Shownotes Transcript
It's September the 12th, 1943, just after 3pm. Two hours north of Rome lies a hotel, the Campo Imperatore. It sits atop the Gran Sasso mountain range, a mile above sea level, accessed only by a funicular railway. Before the war, it was a ski resort for the Italian capital's well-heeled. Today, out of season and out of use, it's rather forlorn, tattered, empty, save for a solitary resident.
quite a famous one. His name is Benito Mussolini. Turfed out of power by a new constitutional government, the once strident dictator has had a spectacular fall from grace. Up here, in this remote spot, he's being held by armed police, until Italy's new rulers decide what to do with him. Till then, his presence remains a closely guarded secret.
Mussolini fears that he will be handed over to the Americans, to be exhibited like King Kong in a cage at Madison Square Garden. And so on this bright afternoon he sits at his window contemplating his fate. It happens so fast he barely has time to clock it. Out of the blue a large aircraft swoops down, its wingtip skimming past mere feet away. It's silent, a glider, just a rush and the clank of cables as the pilot brings it in.
Up high you can hear it now, the engines of the plane that towed it here. Mussolini cranes his neck. There are more gliders, circling like vultures, taking turns to descend. He watches as the first one zooms in low to bounce across the grassy slope, coming to an abrupt but safe stop. On its wings are black crosses, on its tail a swastika, and out of its hold are pouring German paratroopers.
They clamber up the scree towards the hotel, machine guns at the ready. Their lead man is waving at him, telling him to get back. Il Duce breathes a sigh. He knew he wouldn't abandon him. Not after all they'd been through together. His dear friend, his brother, Adolf Hitler, has come to his rescue. From Neuser, this is the story of Hitler's downfall. And this is Real Dictators.
After the monumental defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943, Hitler has been left licking his wounds. There will be no Lebensraum, no living space for his people. What's more, the Red Army is continuing to push back hard against the Wehrmacht. The official narrative spewing from Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda is one of heroic sacrifice. A Wagnerian opera. Hitler and his Volk versus the world. Professor Thomas Weber.
So he's really starting to talk in this kind of religious, apocalyptic ways. We Germans were insufficiently heroic in the past. We were too peaceful and we all have to find redemption from the sins of the past. And we can do so in committing ourselves to an eternal fight for Germany's future. Braver elements of the public and indeed the army are now prepared to resist the Nazi regime, even to entertain the unthinkable.
the killing of their Fuhrer. Though for the moment, they remain in the shadows. Professor Helen Roche: Stalingrad marks this really big turning point where suddenly people begin to realize that all of these speeches about emulating the 300 or Nordic heroes are preparing people for the idea that they're making this sacrifice that has been brought about by bad military planning.
And it's almost a gauge of how invested in the regime people are, whether at this point they continue to believe in the final victory or whether they begin to pull back and say, hmm, things aren't going so well. This is bad. There's no doubt that America's entry into the war has tipped the scales. After victory in the Battle of the Atlantic, the high seas now belong to the Allies.
By air, the US 8th Air Force and RAF Bomber Command pound the fatherland, day and night. The United States, the arsenal of democracy, is also pouring money and material into the Soviet Union. Hitler may have boasted of a Reich to last a thousand years. At this rate, they'll be lucky if it lasts another thousand days. And now an Anglo-American invasion force, fresh from its triumph in North Africa, has landed in Sicily.
The response of the Italian army is half-hearted. Word is feeding back to Hitler that the defenders are coming out with their hands up. Dr. John Curatola. And by that time, a lot of these Italian forces ain't interested. When the Americans go ashore, there's some coastal batteries there. They fire one round to preserve their honor. And then, okay, now they surrender. And so you don't see the Italians by this stage of the war really interested in continuing this thing.
Ground down by years of fascist rule, there seems little appetite for a fight. Allied planes drop leaflets: die for Mussolini and Hitler or live for Italy and for civilization. The choice is pretty clear. Behind the scenes, local mafia groups, many with family ties to the United States, are encouraging and secretly facilitating the Allied advance. Some among the Allies have viewed Italy as an unnecessary diversion.
