Dan Snow's History Hit - Adolf Hitler: The War Years

Episode Date: December 13, 2020

At the beginning of 1940 Germany was at the pinnacle of its power. By May 1945 Hitler was dead and Germany had suffered a disastrous defeat. Hitler had failed to achieve his aim of making Germany a super power and had left her people to cope with the endless shame of the Holocaust. In this episode, I'm joined by Professor Frank McDonough, internationally renowned expert on the Third Reich, as well as actor Paul McGann, to discuss this dramatic change of fortune. Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. I mean, I'm thrilled to say we've got Frank McDonagh back on the pod today. He's just published his second volume of his gigantic history of the Third Reich, of Adolf Hitler and his attempt to win the Second World War. Spoiler alert, it didn't go well. The title of the book is Disaster. It does what it says on the tin, folks. This is a great podcast in which Frank and actor Paul McGann, this is great. We got Paul McGann doing readings from the book, especially for this podcast, exclusively for this podcast.

Very exciting. What an absolute duo they are. Now, the good news, folks, is that tickets are selling to the History Hit Live Tour. October the 7th. This is post-vaccine. What are you going to remember? Is it 2021, folks? 2021. We you going to remember is that in 2021 folks

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your second month is one pound euro or dollar but in the meantime folks here is Frank McDonagh ably assisted by Paul McGann KOD1, and you get a month for free. Your second month is one pound a year or a dollar. But in the meantime, folks, here is Frank McDonagh, ably assisted by Paul McGann. Frank, good to have you back on the podcast. Oh, it's great to see you again, Dan. You still look incredibly young.

A man of 25. Well, that's right, buddy. Never tell them you're real old. You have man of 25 well that's right buddy never telling me a real load you have been on this podcast about a thousand times but this is probably the climax because this is the big one at this level Dan this is what it's all about this is but this is the this is the big book is what I mean because you've been working we've been talking about it working towards the end. It's a lifetime's work, really, distilled into two volumes, and it's my take on the Third Reich. I mean, I suppose it's a bit like my way. You know, if you're a singer, you eventually got to sing my way.

And I think if you're an historian of the Third Reich, you've got to write a mega history of the Third Reich. And of course, you know, every time you ever talk about the Third Reich, you've got to write a mega history of the Third Reich. And of course, you know, every time you ever talk about the Third Reich, everyone says, oh God, there's so many books about that. Well, there is so many books about it, but in truth, and this may surprise your listeners, and you will know Dan, there are actually not that many mega volume histories of the Third Reich. So my way of going back was to go back to a kind of, you know, a chronology that the reader would understand. And I took as my sort of inspiration for this, the kind of storyboarding, very influenced actually by Alfred Hitchcock, because I saw a documentary where it showed that he actually storyboarded

all those movies. And then the people would come on set, you know, whatever it was, Janet Leigh. And she'd say, oh, I like this scene here. And I'd like to say, you're not going to say anything. You're going to say what's in the script. And then he'd show them that he'd actually got an illustrator to illustrate all the shots. So every single shot. So like the shower scene, he's got shots of every single part

of the shower scene. And Hitchcock said, you know, you can't leave anything to chance. So I spent three months storyboarding the book. And what that did, and I think what it does for the reader, what it did for me was the chronology led to the research. Because once I had the chronology, oh, look at this. This is a death that happened to a Yugoslav prime minister. I'd not really heard about that. And then you go in and look at that. So you're sort of dictated by the chronology, and the chronology then produces a different story.

You end up with a different story. It's a richer story. It's a more layered story. This was the first book where I've really gone into military history. My beef with the other books, the other mega histories, is that they don't do the military history that well. They're really good on Hitler's psychology or the society in Nazi Germany. But as for the military history, it's skirted over. We don't really know which armies are fighting at D-Day.

We don't really know what's going on in Operation Bagration, drilling down to the level of detail of armies and army groups and commanders and all of this. And so I thought, well, I'm going to make the military history really sing here, alongside all the other stuff. The good example was the Stalingrad part where, remember the old school thing, where you didn't know where everything is in geography, so you got a big sheet of paper and started drawing on it. So I got a big giant piece of paper and I started to draw Stalingrad, you know, the factory districts and all the different places and the hill and all of that and then I knew then I knew the terrain so then when I saw something it fitted so if there was like an oral history of a guy in the factory district or Pavlov's house which you'll know about Dan because you've been there a lot haven't you and the big hill that was a kind of you know a strategic one like the tennis racket you know all these places that you've been there and done films

about them but I found that fascinating and I think that it bears fruit in actually reading it when you read it you're sort of you're in stalingrad and that's what i wanted to do with a lot of these battles i tried to get you into the battle you know like operation bagration probably the general reader has not really heard of that it's it's a little bit you know it's a little bit like sort of um king crimson or something we know they're great you know, other people haven't heard the LPs yet, you know. I think the Eastern Front is a bit like that, isn't it? It's fantastic stuff, but, you know, probably the general reader probably knows about D-Day, probably knows generally about Hitler dying in the bunker and all of that, but they don't know some of these different conflicts as well. So I tried to bring that, I tried to bring out the bombing of Germany as well. I think some of the

best parts are about the bombing and of course the Holocaust. And I think by having 1942 as the focus, it's called War Against the Jews. That was the chapter where I tell you about these specific extermination camps, you know, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka and, you know, and talk to some of the commandants and there's some graphic stuff there. And also, you know, there's a lot of the Jewish Holocaust, as you know, Dan runs through the book as well. Hell of a lot of the Jewish Holocaust, you know, the Hungarian Holocaust, which people don't usually see. And I tried to show as well, I think I showed it well through some of the sources that I brought out, that they did the Holocaust on the cheap. It

literally was Holocaust by stealth. You know, how can we kill all these people, but how can we do it cheaply? And that fascinated me because really, you know, it just shows that within the midst of this horrible, terrible war, that Hitler still wanted to spend more money on armaments than he did want to spend on extermination. He wanted to do the Holocaust, but to do it on the cheap, like a public expenditure exercise. You know, there were only so many SS men involved and very few of them.

