private cameraman Walter Frentz. They landed at
5.30 A.M. on June 23, 1940, and they left the city three hours later. Beyond the fact that
the Fuehrer with his own eyes wanted to see that he had conquesred his enemy, his visit
was filled with mystic symbolism - as always with Adolf Hitler. He went at once to the
Opera, which he had longed to visit; he took his suite over the house, and he could point
out a rebuilding in the interior. Speer would later tell, that Hitler
"was fascinated by the building, spoke romantically of its unsurpassed beauty, and
his eyes shone ecstatically in a way which I found somewhat uncomfortable."
Afterwards they drove
"up the Champs Elysées, past Madeleine to Trocadéro, from there to the Eiffel
Tower, where Hitler again made the cars stop; past the Arc de Triomphe with the grave of
The Unknown Soldier to the Dôme des Invalides where he remained for a very long time at
Napoleon's grave".
Finally Hitler visited Panthéon and Sacré-Cœur, before he on the way to the airport
discussed the possibility of a victory parade in Paris with Speer. At last he decided
against - officially for fear of British air attacks, but he later gave Speer a completely
different reason: "I don't feel like having a victory parade right now. We are not at
the end yet."
The same night he had a conversation with his architect, during which he asked him to have
some of the buildings, which they had visited in the morning, removed to Berlin. At last,
however, he decided not to destroy Paris, but Speer should instead see to it that the
German capital would be made so great and impressive that Paris would be overshadowed. The
Fuehrer dated the order June 25, 1940, the day when when the cease-fire would take effect.
Albert Speer was terrified by what he had heard, but the fascination of being allowed to
create a new Berlin overcame his aversion to the Fuehrer's will to destroy:
"In the course of a few days some of the contradictions which characterized Hitler's
nature had beeen unveiled to me, without my understanding them in their entire severity at
that time: From a human being, conscious of his responsibility, to the cynical and
misanthropical nihilist, he united the harshest contrasts.
The effect of this experience was, however, superseded by Hitler's brilliant victory, of
the quite unexpectedly favourable prospects for an early resumption of my building
projects, and finally by his abandonment of his destructive intentions."
Albert Speer was also among the selected few who was with Hitler in Wolfsschlucht when the
cease-fire took effect on 1.35 A.M., June 25, 1940:
"A thunder must have been gathering in the distance, because now and again the flash of summer lightnings rushed through the room, just like in a bad novel. Someone who was overpowered with emotion, blew his nose. Then Hitler's voice, softly unaccented: "This responsibility..."
And some minutes later: "Turn on the lights again".
The uninteresting conversation went on, but to me it stood out as a rare event. I thought I had experienced Hitler as a human being..."
As if to gather strength to take up the responsibility which he had undertaken, Adolf
Hitler immediately the following morning went on a tour with two old companions-in-arms -
one was his publisher, Max Amann, the other an Ernst Schmidt - to visit battlefields of
World War I in Alsace.
When he came back a few days later, he had a meeting with his private General Staff. The
meeting is thought to have taken place on June 28, 1940, 26 years after the outbreak of
World War I and 21 years after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Albert Speer went
to the group in order to say good-bye, and overheard Hitler's final remarks:
"Now we have shown what we are capable of. Believe me, Keitel, a campaign against
Russia will only be an exercise compared with this."
After the meeting, the same day, the Fuehrer hurried back to Germany, to a new
headquarters in Schwarzwald, in whose name he again used a metaphor to stress that there
was a concealed decision in his words to Keitel the day before. He called it Tannenberg.
Even though the place was located in the western part of Germany, the signal was
understood by the General Staff of the Wehrmacht - which then of its own account started
the planning of a campaign towards the East. The army did not - as some officers put it
after the war - want to be taken with their trousers down, as they had been when he forced
through his strategy in the West.
The Fuehrer Myth now animated the leadership of the German army as well.