The real business will be hitting Hitler through France. Churchill had wanted to land in Greece and push up through the Balkans to strike the Axis soft underbelly. He already has an eye on how they might limit Stalin's land grab in Eastern and Central Europe. For his part, Stalin would rather the British and the Americans cross the English Channel. But a failed raid at Dieppe in 1942 has already laid bare just how difficult this might be.
Instead, there has been a compromise: get troops ashore as soon as possible by the shortest crossing point. And so, Sicily it is. The move is as much political as strategic. Russians have been dying by the million, quite literally. Putting Western boots on the dirt of continental Europe is a show of solidarity. In terms of land warfare, the Russians really are bearing the brunt of this and of course
They're looking for some kind of relief from the Western allies. But in '42 and '43, both the Americans and the British do not have the forces and the wherewithal and the knowledge and the staff functioning and all the other sinews of war to conduct that major cross-channel operation. The British and the Americans will try this periphery strategy in North Africa and Italy. It is not necessarily what Stalin wants. He wants something more robust.
But the Soviets appreciate the move. They've mounted a big offensive to coincide with the Sicily landings. The Italian invasion may be expensive. It may not realistically provide a route for Allied troops to access Berlin, but at the very least, it will help destabilize Mussolini's regime. It will provide air bases from which to bomb southern Axis targets, including key oil fields in Romania. And it will amount to another huge drain on Hitler's resources.
Within days, Hitler is having to pull troops away from the Eastern Front. There are few in the Wehrmacht High Command, the OKW, who believe that this war can be sustained, let alone won. And the German people, despite ten years of Nazi propaganda, are not stupid. On the streets of Germany, on the buses, in the workplaces, there is a grim humour at play. Hitler has written a new book, they say. Mein Fehler, Mein Error.
There's another one, a joke, about the U-boat that gets sunk with Hitler and Goebbels on board. The entire German nation is rescued. Could Hitler still buy peace? Many Nazi high-ups hope so. The Allies have their doctrine of unconditional surrender formulated at the Casablanca Conference. But in diplomacy, in negotiations, there is always wiggle room. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.
Mussolini has already urged his buddy to come to some agreement with Stalin. The idea has gained currency in the Führer's inner sanctum. End the slaughter in the East and consolidate. Like Hermann Göring, Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Reich's foreign minister, also has contacts in neutral Sweden. He puts out feelers. The Soviet Union is in the ascendancy, holding all the cards. But...
Ribbentrop has heard that certain influential Russians are also tired of war and tired of Stalin. Maybe they could wind back the clock and settle on the old 1914 borders. Forget this ever happened, they can still keep their halves of Poland. But in Stockholm, the line coming out of the Soviet embassy is one of deep cynicism.
Wasn't Ribbentrop, the former sparkling wine salesman, the one who flogged them the dodgy friendship pact with Germany in the first place? Hitler comes down on his foreign minister like a ton of bricks. To hell with Russia. This is a struggle to the bitter end. Death or glory. Perhaps rightly, Hitler believes that no one can be trusted anymore. Trust and loyalty, especially where Mussolini is concerned, have proven to be very costly.
The two dictators meet again on July 19th, in Veltra, northern Italy. Hitler upbraids Il Duce in a two-hour amphetamine-fueled rant. He tells him that they must remain strong. They will secure their Axis legacy, just you wait and see. Mussolini must rouse the Italians into a heroic defense against the Allied invader. Expel them from Sicily before it's too late. It already is. Sicily's capital, Palermo, is about to fall any day.
Hitler's tirade is so incomprehensible that the Italian dictator has to ask the Führer's interpreter for a copy of his notes. Unfortunately, Mussolini isn't exactly feeling the call of history at the moment, or so he tries to explain to Hitler in his faltering German. His biggest enemy seems to be his own people. There have been riots in Milan and Turin over food prices and government corruption. Rome has just experienced its first heavy Allied bombing raid.
And now political forces are moving against him too. Back in the Italian capital, at the urging of his lieutenants, Mussolini convenes the fascist Grand Council. They will renew the fight, restore law and order. But the proceedings do not turn out the way Il Duce had planned. A vote is called. By a shock, 19 to 8, a resolution is passed to restore the constitutional monarchy and a parliament.