And the guy who was overall in charge he produced um i show the the accountancy of it and the way that he actually sends back 70 million reichsmarks as a profit and that's after all the creaming off that all the guards had took and everybody along the line the extermination camps those three made a 70 million mark profit. That's an astonishing fact, which I want to come back to, because, Frank, I want to say we're very lucky on this podcast, because we've got Paul McGann, the famous actor, and he's a friend of yours, and he's read extracts from this book, especially for this podcast. So we're going to intercut them, and we'll talk about the extracts as we come across them in the chronology. But can I start by saying, I was very struck reading this

book, that in the previous book of yours, Triumph, when we hear about Hitler as a politician, fake news, propaganda, flying around the country, using new technology, promising things to everyone, beginning to sound a little bit familiar. Anyway, promising all sorts of things, different constituencies would listen to him. But in this book, rapidly, in the space of a few months, he becomes quite a military commander. How did you find him as a biographer? Was he more important in the military sphere or the domestic sphere as 1940 dawns and total war dawns? Undoubtedly, Dan, you can see him as a military figure. You can sort of see him as part of the military war and having a very little role in the domestic as you said he did have a handle on the domestic policy but here he disappears from the domestic policy i think 80 percent of all the laws that are enacted come through the ministries so they're enacting laws themselves and he's just rubber stamping them so very few domestic policies sometimes he interfer. Usually it's to do away with the Reichstag,

for example, or to give himself more powers or to take away powers from the judiciary, to give himself more powers. But really, he's not really taking a big role in the domestic situation. Of course, after Stalingrad, someone like Goebbels, he thinks, you know, we need a kind of domestic Fiora. And he tries to put that idea forward, that he thinks, you know, we need a kind of domestic Führer. And he tries to put that idea forward, but he's not strong enough to put it to Hitler. So it sort of falls down. They never get a handle on who's going to control the domestic situation. So really, you've got Hitler who's obsessed. He spends the majority of his time in military meetings. If you actually tabulated what he does, you'll see before 39, as you said, there's tons and tons of speeches every year. And then they go down, gradually they go down.

And by 1943, 44, he's hardly giving a public speech at all. Sometimes he gets somebody else to read out his speeches. Sometimes he gets somebody else to read out his speeches. You know, for example, after the defeat at Stalingrad, he gets Goering to read out his speech for the anniversary of coming to power. So he does retreat into the, you know, first of all, it's Rastenberg. Then he goes to another one in Vinicita. It's in the Soviet Union. Then he goes briefly in the West.

He goes to a military headquarters in the West. He does that in 1940 briefly, and he does that in the D-Day landing, but it doesn't last very long. He doesn't stay there very long. And then in the end, he ends up back in Berlin in the bunker for the end of it. So he really is a kind of a military leader, really. And I mean, I think it's hard to see the Third Reich in the war other than a dominant military campaign. And really, the consequences of the war are felt by the German people. The German people have to face the consequences. But largely, Hitler is not involved heavily in what's going on on the domestic scene. So there is that separation between the two,

the military commander on the one hand and then the domestic policy which is kind of a little bit chaotic it's just run by the different ministries well some would say that military policy was a little bit chaotic as well which you're going to tell me about i'm sure but let's come to the first extract and let's come to the first point of discussion where his interaction with the generals it's often heralded as a great success of civilian-military interaction. And that is the plan to defeat France and the Western Allies in the spring and summer of 1940. There was a strain in historiography which said that that was a good example of generals bringing ideas to Hitler who made the final call for

military and political reasons and that kind of synthesis worked pretty well. Well we see in the first incident is this Mechelen incident which is in Belgium where a plane crashes in January with the secret plans for KCL or the attack on in the west. Let's hear Paul McGann read out a clip from your book now. In February, Hitler decided that a rethink was required on the existing idea for Case Yellow, prompted by the unexpected Mechelen incident. Hitler now wanted a less predictable plan. General Erich von Manstein, the Chief of Staff of General Gerd von Rundstedt, who was to be Chief of Staff of Army Group A for the German attack in the West, was also unsatisfied with Case

