Letter, Berghof, 20 May 1941:
The boss left today for Munich, I have stayed behind… as my friend now needs money, she decided to sell the handwritten poems by Dietrich Eckart which he had sent to old von Wolzogen. I mentioned this to the boss, who was very close to Eckart, and no sooner said than done, he bought them for 10,000 RM. An amount like that M. would naturally not have got anywhere else…
Chapter 8
The Russian Campaign 1941–1944
THE WAR WITH THE Soviet Union began on 22 June 1941 and next day we left Berlin after making brief preparations. On 28 June I wrote to my friend from the new FHQ Wolfsschanze,[67] eight kilometres in the woods from the miserable little town of Rastenburg in East Prussia:
After five days here at HQ I can give you a short report on morale… the bunkers are dispersed through the woods, divided up into work sections. Every division set aside for itself. Our dormitory bunker is the size of a railway compartment and has light-coloured wood panelling. There is a discreet washbasin, above it a mirror, a small Siemens radio with a wide choice of stations. The bunker even has electric heating, not yet connected up, eye-catching wall lamps and a narrow hard mattress filled with eel-grass. The room is narrow but all in all it will have a nice look once I have hung a few pictures. Common shower rooms are available but until now we have not used them. At first there was no hot water and as usual we slept in until the last possible moment anyway. Because the noise from the fan in the bunker disturbed us and the draught passed continuously above our heads, which I always hate especially because of the rheumatic pains I have so often, we requested that it be turned off at night with the consequence that we now sleep in a fug and suffer all next day from a leaden heaviness in the limbs.
Despite that it is all fine except for the damned plague of biting midges. I have midge bites all up my legs which are now covered in thick swellings. The anti-midge precautions last us only a short while. The men have better protection than we do (long leather boots and thick uniforms). Their only vulnerable spot is the neck. Some wear a mosquito net all the time. I tried it one afternoon but it becomes a burden after a while. If we spot a midge the hunt for it starts immediately…
The awful biting-midge plague did not leave Hitler unaffected. He said that they had searched out for him ‘the swampiest, most climatically unfavourable and midge-infested region possible’. Nevertheless he had not yet lost his humour at that time, pointing to ‘difficulties in jurisdiction’, and concluded, after all hands went for the midges, ‘in this work only the Luftwaffe is competent!’
Actually in the initial stages of the Russian campaign I found that Hitler was nearly always good-tempered and ready for a joke. One night after the usual tea hour at Wolfsschanze ended (it always followed the military situation conference and was attended by one personal and one military adjutant, one medical doctor and two secretaries) Hitler accompanied us to outside the bunker doors. There we stood chatting for a while in the darkness (blackout was always strictly observed). Suddenly I realised that I had left my flashlight in Hitler’s room, and asked the manservant to fetch it. He returned empty-handed. ‘Where could it be then?’ I said. Hitler, in jovial frame of mind, defended himself with a smile: ‘I have not stolen it. I may be a thief of lands, but not of lamps. And it is better that way, for they hang you for the little item, but for the bigger one they let you go!’
Letter, FHQ Wolfsschanze, 28 June 1941:
Some wire fly-swats have arrived and whoever is free has to join in the great midge hunt. They are saying that this is only a smaller breed and by the end of June an even more unpleasant kind comes and the stings will be even worse. God help us! However, I am pleasantly surprised by the temperature. It is almost too cool in the rooms. One has to dry out the bed first by body heat, it always feels damp. The trees deflect all the heat. Just how much one realises only when in the open on the highway. Then the heat hits you.
Now for my ‘busy schedule’. Shortly after 1000 Dara and I go to the officers’ mess bunker, dining room 1, an elongated white-painted room set quite deep in the ground so that the small gauze-covered windows are quite high up. The walls are decorated with marquetry: one shows Hutten, the other Heinrich I. A few days after moving in, a captured Soviet flag was fixed to the wall. In this room with seats for twenty at the table, the boss with his generals, general staff officers, adjutants and doctors eat at midday and evenings. At breakfast we two ladies join them. The boss seats himself so that he can gaze at the map of Russia on the opposite wall, which naturally spurs him into new monologues about Soviet Russia and the dangers of Bolshevism. He must have suffered very much in the period after the signing of the so-called Friendship treaty with Russia. Now he speaks of his fears from the heart, always emphasising the great danger which Bolshevism presents to Europe and that, had he waited another year, it would probably have been too late.
Recently he said in Berlin during the usual coffee hour which he takes daily in our room that Russia seemed eerie to him, rather like the ghostly ship in the Flying Dutchman. In reply to my question why he always insists that this was his most onerous decision (namely to proceed against Russia), he answered: ‘Because one knows next to nothing about Russia, it might be a great soap bubble, or just as well be something else…’
The beginning has been so promising. In the first two days at Wolfsschanze Dara and I even attended the military situation conferences when the improvised sessions took place in the mess. So we heard the boss, standing by a large map of Europe and pointing to Moscow, say: ‘In four weeks we will be in Moscow. Moscow will be razed to the ground.’
Letter, FHQ Wolfsschanze, 28 June 1941:
Yes, now I have wandered completely off the subject. Therefore in the morning we wait in Dining Room I until the boss, coming from the map room (where he will have received the situation report), arrives for breakfast which, by the way, consists of a cup of milk and a peeled apple. Easily satisfied and modest, isn’t he? We girls on the other hand cannot get enough and, after wolfing down our allotted portions (small pat of butter), deftly exchange the cutlery so that we get three portions instead of two. After that we let the boss explain the new situation to us and afterwards attend the general situation conference at 1300, which is held in the map room where reports are made by either Oberst Schmundt or Major Engel (army adjutant).
These reports are extraordinarily interesting. Statistics about the enemy aircraft and tanks destroyed are delivered (the Russians seem to have enormous masses, up to now they have lost over 3,500 aircraft and 1,000 tanks including heavy 40-tonners) and the progress of our troops is demonstrated on the map.
It is made clear how furiously the Russian fights; he could match us man for man if the Soviets had proper military planning which, thank God, is not the case. So, from the experience so far one can say that it is a struggle against wild beasts. If one asks how it is that we have taken so few prisoners, it is important to know that the Russian soldiers are stirred up by their commissars, who tell them atrocity stories about our ‘inhumanity’ which they will experience should they be taken prisoner. They are instructed to fight to the last and if overwhelmed to shoot themselves. That is how it plays out and the following happened at Kovno. A Russian prisoner sent by our troops to a bunker in order to ask the Russians there to surrender was probably shot by the commissar himself for having volunteered to carry the message. After that they blew themselves up. Better death than surrender.
67
FHQ Wolfsschanze in the woods at Görlitz was the largest HQ built by the end of 1944. With various absences elsewhere Hitler inhabited this HQ from 24.6.1941 to 20.11.1944 as military overlord. Originally intended for a four-week Blitzkrieg, it was continually expanded until the installations were destroyed on 24.1.1945.