The King, Victor Emmanuel III, will become the new commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Just like that, Mussolini is given the order of the boot. He's in complete denial. He turns up for work the next day as if nothing has happened. The King will have none of it. That evening Mussolini is arrested and carted off, symbolically, in an ambulance, to be deposited at the nearest police station.
He has paid the personal price for tying Italy's fortunes to those of Adolf Hitler. This big daddy of European dictators, the original strongman tyrant, is suddenly history. And no one lifts a finger to help him. In fact, on the streets, there's rejoicing. A popular chant goes up: "Benito e finito." The king appoints a veteran general, Pietro Badoglio, to form a new government. The fascist party is dissolved.
Political opponents of Mussolini's regime are released from prison. The dream of the blackshirts is over. Back in Berlin, Hitler is stunned. It's not just the loss of his great pal. It's that Il Duce took it so tamely. Not a hint of going down, guns a-blazing. What might happen if the German people or the generals turn against him? Hitler is deeply suspicious of Badoglio.
He has pledged that Italy will continue the fight against the Allies, but Hitler suspects that once they reach the mainland, the new Prime Minister will throw in the towel. There is nothing, in the short term, that Goebbels can't fix. To the German people, the line goes out that Mussolini has retired due to ill health. Nothing to see here. Hitler dispatches German troops to secure the Alpine passes. Less Italian troops blow them up and seal off the country altogether.
Italy will be kept open for military business, he declares. They will overthrow this new Roman government, this gang of impostors. He tells General Yodel, we'll get that bunch of swine out of there.
For a surprising amount of time, Hitler will still think that somehow there can be a reversal. He somehow thinks that ultimately the Allied soldiers will run out of steam and will no longer have a will to fight. This is why almost until the end, you can understand where Hitler's fantasies of a last minute reversal of the war is coming from. The Soviet Union's capacity to withstand punishment remains staggering.
the people of the USSR seemed to have a superhuman ability to just take it. Up north, Leningrad, Russia's second city, has been under siege for two whole years. By the time of its liberation in January 1944, the Soviet death toll here will exceed that of the combined Western armed forces for the entire war. I still cannot wrap my head around the scale and scope of the Eastern Front.
How big, how massive the casualties, the manpower, the material, it staggers the imagination. Just to give you a figure to kind of compare, the Americans and the British for the war in total lose about a half a million men, ballpark figure, 400,000, 500,000 people. The Russians will lose 25 million.
And that's only an estimate because Stalin was doing his Stalin thing in the 30s. So we don't know what the starting number was. Some estimates are as high as 45 million. So again, when you look at the scale and the scope of what happens on the Eastern Front, it is massive. Another statistic for you, roughly, for every 10 dead Germans, seven were killed by a Russian bullet. It all feeds into the Kremlin's paranoia.
This big three alliance, the United States, Britain and themselves, is a marriage of convenience. Everyone knows it. The West doesn't want a Soviet-dominated Europe any more than it wants a Nazi-run one. So is this all just a ploy? All part of the long game? Are the Western allies simply letting the Russians burn themselves out? In which case, is responding to German peace overtures really such a mad idea? But they have the momentum now.
Why quit when they're on top? And the Germans have committed too much atrocity to be let off the hook. Ironically, the advancing Germans had been greeted as liberators in some parts, in the Baltics, in areas of Ukraine. The Wehrmacht could have used the local people to their advantage. But Hitler never treated them as anything other than Untermensch, subhumans. And now it's payback time.
And you see this upswell of patriotism, not fighting for communism, but fighting for Mother Russia. Stalin is smart enough to understand, look, they're not going to fight for the greater glory of the Soviet Union. They're going to fight for Mother Russia. And so you see this changing mental and emotional messages that are coming out from the Soviet Union at this time. The Soviet forces, meanwhile, grow stronger by the day.
Via the road route across Persia, via the Arctic convoys, Russia is being supplied and armed to the teeth. Dr. Chris Dillon
the prospects for Germany winning the war are receding quickly. The industrial capacity of Germany cannot match that of the US plus the other allies. And so Germany can't turn out enough planes, and it can't turn out enough capital battleships to win a world war. It can turn out things that are easier like tanks, but it can't cope with a large air war.