Yellow, which he thought resembled the Schlieffen Plan of 1914, suggesting an initial thrust through Belgium and the Netherlands. In seven memoranda, Manstein argued that the main part of the Panzer attack in Western Europe should be led by Army Group A in a surprise thrust through the seemingly impenetrable Ardennes forests, which was regarded as impassable by tanks. They would then bridge the River Meuse and break through at Sedin, before sweeping towards the English Channel, with the panzers at the spearhead, thereby creating a corridor, trapping the Allied armies on two sides. A second assault, led by Army Group B, would attack through the Netherlands and Belgium, but this would be a diversionary assault, designed to lure the Allied armies northwards, and into the ingenious German trap. This bold plan was supported by Rundstedt. But Walter von Brauchitsch,

the Supreme Commander of the German Army High Command, OKH, felt the plan was far too risky. He feared the panzer units needed to bridge the River Meuse would end up in a traffic jam, and become a sitting target for Allied bombers. Franz Halder, the chief of general staff at OKH, had effectively sidelined Manstein in the previous months by moving him to an insignificant post in Szczecin in Poland. None of Manstein's memoranda for Case Yellow had yet reached Hitler. On 7 February 1940, Rudolf Schmunt, Hitler's chief military aide, listened to a talk by Manstein during a war game conference in Koblenz, and was deeply impressed by his ideas. Schmund decided to invite Manstein to a military conference about Case Yellow, with key army commanders at the new

Reich Chancellery, on the morning of the 17th of February. This gave Manstein the opportunity to present his plan to Hitler face to face. The Fuhrer was transfixed, as Manstein cleverly outlined how his plan would work. By the end, Hitler declared himself enthusiastic, especially about the deployment of panzer units to spearhead the assault. From this point on, Manstein's sickle-cut thrust through the Ardennes suddenly became the plan that Hitler had apparently favoured all along. That was Paul McGann, he's reading from Frank McDonald's brilliant new book,

Disaster. Frank, we just heard about, I mean, that's Hitler's apotheosis almost, isn't it? He's in Paris, he's looking at the Eiffel Tower. It's extraordinary. He's destroyed the world's two superpowers, Britain and France. But does he take away the wrong lessons from that moment? I think really there's a sense in which Hitler thinks that the British will accept his victory. He thinks, oh, you know, the British being pragmatic, they will accept his victory. So he offers them a peace deal. So he, you know, shortly after the defeat of France and

the armistice, in which France is divided in two, you know, one part is Vichy France and the other part is the occupied zone. He offers in a speech, he offers the British a peace settlement. It's strange, isn't it? Before the war, we're trying to get a peace settlement with him. And, you know, we're desperate to get a peace settlement. Chamberlain goes all the way over there to get one, and we can't get a long-lasting one. And now he's offering a peace settlement.

But the peace settlement he's offering is that we accept his defeat of France. We accept that he's dominant in Europe. We accept that he's taken over Poland and subjugated it. And he just is not on the same wavelength here. It is a case of disconnect. There's a disconnectedness from empathy and understanding of what the British people are really like and what the British government is really like. There is no possibility in the world that Britain is going to come to a deal on these terms. And yet he thinks they will. He keeps saying they're bound to come to this deal.

And he goes on thinking that throughout 1940. And of course, you know, we come to one of the most important early moments, which is the Battle of Britain. And then obviously the Luftwaffe fails to defeat the RAF in the Battle of Britain. But I want to know if he also buys the myth of his own invincibility and his own brilliance. Because, of course, in summer of 1941, only a year later, he launches the most hubristic and devastating offensive of all time, probably Operation Barbarossa into Russia. Like, why does Hitler make that decision?

It's not as clear cut. I think in the book you see that it's not as clear cut as it seems that, you know, we always think of Mein Kampf. Mein Kampf. And, you know, and in Mein Kampf, he says, you know, when we look to the future and living space, Lebensraum, we look to the east and we look to the vast tranches of territory in the Soviet Union. And in Mein Kampf, he more or less says, you know, if Germany is going to have a second war, it's got to gain territory in the east. So you could say, you know, that's always on his mind. You know, some historians would say that he's always going to lead towards that war. That's the war that he's inexorably leading to in his mind, although he doesn't let everyone in on the secret. But he does go through the motions of trying to eliminate Britain from the war. You know, there's Operation Sea Lion. He goes through the motions of that, trying to get

air superiority. Then when he realizes he can't get air superiority, he loses interest in that. He realises it's a difficult task. And I think we need to make this clear. And I think I do make this clear, you know, for all this, you know, like, you know, we talk about the pandemic now, you know, it's such a threat to humanity and all the rest of it. I think once we'd survived the Battle of Britain, we were safe. We were safe. And I even don't think they could have mounted a successful attack on Britain due to our Navy. And that's where the Navy was crucial. And we, you know, some people don't give due respect to the Navy and what the Navy did. The Navy was absolutely vital. We had total naval superiority over germany how were they going to get across they were saying they were going to get across in these barges i mean they were sitting targets we had battleships you know five battleships what 300 destroyers cruisers and we were well a match for them in the air as well you know they didn't have aircraft carriers we had

aircraft carriers even you know they didn't have a situation where they could get an aircraft carrier halfway to Calais and then start to back up their landing. It was impossible. There's not even an attempt to mount it. You know, I mean, you know, these barges that were talked about, you know, when you actually looked at them, none of them have been fitted out to get across the channel anyway. So that was pie in the sky. Then he has this idea, he's going to create an ante. And I go into that and it's probably a part of the book that people won't have realised because it deals with diplomatic meetings that went on. So I found these diplomatic meetings. You know, one is with Franco, who comes across as a rather he comes across as a rather shrewd figure who will meet up with you he'll promise you the earth and then after a few weeks

you realize that he's promised you nothing and you have to go back to him and sort of phone him say didn't you promise to be here on Wednesday and he says I don't think I did and then they have these protracted meetings which they get to be quite funny, don't they? Because in the end, you know, you get the ambassador, the German ambassador who was being told to pin him down, ask him, is he going to join the war? And he goes, well, I think I might join the war, but I need some economic.

