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Goebbels persisted nonetheless, arguing forcefully that “too much has been expected of the front, too little of the homeland.” The massive losses suffered by the Ostheer, combined with the need drastically to increase arms production, meant that superfluous personnel had to be redirected from the bureaucracy and civilian economy to the war effort. His own nervous exhaustion—on Christmas Day he admitted that the dire situation demanded “the complete mobilization of the entire German people in this decisive struggle for existence”—and a palpable mood of panic among the top leadership persuaded the Führer that the regime could gain a breathing space only through a total effort in both the Reich and the occupied territories. The result was a competition among leading government figures to translate the Führer’s will into reality. While Bormann demanded that the party return to “the spirit and methods of the period of struggle for power [the Kampfzeit],” army officials quickly prepared a new personnel plan for raising troops for the Wehrmacht. Armed with a special authorization from Hitler—“Tanks must be produced, no matter the cost”—Speer rushed to put into place a new program that would drastically escalate tank production but that would also require millions of additional workers. As a first step to secure that labor, by the end of January measures had been put in place that required all women between the ages of seventeen and fifty (with the upper limit quickly reduced to forty-five) to register for work and young men and women to be used as Luftwaffe spotters and flak helpers.42

Goebbels, however, had hoped not only to speed this process of total mobilization but also to gain decisive control over it. In addition, troubled by what he saw as a fracturing of the Volksgemeinschaft, he intended to use patriotic themes and a radicalization of the war itself to promote a revolutionary restructuring of German society. In this scenario, Hitler would use Stalingrad in much the same way that Churchill had used Dunkirk, as a means by which to rally the nation to unity and sacrifice. For all his efforts, however, and despite the Führer’s accord with the spirit he was trying to invoke, Goebbels largely failed in his personal efforts. His control over the total war effort remained confined to psychological mobilization, although the resolve and defiance he provoked, along with ever-intensifying measures of oppression, assured that there would be no collapse of the German home front.43

The move to total war also unleashed a contest for dominance in the new power spheres that were opening up, a burst of feverish activity that, in the absence of any consistent leadership from Hitler, lacked the coherent, coordinated planning that might have made a difference in the German war effort. Amid the jumbled jurisdictions and institutional Darwinism characteristic of Hitler’s preferred style of rule, a halfhearted effort was initially made to achieve some overall coordination of policy. In mid-January 1943, Hitler authorized Keitel, Bormann, and Lammers, the heads of the three main branches of the Führer’s authority (the Wehrmacht, the party, and the Reich Chancellery)—and men not likely to challenge him—to oversee the total mobilization of the German population for the war effort. Predictably, however, from the outset this triumvirate found its efforts undermined by opposition from men such as Speer, Goebbels, and Goering as well as by the fact that Hitler reserved for himself the right to make the final decision on anything of importance. Within a week of his total war speech, in fact, Goebbels had defined the problem precisely. “We have not only a ‘leadership crisis,’” he mentioned privately to Speer, among others, “but strictly speaking a ‘leader crisis.’”44

Still, despite the inevitable chaos and inefficiencies that resulted from this shapeless system of rule, it often resulted in impressive short-term successes. Such seemed to be the case in the first part of 1943. By the end of May, the output of aircraft, artillery, ammunition, and infantry weapons was nearly 120 percent higher than the year before, while the total production of armaments more than doubled from the beginning of 1942 to the end of 1943. For Hitler and Speer, however, the key to victory was not so much a general increase in output as a decisive rise in the production of tanks, the weapon deemed critical for success in the east. Announced to much propaganda fanfare at the end of January 1943, the Adolf Hitler Panzer Program, with its promise to double and triple the production of tanks, including the much heralded Panther and Tiger models, was as important symbolically as it was materially. If total war demanded total exertion, there had to be the prospect of some payoff for such efforts: the tank program was that reward. Certainly, the Ostheer badly needed tanks since it had fewer than five hundred at the end of January 1943. Nor can the success of the Adolf Hitler Panzer Program be denied: tank production in May was more than double that of the autumn, while, in all of 1943, 41 percent more tanks were built than the year before, with fully 40 percent of them the Panther and Tiger models.45

The ultimate problem, however, was twofold: for all its success, German armaments output in 1943, including tank production, was being swamped by that of its enemies. In that year alone, the Allies produced just about six times more aircraft, nearly five times the number of artillery pieces, and almost four times more tanks. In each of these categories, the United States alone doubled and tripled German output. More vitally, in the spring of 1943, the German war economy itself was drawn directly into the fighting as the Anglo-American bomber offensive began to achieve significant results. Tank production required massive amounts of steel, which Hitler had now reallocated to the army rather than the navy or Luftwaffe. Pursing ruthless efficiency, German steel mills had in March 1943 managed an impressive jump in output, a feat that, combined with the stabilization of the front in April, left Speer and Hitler optimistic that further large gains in steel production would follow. Instead, beginning hesitantly in March, then increasing in frequency and intensity from April through July, British Bomber Command began the Battle of the Ruhr. Intended both to cripple output in this vital industrial area and to destroy the fabric of urban life, the bombers not only killed thousands of people but also disrupted steel production just as the Nazis anticipated an armaments surge. Where a significant increase had been expected, steel output now fell. Not only did that lead to an immediate cutback in tank and ammunition production, but the disruption in the Ruhr also resulted in a supplier crisis as all manner of parts, castings, forgings, and components vital for continued production in plants outside the Ruhr were now in short supply. The result was sobering: in the second half of 1943, armaments output stagnated. As Speer acknowledged, Allied bombing negated the plans for a substantial increase in production. Not until spring 1944 would the armaments index again show a significant increase, one that would last through September, but by then it was too late.46