Generals would sometimes convince themselves that by sheer élan and fighting spirit they could offset these basic material realities. But I imagine that once they sobered up after their cognac, the situation generally was much clearer. The Red Army, with over six million personnel deployed on the Eastern Front, is now more than twice the size of the Wehrmacht. A big showdown is about to come.
A combined two million men, six thousand tanks and four thousand aircraft are about to clash in one of the biggest battles in history, the Battle of Kursk. Kursk lies in western Russia, in the open land outside the city, across the undulating wheat fields and gentle streams. The Germans have been watching. They've observed a growing bulge in the Soviet lines, a salient. Hitler believes it can be cut off and encircled.
And so in April, he initiates Operation Citadel. As Hitler sees it, once this Soviet weakness has been exploited, 900,000 men and 17 panzer divisions will punch through the enemy lines and wheel back up to Moscow. Hitler declares the Reich's imminent and inevitable victory to be a beacon for the whole world. But it's a desperate swing from a punch-drunk boxer. He has telegraphed his move literally.
British intelligence had been passing decoded Wehrmacht messages to their Soviet allies. Sir Anthony Beaver
Now, the battle, of course, was something which Hitler had been planning with Field Marshal von Manstein from quite early on in 1943. The trouble was that they kept delaying the operation. And, I mean, to give an idea of Hitler's obstinacy, Hitler was determined that, for example, the new panzer tank, the Mark V Panzer, must be involved in the operation. Well, through a lucky chance, part of our strategic air offensive
actually hit the factory where the Panzertank was being manufactured. But instead of changing the plan and saying, "Well, we'll just have to get on with it," Hitler then again postponed the operation back until May. Well, by then, the Russians had managed to really increase their defensive positions. I mean, every single bump or dip in the ground had been turned into a fortified position.
with anti-tank guns, with barbed wire, with trenches and all the rest of it. And they knew exactly what was happening.
This is a problem you're going to see for the remainder of the war. One of the things that makes the Wehrmacht so successful, say 1939 all the way up until the end of 1941 and getting into 1942, is the fact that you have a lot of innovation. You have a lot of commanders who have the authority to act independently and think independently. But as things start to go pear-shaped for the Germans, this ability to have flexibility starts to evaporate.
The Russians on the Eastern Front, they go the opposite direction. They start to allow more of the talent, Zhukov and generals of his ilk, to operate independently without having, say, Stalin stick his finger in the pie. It's not until July the 5th that the great offensive begins. Marshal Zhukov knows exactly what to do. Sit tight and soak up the pressure. As one might put it, park the bus. Thanks to this advanced intel,
The Soviet air force has already managed to destroy 500 Luftwaffe aircraft on the ground, depriving the German army of vital air support. Hitler is already having to pull troops out of the front line to reinforce the new Italian front. To replace them, he calls up members of the Hitler Youth and men in their 50s. The ongoing battle is muddy, chaotic and scale. It was a slogging battle of the worst imaginable kind.
And by holding in there, the Russians or the Red Army was able to inflict very heavy casualties on the German army. During the Battle of Kursk, we see the whole of the balance of power in the air on the Eastern Front changing.
For once now, suddenly the Germans are having to pull back their anti-aircraft guns to Germany again to defend the cities, leaving the Eastern Front, Fuchwar exposed. And this actually has a critical effect, in fact, on war as a whole and not just the war on the Eastern Front. By July 15th, with half of his tanks wiped out, Hitler calls a halt. Operation Citadel is over.
The Battle of Kursk is lost. It has been hugely costly for the Red Army too. Now, are they losing a lot? Yes, they are. However, they can sustain those losses. The Germans, on the other hand, are not in a position to sustain these large-scale losses. And while Blitzkrieg is based upon quick lightning strikes, it's not designed for an attritional fight, which is what they get.
In the history books, this momentous clash tends to play second fiddle to Stalingrad, especially when Soviet achievements become downplayed in the West during the Cold War. It doesn't help either that the Battle of Kursk goes by varying operational names and consists of multiple different encounters, but it is one of the significant engagements of the European conflict.
with a million men now chasing after the retreating Germans. The Red Army is an unstoppable force. From August to November 1943, the cities have been taken: Orel, Belgorod, Kharkov, Smolensk, Kiev. And Stalin's commanders have reached a major geographical and strategic objective: the Dnieper River. The wide waterway flows north-south from Russia down through Ukraine, all the way to the Black Sea.