You've got to realise, you know, unless we get grain supplies from Canada, you know, we can't go on. Our population will starve to death. Will I join in an attack on Gibraltar? Oh, I don't think so. Can Germany take over one of the Canary Islands? Oh, I'm not sure about that. So, and in the end, you know, I think it's Ribbentrop. Ribbentrop said, he's given us nothing. He's given us absolutely nothing. Hitler said, rather than talk to Franco again,

he'd rather have all his teeth pulled out one by one with pliers. Well, when you look at the fate of Germany's allies in the eventual invasion of Russia in 1941, you can see where Franco was coming from. It's terrifying, that story and the way you write it up. Let's hear from Paul McGann, reading out about the failure to take Moscow in December 1941. On the 20th of December 1941, Guderian flew to the Wolf's Lair to outline to Hitler the dire position of Army Group Centre outside Moscow, and to ask him for

permission to retreat even further. Hitler showed absolutely no sympathy for this line of argument, angrily telling Guderian that German soldiers should dig in and fight where they stood. Hitler accused Guderian of being too deeply impressed by the suffering of the soldiers. You feel too much pity for them. You should stand back more. Believe me, things appear much clearer when viewed at a distance. Hitler had no desire to hear about the suffering that he was inflicting on German troops. Guderian later recalled that although Hitler constantly spoke about his time as a soldier in the First World War, his character had little in common with the thoughts and emotions of soldiers. That was Paul McGann. Frank, the Battle of Moscow in 1941 feels like

the turning point of the Second World War in Europe, doesn't it? I think we can sort of wind it back, can't we? We can sort of see that the Battle of Britain is much more significant than other historians would reckon. It was hugely significant that we'd survived. And we survived with the idea that ultimately America would use its economic power and come on board with us. People talk about Churchill, and you know, we can talk about all the other parts of his personality. But where Churchill was strong was on vision. Churchill had a very strong vision of what would happen in the Second World War. He always thought Hitler would make the mistake of attacking the Soviet Union. And he always thought

the Americans would see what was at stake. And he did work effectively on Roosevelt. And you know, this gets forgotten. He worked very assiduously to get Roosevelt to see what the bigger picture was. For example, I've got no doubt that if Moscow had fallen and the Soviet Union had fallen, on the next day, forget about the attack on Pearl Harbor, America would have declared war on Germany. America would have seen this now is a threat to the entire world order and we are going to go down as well unless we step forward.

And you know, what Hitler misjudged in America was its huge potential, the huge war potential of America. Yes, it didn't have a big army to start with. It didn't have huge armaments, but my God, it's one of the most amazing industrial transformations ever. Within four years, America's producing 50% of all the world's armaments. I mean, that is quite incredible. And that's weighing on the scene. And they've got scientists. It's a little bit like the pandemic. The scientists are rising to our rescue. But the Americans also had a kind of fallback plan, the atom bomb. And that was something that was forward planning that, you know, if we think about the plan, the atom bomb. And that was something that was forward planning,

that, you know, if we think about the future, the atom bomb might be a game changer as well, on top of the fact that we're gearing up. I think that Moscow was key because Hitler knew in his own mind that psychologically it would have an impact on the war. It would have an impact on the morale of his enemies if he didn't take it. It would have an impact on his own army if he didn't take it. And that's why he feared the whole thing.

And that's why we see in the book, don't we, all these arguments about Hitler. And Hitler, remember, here's where we've got to say that the generals of Hitler, who, you know, after the war, you know this, Dan, they went on about, oh, if only Hitler hadn't, you know, after the war, you know this, Dan, they went on about, oh, if only Hitler hadn't meddled in what we were doing, we would have won the war. And you get a book called Lost Victories. It gives you some idea, having a title like that, of what these generals thought. And all these generals in Nuremberg were always saying, oh, we hadn't have interfered. You know, we would have won this battle we would have won that battle well here is where they did interfere they said let's go to Moscow let's not go to the south

and take the oil fields and the Caucasus let's not do that let's go to Moscow knock out Stalin knock out the regime and win the war and Hitler said I don't want to do that because if we don't take Moscow, he survives and it's a psychological blow. Everyone will call me Napoleon and I'll suffer from that for the rest of my life if I don't take Moscow. And he delayed on taking Moscow, but they wanted to take Moscow. But the truth was, Hitler was right. It was a mistake to go for Moscow in 1941. And it wasn't his mistake. It was his general's mistake. So we need to get that revised. We need to get that bit of Hitler revised after all this time. So another failure as well. We've got to say this isn't Hitler's fault either. This is in the military. German intelligence performs atrociously in this war.

You know, talk about winning the intelligence war. You know, it literally is Barcelona against Crewe on the intelligence front. It literally is, you know, and then the Barcelona of Pep Guardiola, you know, it literally is. They're keeping possession and scorn at will. We find out so many secrets of the other side. And here's a great example. Zhukov brings up all these Siberian troops dressed in winter clothing, in white or with skis and all the rest of it. Gets a million men together to defend Moscow to mount a counterattack. And the Germans don't know anything about it.

