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