Behind it, Stalin can build up his forces at his own leisure. Once across the Dnieper, the Wehrmacht will be backpedaling all the way to the Brandenburg Gate. In the spring, German soldiers were boasting of sending home Astrakhan furs to their wives and girlfriends. By autumn, they're scavenging for rags to wrap their frostbitten feet. The Nazi rhetoric still spouted by their officers rings hollow. Many can't look their own men in the eye.
The problem is what is the Soviet Union's center of gravity? What will cause the Soviet Union to capitulate? And that's something that the Germans can't figure out. They can take city after city. They're very good at taking a city or winning an engagement, but the problem is how do you string engagements or battles to meet a strategic objective?
If your strategic gain is to remove Jewish Bolshevism, I'll use that term, and specifically in the Soviet Union, well, how do you do that? And so while you can take these individual cities, it is not moving your strategic objective, that marker, down the field. You're basically just wasting assets and wasting men. In Sicily, US and Commonwealth forces prepared to cross the Straits of Messina to the mainland.
They land successfully on September 3rd, virtually unopposed. But the fighting will become more intense. The Germans are ready and waiting for the coastal assault on Salerno. Hitler summons a war council of the OKW. He tells them that they need to toughen up, to demonstrate a willingness for cruelty in the treatment of their men, just like the Soviets have done. There should be trials and court-martials and executions to stiffen the resolve. It doesn't work.
In three weeks, the Allies will have taken Naples. And, just as Hitler had predicted, on September 8th, Prime Minister Badoglio reveals that he has sought an armistice. Italy is out of the war. Two days later, from the Wolf's Lair, Hitler makes a radio broadcast. At just 16 minutes long, the speech seems rushed, high-pitched.
My right to believe unconditionally in success is founded not only on my own life, but also on the destiny of our people. Germany is invincible. In reality, events are now running away with themselves. Hitler has two courses of action up his sleeve. The first, Operation Axis, is to initiate the full German military occupation of Italy. The man for the job is Field Marshal Kesselring, the masterful Luftwaffe commander, one of his most capable.
He will be charged with seizing Rome and shoring up the defenses. Kesselring duly takes the Italian capital, crushing resistance and taking 650,000 soldiers as prisoners of war. Most are sent off as forced labor. A second move, Operation Oak, is designed to restore some fascist honor. At Hitler's personal initiative, it will be an audacious mission to rescue Mussolini. Professor Nicholas O'Shaughnessy
Unlike Stalin, who was incapable of personal loyalties, Hitler was capable of very strong personal loyalties, and particularly in the case of Mussolini. And so he was determined to save him, and save him he did, by one of the most remarkable surgical interventions of World War II. Lieutenant Colonel Otto Skorzeny is a Nazi officer straight out of a Hollywood B-movie. He's 35 years of age, 6'4", multilingual,
The Austrian SS man is best known for the deep fencing scar that runs down his left cheek. He got it in a duel. A former bodyguard to Hitler, Skouzini has distinguished himself in combat on the Eastern Front. He's earned a reputation as Europe's most dangerous man. After the war, Skouzini will escape captivity and pop up in Spain, Argentina, Egypt. He will end up in what seems an extremely unlikely move at this moment in time.
working for the Israeli Secret Service, Mossad. But that's another story. Mussolini is being held in the Gran Sasso Mountains in northern Italy, at the Hotel Campo Imperatore. And what better way to liberate him than by the hand of the Reich's most famous warrior? On September 12th, Scosini and 107 mission commandos are transported in a squadron of gliders, towed by light aircraft.
They're released on high, riding on a thermal to circle around the hotel before coming in low. They crash land just a few hundred yards away. Mussolini watches on in expectation as Scorsini's men scramble up the slope. They've even brought a film crew with them to record the daring raid for posterity. When the lead squad rushes in, submachine guns raised, the sight of them is so awe-inspiring that the armed police guarding Mussolini head for the hills.