They're basically like dad's army. Oh, what? Oh, God, what's happened? And we see this time and time again. When the Russians pull off some amazing feat, Hitler doesn't know what's happened. But in many ways, he's not the head of the intelligence services. It's not his fault. It's the army's fault.

And again, that's something they try to pin on him, which is their fault. So, you know, the defeat in Moscow is not really Hitler's defeat. But as you say, Dan, looking back on it now, he was fighting a losing battle from there. Because even if he regenerated the Wehrmacht's efforts, which he did, he was never going to get on top again. Frank, I've never heard that metaphor before, Barcelona versus Crude, but that's one that's going to stay with me for the rest of my life. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed.

We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hit. There are new episodes every week. You're listening to History Hit. We've professor frank madonna on talking about the third reich more after this let's go into 942 now following the reverse outside moscow following american entry into the war the timing of the holoca Holocaust, the active genocidal phase of the Holocaust kind of could be said to begin, couldn't it, at the beginning of 1942. Are those

facts all related? Why does Hitler decide to crank that up at that point? I think really, you know, why I think 1942 is important, and it's important in the sense of the amount of people who are killed in the Holocaust, you know, systematically in 1942. You know, it's over 50% of all the deaths of Jews take place in 1942. And, of course, there's the Wannsee Conference. Some people have said, oh, the Wannsee Conference is a catch-up conference. And it is a catch-up conference because the Holocaust, as we see in the book, the Holocaust, it evolves. It's not a big bang it's not like hitler sits down at a desk writes an order and says we're having the holocaust now

and it's going to happen on this day this day and that day it doesn't it happens organically it happens with the occupation of poland and problems that grow out of the occupation of Poland, overcrowding, for example, Germanization, sending too many people into Poland. Hans Frank, the governor, can't cope with it, and neither can the SS men. So the SS men come up with ideas to solve the overcrowding. So in many cases, you've got SS men who are taking the idea of having genocide, but it's not linked to anti-Semitism in their minds. It's just, we need to solve this problem. How do we solve it? I mean, a good example of that is the first major killings at Chelmno in 1941, which is sort of the start of the gassing, the bigger gassing campaign in the Holocaust. And that grows out of the fact that, you know,

there's an overcrowding in the local ghetto. And one of the Nazi officials goes to the ghetto and the Jewish council leader in there says, we've got too many people here. We need to, you need to move them somewhere else. He doesn't mean kill them. But of course, the SS official involved thinks, yeah, this is what i'll do

and on his own initiative he finds this castle in chelno he realizes that there's a there's a cellar that he can pipe in carbon monoxide and then he takes trucks of these people he takes 20 000 people most of them are jews 5 000 are gypsies and these are recommended by the jewish council we need you know it's overcrowded they don't know they're going to commit genocide and Most of them are Jews. 5,000 are gypsies. And these are recommended by the Jewish council. We need, you know, it's overcrowded. They don't know they're going to commit genocide. And that is done. And there's no link back to a policy of why that happened.

That happens on the ground. It happens by people making decisions. So what kind of system transfers, you know, extrajudicial killing to an ordinary, basically, jumped-up SS man? And that's where you see the way this system operates. This system gives enormous power over life and death on the ground. And then Vance says a catch-up. It's a catch-up. People say, yeah, but there's this going on here.

There's the Einsatzgruppen shooting people in the Soviet Union. The ghettos are becoming overcrowded. And they come to an idea, we've got too many people in Poland. So Wannsee is to solve the overpopulation in Poland. What are we going to do? And the solution is, a final solution, which is to create these camps. They become known as the Operation Reinhardt camps. They are not mentioned at Wannsee, but they start to happen shortly after Wannsee. It's impossible to say there is no link here. Heydrich made clear that the final solution involved tracking down all Jews in Europe and transporting them to the East. Able-bodied Jews would be assigned hard labour, mostly heavy construction

work, and would be eliminated by what was described as extermination through labour. Older Jews, meaning those over 65 from Germany and some western countries, would be deported to an old-age ghetto in Theresienstadt concentration camp, where they would die from limited food rations. The unmentioned remainder faced special treatment, which had already become an SS euphemism for extermination. First the Greater German Reich and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia would be cleared of Jews. Then the whole of Europe would be combed from west to east, and all Jews transported eastwards and held in camps and ghettos. Heydrich then explained how an extension of the final solution to the occupied and satellite countries

would follow negotiations between local and military governments. Slovakia, Croatia, Italy and Greece would present no problems in cooperating, he said. But Hungary and Romania might offer resistance. As for France, Heydrich thought that it might prove difficult getting hold of every Jew there, particularly in the unoccupied zone. This might also be the case in Belgium and the Netherlands. We see these camps created, Treblinka, Zobibor, Belzec. Treblinka, unbelievable. It's a camp created just to kill people.

You know, and it expands. And through that year, just that year, 1942, and we know this because, you know, the British intercepted a telegram later on in the year, and the telegram lists 830,000 people have already been killed there. You know, these people, these Holocaust deniers, well, here's a telegram that we deciphered and found that shows that 830,000 Jews were systematically killed after a blinker. Get out of that one. Frank, coming back to Hitler himself, through

the summer of 1942, when there was one last great blitzkrieg, miles and miles of Soviet territory down to the Caucasus was captured. There was a glimpse, perhaps, at a possible victory. And then that comes to such a decisive end. Well, it's a totemic end in Stalingrad. It's already petered out before then, but when the Sixth Army surrounded and destroyed Stalingrad, is that an important moment on Hitler's personal sort of psychiatric and physical collapse? I think in 1942, you know, he does accept that Germany is only going to regain the initiative if it can get some raw materials. So in 1942, it's not an ideological war he wants with the Soviet Union. It's an economic war.

