THE WARAGAINST THE Soviet Union, whichappeared

necessary to Hitler from early on,49was led by a man

of different personality to the Hitler of the previous
campaigns.Certainly, long before the Polish campaign
he had planned offensives against Britain and
France, using Czechoslovakia and Poland as possible
catalysts for these wars, but they were not so clearly
impregnated with his personality,whichdeveloped through
his unparalleled successes. His fundamental belief that the
Reichneeded the adjacent territories in the east as
space essential for its existence, as a result of which
a war to conquer it all was unavoidable, was
encouraged by the ‘wars with flowers’ and the
‘lightning campaigns’. The Polish campaign lasted four
weeks, the French campaign six weeks. Norway and
Denmark were overrun withintwo months, Holland in
five days, Belgium seventeen days. The campaign against
Yugoslavia lasted eleven days; that against Greece
three weeks, although here he was forced to shore
up Mussolini. This was the basis for what was to
happen in the east from 22 June 1941 onwards.
Without the many, and for the most part
unexpected previous successes, Hitler would have been
a very different man in the summer of 1941, and
the war against Russia would have had another
ending. Hitler himself acted as though things were
just as they had been before, but if one observed him
and events closely one saw that it was not the
case. The war againstthe Soviets, whichhe had declared
to be an ideological war of annihilation from the
outset, he pursued with fanatical ruthlessness,
something that had not been seen in him from 1934 to
1941.Thus the campaign in Russia differed fundamentally
from all the other wars and campaigns that he instigated.
Whenever he spoke aboutoperational plans and measures
anywhere, even without hearing his voice one could make
a reasonable guess as to what theatre of war he
 was talking about. Despite all the versions abouthim
to the contrary, Hitler was for me an often indulgent,
reasonable and adaptable Führer, and thus it came as
a brutalshock to see how he rejected Alfred
Rosenberg’s proposals for the treatment of the
people of the Ukraine. Rosenberg, who had eithernot
understood Hitler’s intentions and objectives, or wanted
to deflect them elsewhere, had madea great effort to
win Hitler over for his personal policies in the
Ukraine. In vain. The Führer preferred the ‘policies’
of Erich Koch,who wanted to rule with the whip -
and did so. Usually cinema newsreels had their effect on
Hitler, and he would often make a decision
subsequent to seeing one. I was present when
he saw the film of our
troops marching into the Ukraine. They were received as
liberators with flowers, bread and salt. Hitler’s face was
impassive. His features were relaxed. Just for a second
they might register a small surprise. Suddenly as I
was observing him his face hardened. I looked at
the screen and saw the reason: Ukrainian women,
children and the old were crossing themselves, crucifix
in hand.In Poland, France, Belgium and Holland he
would have frowned at such pictures, but here it
was quite different. We all knew that the primary
military resistance to Hitler, whichhad not been the
only subject of discussions in the spring of
1938,had fermented further. It was also obvious to
us that this resistance would be fuelled by every
operational failure, every battlefield defeat and every victim
in the homeland. That it would lead to an
assassination attempt with a large-scale conspiracy was
something none of us feared for it had been too
much talked of around Hitler. Too often Himmler’s
confidante Fegelein had warned of it self-importantly
and demanded ‘special security measures’. When the
 Allied invasion began in June 1944 Fegelein took me
aside and told me ‘under a pledge of secrecy’
that they were ‘on the trail’ of a conspiracy.It involved,
so he said, mainly ‘disaffectedofficers above all
from the nobility’. Himmler, his chief, was playing along
with one of these groups so as to strike at theright
moment. Fegelein said that I should be especially
watchful and not let the Führer out of my sight.
As I knew Fegelein’s bloated idea of himself I
did not take the thing seriously, especially since it was
my duty to watch over Hitler carefully anyway. During
Hitler’s visit to Zeitzler, chief of the army general
staff, the SS bodyguard, officers of the general staff
and I sat together in conversation. Some of the
Wehrmachtofficers present expressed their belief quite
openly that they doubted the war could still be won,
especially since Hitler was not running it as they
would have liked. The SS officers did not sharetheir
pessimism and advised their Wehrmachtcomrades to be
more discreet in future. I could not share their
negative outlook, for I was convinced that Hitler still
had the necessary authority to overcome interior
resistance. Letters from discharged officers reinforced me
in this opinion. I read how von Brauchitsch had
written after his dismissal that despite all difficulties
Hitler’s genius would lead the German Wehrmacht
to victory. That the Foreign Ministry was already
conducting ‘peace negotiations’ in Stockholm I discovered
only after the attempt of 20 July 1944. On our return
to FHQ Wolfsschanze we founda changed picture.
The