At least according to the legend. In Nilduce's room, Scosini informs the ousted Italian leader that Hitler personally has sent them to release him. The teary prisoner embraces his rescuer. "I knew my Fuhrer would not let me down. Mussolini does not look well. The normally well-fed tyrant is gaunt and unshaven. His traditional smooth skull is patchy and stubbly, and he's dressed in an ill-fitting, baggy civilian suit.
A few minutes later, a small single-engined aircraft bumps along the grass. Mussolini is swept out and bundled into it. The pilot insists that there's only room for the one passenger, but Scorsese is adamant that he will come along for the ride. The plane turns into the wind, ready for takeoff. The pilot revs the engine. The run-up is ridiculously short, mere yards.
The overladen aircraft rattles along, strained to the max, then plunges off the edge of the mountain into a ravine. The pilot heaves back on the stick with all his might, struggling to keep the plane's nose pointing skyward. Somehow he does it. It climbs away. Mussolini has been sprung. At the Wolf's Lair, Hitler has been pacing around, waiting for news.
Word comes through that they've set down at a German-occupied airport near Rome. The Fuhrer telephoned Squizzini: "You have performed a military feat which will become part of history. You have given me back my friend Mussolini." The mission, it turns out, has been somewhat overstated. There was no real raid, no jailbreak. The Italian defenders had even posed for photographs with Squizzini's men. But Goebbels has got a sensational action film to screen to the German public.
A mission impossible, and the Reich as an instant hero. Many were involved in that operation, but the PR machine let Skorzeny take the credit. He was quite old. He'd been rejected for the German Air Force because he was too tall. Too tall, my dear. And too old. So he was, in a way, you could say past his prime. He was getting on. But he nevertheless looked the part.
And if you see that Third Reich as a movie, designed by a set designer and self-produced, which it was, then Scorsese fitted the bill. Mussolini is spirited away to Vienna, where he spends the night at the Hotel Imperial. Scorsese, thoughtfully, has brought Il Duce some pyjamas, but the tearful captive is now recovering his form back to the old braggadocio.
"He never wears anything at night," he tells Scosini, clapping him on the back. "And I would advise you do the same, especially if you're with a woman." After a stopover in Munich, where he's reunited with his family, Mussolini is soon airborne again, winging his way to East Prussia for the big, bromantic reunion. September 14th, 1943. Morning. At the Wolf's Lair. A plane appears. It purrs past the windsock to land at the command post airfield.
An expectant Fuhrer in his leather trench coat waits excitedly, and soon there he is, Mussolini, coming down the steps. In the morning sunshine the two dictators clutch hands, gazing into each other's eyes. If they can't lay waste to Europe and murder millions of people, then who can? Once settled in the bunker, Hitler gets down to business.
He urges Mussolini to take vengeance on Prime Minister Badoglio as soon and as painfully as possible. But Mussolini hasn't got the stomach for it anymore. Hitler asks, "What is this sort of fascism that melts with the snow before the sun? Their new order is not dead, not by a long shot. Take heart!" Hitler sweetens the deal. He will set Mussolini up with his own republic in northern Italy. Fascism will live on. There'll be a small service charge.
Il Duce must hand over some territory. Mussolini shrugs. Whatever. And so, on September 15th, at Hitler's behest, Mussolini proclaims the new Italian Social Republic. Everything from Rome, northwards. Badoglio's legitimate government, meanwhile, goes into exile in the southern city of Brindisi. On October 13th, it will formally switch sides to join the Allies.
The special forces of the SS managed to liberate Mussolini. But that is, of course, a special operation. This is not the war at large. And in a way, it's also a smokescreen that things are still not going at all. And what soon becomes clear is that Mussolini is in no position at all to really take over the helm of Italy again.
As head of the new puppet state, Mussolini, along with his mistress, Clara Petacci, is set up in a villa on the north shore of Lake Garda, under the close watch of the SS. He will flex his dictatorial muscles again with a demonstration, to Hitler as much as to anyone, that Il Duce is back in business. After a show trial in Verona, four members of the fascist Grand Council who voted against Mussolini are sentenced to death.
including his son-in-law, Count Ciano, the old foreign minister. In January 1944 they will be killed by firing squad, given a dishonorable end by being tied to chairs, facing away from their executioners, and shot in the back. The only thing Mussolini seems concerned about, once again, is that Hitler settles his scores with Stalin. It's not just in Sweden where back channels have been opened.