He wants these oil fields. And he starts off with Operation Blue, which doesn't have Stalingrad, by the way, as you know, is the major objective. The major objective is to take these oil fields in the Caucasus. And of course, they have to go through these mountain ranges, don't they? And they get bogged down. And they get stopped in these mountain ranges. And then he starts to fall out then with his Major General Halder and he falls out with Alfred Jodl. So much so that at one point he starts eating his meals on his own at Rastenberg. He won't even eat with them, you know, and there's a terrible atmosphere. I think Wollemont comes in the middle of the summer and he says, he fixes me with a gaze which says, you know, I don't trust you.

He said he doesn't trust anyone now in that inner circle either. And he thinks that they've blown him. Then he realizes Stalingrad could be a consolation prize. So Stalingrad, it's got no real strategic value now, really. But he wants to capture it. So, you know, the 6th Army tries to capture Stalingrad, and that's the theme of late 1942. And then, of course, comes Operation Uranus, which is the amazing Soviet counteroffensive on the 19th of November. So they've drawn the 6th Army into Stalingrad, and they're fighting for it street by street. Pavlov's house is a great example, isn't it? 57 days fighting over one house. And I think Tchouikov, the Soviet general who's the commander of the 62nd Army, at the end of it he says, the Germans lost more trying to take Pavlov's house than they did in France.

trying to take Pavlov's house than they did in France. And then we get Operation Uranus, which is this surrounding of the 6th Army outside Moscow, joining up outside, and then they're trapped. And again, Hitler's flabbergasted. How did this happen? Again, it's a failure of German intelligence. German intelligence doesn't know this is happening.

This is pretty bad intelligence again. Another massive failure of intelligence which again is not hitler's fault but hitler's solution is is wrong you know instead of trying to get these soldiers out rescue them he decides that they should stay there and fight to the last man and like custer's last stand if you like so he has this idea or Goering has this idea that he's going to supply them he says he can get 7,000 tons of supplies in every day in fact he only gets in 3,000 tons of supplies every day and and he needs 7,000 powerless to survive so gradually they're kind of starving to death there and they attempt to take Stalingrad street by street. You know, they're fighting for the factories. Then they get hold of the factories.

Then they can't hold on to the factories. And I think Tchikov, the Soviet commander, says, we've still got part of these factories. He said, well, we have. They still can't plant a flag. And in a way, you know, it's so brave. And that section is so brave. And really gradually Hitler sees that he doesn't want to get them to surrender. He resists any attempt to

rescue them. There is a vain attempt to, well, it's unclear whether it's an attempt to rescue them or to supply them. Hitler wants to supply them, not rescue them. And then he wants them to fight to the death. And of course, Paulus does surrender. He makes him a field marshal. No field marshal has ever surrendered, ever. And they're shocked, aren't they, when they arrest Paulus, when he does surrender and he goes to be sort of interviewed. And they call him Lieutenant Colonel. And he says, no, no, I'm a field marshal. And they say, well, you're a field marshal. Can we check that? They can't believe that a man of this rank is going to do the surrender. And Hitler, you know, there's a great passage there, isn't there? No doubt Paul will read it, where Hitler describes his anger. Well, let's hear that from Paul McGann right now.

Hitler was totally disgusted by the surrender of Paulus. To his generals at the midday military conference at the Wolf's Lair on the 1st of February 1943, Hitler delivered a bitter tirade against Paulus and his fellow officers. They have surrendered there, formally and absolutely. Otherwise they would have closed ranks, formed a hedgehog and shot themselves with their last bullet. As he ranted on, the Fuhrer became more emotional about what he saw as Paulus's betrayal. It hurts me so much, because the heroism of so many soldiers is destroyed by a single spineless weakling. And the main thing is, what is he going to do now? You have to imagine it, he comes to Moscow and sees the rat cage

in the notorious Lubyanka prison. He'll sign everything there. He will make confessions and appeal. What most wounded Hitler was the fact that he'd promoted Paulus to field marshal to give him a final consolation before killing himself. That's the last field marshal I shall appoint in this war. That was wonderful, Paul McGann. We're back with Frank now. Let's speed forward towards that last catastrophic year of the war. Let's talk about the Staffenburg plot, the bomb that came so close to killing Hitler. In fact, hang on, let's hear from Paul again, because we've got another extract from the book in which Paul discusses the relations between Nazi leaders in the aftermath of that assassination attempt.

Then I've got a question for you. At about 5pm, Mussolini was having tea and cake inside the Führer's bunker. Also present were Goering, Ribbentrop, Dönitz and Keitel. They were already debating who was responsible for the bomb attack, and the tensions between them were laid bare. Dönitz lashed out at the obvious disloyalty of the army. Goering supported him, then turned on Ribbentrop, claiming the assassination attempt was yet another failure of German intelligence. The discussion became ever more vicious,

with Goering at one point calling Ribbentrop a dirty little champagne salesman. In reply, Ribbentrop yelled, I am still the foreign minister, and my name is von Ribbentrop. Then the brutality of the Night of the Long Knives in 1934 was brought up as an example of how to deal effectively with traitors. At this point, Hitler jumped to his feet, saying the Rome purge was nothing compared to the revenge he would now inflict on those involved in this betrayal. He would shoot them all. I'll put their wives and children into concentration camps and show them no mercy. Well, paul mcgann describing uh you know that game where they say what's your favorite historical dinner party you invite guests from history well that would be my least favorite historical dinner party wowee that sounded appalling

and hitler obviously sounds like he's greatly affected he's furious about the fact that he was almost killed by a bomb planted by his own army officers people often go on about hitler being mad and for much of his career, he obviously wasn't mad. But that last year, following the bomb plot, following his physical and mental trauma he sustained, and the fact that everything imaginable is going wrong, did Hitler descend into a kind of madness? I think we have to realise,

we see it with modern politicians, don't we? I suppose in the pandemic, we've seen it with politicians having to make swift decisions and being under pressure. And really, you know, they've got a load of other people taking the strain off them. And the problem with the Nazi system was it was all Hitler. Hitler was making all of the decisions. He was making all of the military decisions. He was taking part in every single military meeting. This wouldn't happen now. This would be devolved to, you know, the chiefs of staff, and they would deal with that,

and they would just present something to the president or the prime minister. So Hitler was sort of intimately involved with it. And I think, you know, his health was failing. I think he went to pieces. I mean, I think we're talking about a physical and a mental collapse here in 44 to 45. I think he gradually collapses. In a sense, as Germany is collapsing, he's collapsing. And I think it's not a dependence on drugs for pleasure. He did have problems. He did have an arm that shaked. He did have a leg

that shaked. He probably had the ongoings of Parkinson's disease. He did have terrible digestive problems. He did have terrible pains. He did suffer from depression. He did have tremendous mood swings. I think he gradually collapses. And I don't buy in for this thesis of, you know, that he didn't see what was happening. I think he did see what was happening. And I don't buy in for this thesis of, you know, that he didn't see what was happening. I think he did see what was happening. And I think that sometimes, you know, you can find another source that other people might have used, but they might not have seen in it what you see in it.

And I think his secretary, I mean, I know they used his secretary's memoirs for the film, Downfall, it's largely based on her memoirs. But there's some great passages in that, in that discussion that she has with him. And one of them is in the bunker towards the end. It's in April 1945. And she says, you know, what do you, what do you really think?

And he says, well, I think the game's up. I don't think, you know, I don't think we can get out of this. He said, you know, I think we will be defeated. And she says, what do you think will become of Nazism? And he says, it's had it. It'll just be destroyed. He said, as the German people will be destroyed. He said, that is the way the history goes. He said, the stronger race has won. They must now decide what happens to us. We are the weaker race. He he said whether we'll become the strongest race in 100 years time i don't know maybe if i leave a kind of legacy of

you know bravery at the end maybe in 100 years time nazism could come back he said but it won't come back in the same way anyway he'll come back in a different way there are passages there in gerbil's diaries where he mentions having a peace settlement doesn't he should we have a peace settlement with the british should we have a peace settlement with the americans should we have a peace settlement with the russians and hitler comes out of those conversations with a clear sight and really still got clear sight he says why would stalin want a peace settlement he said his armies are just marching on and marching on there's no chance of a peace settlement? He said his armies are just marching on and marching on. There's no chance of a peace settlement.

And he said, Roosevelt and Churchill, they're so constrained, he said, by the rhetoric of their speeches, that how could they come to a conference table with me? Let's just hear Paul McGann on Hitler's last will and testament. Hitler slipped away to the secretarial room to dictate his last will and testament. Hitler slipped away to the secretarial room to dictate his last will and testament to Traudl-Junge. She took down every word in shorthand and typed it up in triplicate. Hitler began by reciting his political testament.

The first part was an overview of his explanation for why the war had started and the reasons for Germany's defeat. There was no hint of regret or remorse whatsoever. Hitler judged himself not guilty, in the court of his own poisoned mind. land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed

not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Hitler took absolutely no responsibility for any of the horrors that he had inflicted on the world. He denied he even wanted a war in 1939. It had been provoked exclusively by those international statesmen who either were of Jewish origin or worked for Jewish interests.

He had never wanted war with Britain or America at all. Three days before the attack on Poland in 1939, he continued, he proposed to the British government a reasonable solution to the Polish-German problem. This was flatly rejected, because the ruling clique in England wanted war for commercial reasons, and partly because it was influenced by propaganda put out by international jury. It was the Jews who were responsible for all of the deaths on the battlefield and in the bombed-out German cities. Hitler then predicted Germany's role in the war would go down in history as the most glorious and heroic manifestation of the struggle for existence.

He promised that he would not allow himself to fall into the hands of the enemy, but he insisted, I have therefore decided to remain in Berlin, and there to choose death voluntarily, at that moment when I believe that the position of the Führer and the Chancellery itself can no longer be maintained. I die with a joyful heart in my knowledge of the immeasurable deeds and achievements of our peasants and workers, and of a contribution unique in history, of our youth, which bears my name. Oddly there was no mention in his political testament of his bitterest enemy, the Bolsheviks, nor any explanation as to why he launched the unprovoked attack on the Soviet Union of the 22nd of June 1941. Also missing was any reference to the National Socialist Party, or the SS, the two

organisations he created, except to state that he accepted that National Socialism was now a dead ideology. Hitler then insulted the German army, especially its highest-ranking officers, whom he chiefly blamed for the military disaster now facing Germany. He asked the commanders of the three armed services to prefer death to any cowardly resignation or capitulation. Nevertheless, he still claimed that the ultimate aim for the German people in the future was to win territory in the East. That was Paul McGann. Let's get back with Frank Madonna. What are the lessons that you draw after all these years of work,

getting into the weeds of one of the most criminal regimes in human history? The lesson I draw is that Hitler was obsessed with war. He tried to turn Germany into a superpower, and he believed the only way that Germany could become a superpower was through war. So he believed in the idea of war. And his project failed. His project failed. And it failed because Germany was never a potential superpower.