The Japanese, too, have been having conversations on the Axis' behalf. There is no doubt in Tokyo as to who is going to emerge victorious on the Eastern Front, as Soviet victory could have ramifications regarding the war in Asia. At the Wolf's Lair, Goebbels tries to soften up Hitler again to the idea of a negotiated peace. End it now, before the Red Army ravages Berlin. On September 23rd, Goebbels takes Hitler for a walk in the woods to lay out his case.
but it leads to the usual histrionics besides vengeance hitler even if they were to negotiate a big if wouldn't churchill be the better bet the british and the germans as he always said are kindred spirits they could march together against the bolsheviks couldn't they goebbels disagrees churchill is a romantic adventurer stalin is the pragmatist the realist that is where any deal might be done
When they dine alone later, Hitler seems to have been swung. Maybe Goebbels is right. There were one or two occasions when he would say something like that, I think that the war is lost, but only to one or two people, just very, very close colleagues or close collaborators. And then he would change his mind again, saying, you know, we will reorganize this, we'll reorganize that or whatever. He could never keep, should we say, a consistent thought in his head about the course of the war.
But the chances of Stalin calling a truce, remote as they already were, are diminishing by the day, especially as he is about to sweep across the Dnieper River. And worse, there are rumours he is about to meet up with Roosevelt and Churchill. Indeed, in just a few weeks, in November, a further Allied conference will take place in Tehran. It will be the first time the big three leaders have convened in person. And their agenda?
This is no longer about the prosecution of the war, but the post-war settlement, a plan for the post-Nazi era. Hitler has already been consigned to the dustbin of history. They will discuss something else too, a new military mission, something called Operation Overlord. The long-awaited invasion across the English Channel has finally been given the go-ahead. Set for the following spring,
On November 8th, for the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler is back in Munich, making his customary speech about ultimate victory. Maybe he knows something the Allies don't, for advancing up the Italian peninsula is turning out to be a long, hard slog. Less soft underbelly, more tough old gut, as US General Mark Clark calls it. Due to the mountainous interior, fighting is restricted to the coasts.
It's a case of edging northwards and trying to leapfrog ahead of the enemy with a series of shore landings. Hitler's loyal Field Marshal Kesselring has dug in south of Rome. His Gustav Line, which hinges on the hilltop monastery of Monte Cassino, seems to be holding out. After the beach landings at Anzio, the Germans even capture two American Ranger battalions and parade them through Rome. The fighting is brutal.
Monte Cassino is levelled by Allied bombing, a monument to the war's intensity. Eventually even Kesselring is forced to withdraw. He declares Rome an open city. US General Clark's Fifth Army enters it on June 4th, 1944. The first Axis capital has fallen. Midday, June 6th, 1944. We're at the Berghof. Unable to digest the news from Italy, Hitler takes to his bed.
He's back to his old routine, medicated by his personal physician, Dr. Morel, working late or droning on through the night about the good old days, and then sleeping into the afternoon. You would be a fool to wake the Führer, no matter the circumstances. No matter that on this very morning, the Berghof switchboard is lit up like a Christmas tree, the airwaves buzzing with a shock new development.
there is massive Allied activity on the coast of Normandy, France. There were paratroop landings during the night, the reports are stating. Local resistance has been active in behind-the-line sabotage. And since first light, backed by an almighty air and naval bombardment, a huge amphibious assault has been taking place. Wave after wave of landing craft have been grinding onto the sand.
British, American and Canadian units are advancing off the beaches. But that was, what, six, seven hours ago now? Field commanders in northern France are in a state of confusion, awaiting instructions, powerless to act until given Hitler's personal consent. At the Berghof, they eye the clock. Somebody really ought to wake the Führer. In the next episode, a delusion of Hitler downplays the Normandy landings.
A group of generals meanwhile attempts an audacious military coup. With allied bombers pounding Germany, the Fuhrer plays his next card: scientific wonder weapons that will turn the war back his way. That's next time.