Because we know now that to be a superpower, you need a great big land mass. We can see this with the two great superpowers. Okay, Russia was a superpower for a while, but that was mainly based, wasn't it, on its nuclear weapons, not on its industrial resources. The two great superpowers are America and China. They are the two great superpowers, and they're almost identical. They're self-sufficient in oil they've got huge

manufacturing capacity they've got huge economic capacity america's consumer capacity is enormous you can't underestimate america you know people say america's on the floor you know america is never on the floor because of its huge land mass and china China has now emerged, hasn't it, with the same characteristics of vast raw materials, its own oil, vast manufacturing capacity. And there we have it. Those are the two models for a superpower. Hitler was trying to be one of those and the land mass he wanted was the Soviet Union.

Now, if he could have got that with the economic capabilities that he had and the Soviet Union. Now, if he could have got that with the economic capabilities that he had and the ability to develop that in the way that the Americans developed America, then yes, Germany could have become a superpower. But the problem was he was not going to be allowed with the balance of power in the world to be allowed to become a superpower because ranged against him was the industrial might of America. And as I said before, what wins the war is the blood of the Russian soldiers, the inspirational speeches of Winston Churchill and the money and the know-how of America. Stick them three together and you've got an unbeatable combination. And really, the game was up for Hitler once those three powers came together.

We can go on about the brilliance of the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Moscow and all the rest of it, even if the Soviets had lost, America would ultimately have won the Second World War. And if you look at the plans for D-Day, factored into those plans was a plan B and a plan C. And, you know, and plan C was going to be, we're going to take over 8 million people onto the continent of Europe. Yeah. And in the end, you know, let's make no bones about this. America was a slow learner in war. Now, as we know, you know this from Africa and all the correspondence of all the commanders there.

We had a very low opinion of them on the battlefield early on in North Africa. But, you know, come 1945, we didn't have a low opinion of them and neither did the Germans either, of them and neither did the Germans either because they'd managed to create a fantastic military machine that saved the soldiers from dying but inflicted huge massive death rates through the use of air power and you know massive air power massive artillery power I think at the end of the battle of France, Eisenhower in his memoir said, I went around in a jeep and all I saw was dead bodies. He said, and those dead bodies have been destroyed from the air. We regained the initiative in the Battle of the Bulge from the air. The Americans had a huge military power.

I mean, I think it's steel. I think Peter Adams calls it steel. No, it was the steel that made the difference. And I think James Holland has said this as well. We can go on and on about totting up who lost the most men in the war. And then we end up saying the Soviet Union won the war. The Soviet Union gave the most blood in the war, but the Soviet Union wouldn't have won the war without actually the supplies it got from the USSR as well. It was an allied alliance that won that war.

Well, Frank, that was amazing. Thank you very much for taking the time. I'm going to let you get back to it. Your book is called The Hitler Years Disaster 1940-45. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Oh, thanks, Dan. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. We're going to finish up now with Paul McGann reading an extract from the

end of your brilliant book. Since the reunification of Germany in 1990, there's been a very noticeable willingness of younger Germans, who had no personal involvement in what happened, to confront many inconvenient truths about the Nazi era.

Steven Spielberg's epic Schindler's List in 1993 prompted most German history teachers to take their students to see the film. The crimes of the Wehrmacht, once denied, are now fully acknowledged. The former SS-run German concentration camps of Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and Sachsenhausen are now moving memorials to the victims of Hitler's terror. All German schoolchildren now visit them as part of the school curriculum. In Germany in recent years,

there's been a flood of new documentaries, films and novels, as well as university courses dedicated to the Holocaust and Nazi war crimes. There's now a Holocaust memorial in the centre of Berlin. In 2001 a Jewish museum opened and is now one of the city's leading tourist attractions. The German democratic government now makes frequent payments to former slave labourers

of the Nazi era and to victims of the Holocaust. The heroism of those who stood up to the Nazis is also celebrated in Berlin's German Resistance Memorial Centre. It's now generally accepted most German people during the Nazi era were not just taking orders, but were enthusiastic supporters of Hitler and fought to the bitter end to preserve his criminal regime. It would be a mistake, however, to assume all Germans have finally come to terms with the enormity of what happened during the Hitler years. The victims of Hitler's genocide and their families continue to suffer the pain and grief and the haunting memories.

Adolf Hitler's long shadow over Germany and over humanity itself has not yet disappeared, and probably never will. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished and liquidated. Hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber

or pay me any cash money. Makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast if you give it a five star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review purge yourself give it a glowing review I'd really appreciate that it's tough weather that law of the jungle out there and I need all the fire support I can get so that will boost it up the charts it's so tiresome but if you could do it I'd be very very grateful thank you