The Storm of War - Andrew Roberts [85]
‘Yes, there are many links between Obersalzberg and me,’ Hitler reminisced to his cronies in January 1942. ‘So many things were born there, and brought to fruition there. I’ve spent up there the finest hours of my life. It’s there that all my great projects were conceived and ripened. I had hours of leisure, in those days, and how many charming friends!’ The Berghof itself was not the architectural masterpiece Hitler believed it to be; the historian Norman Stone describes it as ‘a building fit for an Ian Fleming villain. Huge slabs of red marble adorned it; looted pictures hung on the walls; there was a vast, thick carpet; a huge fire burning in the grate; oversized armchairs were placed an uncomfortable distance apart, in such a way that the guests would have to half shout their platitudes at each other as the sparks leapt from the fire in the gathering twilight.’32
From the Berghof, Hitler could see his beloved Salzburg and all the surrounding countryside. For his fiftieth birthday in April 1939 the Nazi Party presented him with the civil engineering miracle of the Eagle’s Nest, a stone building 6,000 feet up, reached through the interior of a mountain, from which one can view the entire region. Yet the breathtaking scenery did not calm what passed for his soul. Paradoxically, these panoramic views seemed only to have helped him come to his most drastic decisions. It was while he was staying at Obersalzberg that he plotted his most daring coups, including the plan to dismember Czechoslovakia. Joseph Goebbels, a regular visitor, often complained to his diary about the amount of time the Führer spent at Obersalzberg, but was also gratified by the way ‘the solitude of the mountains’ always tended to spur his Führer on to more fanatical efforts. It was in late March 1933, while staying there, that Hitler decided upon a national boycott of all Jewish businesses, services, lawyers and doctors across the whole Reich. Staggeringly beautiful scenery clearly had an effect on Hitler that was opposite to how most other people reacted: rather than softening and humanizing him it hardened his heart and filled him with power-lust.
One of Hitler’s major purposes in attacking Russia was to denude Britain of any hope of allies, thus forcing her to make peace. Franz Halder had noted in his diary for 13 July 1940 that ‘The Führer is greatly puzzled by Britain’s persisting unwillingness to make peace. He sees the answer (as we do) in Britain’s hopes for Russia, and therefore counts on having to compel her by main force to agree.’33 A fortnight later at the Berghof, Hitler himself told his generals: ‘With Russia smashed, Britain’s last hope would be shattered. Germany would be the master of Europe and the Balkans. Decision: Russia’s destruction must therefore be made part of this struggle.’34 He wanted, in one historian’s phrase, to conquer ‘London via Moscow’, however geographically absurd that might sound.35 The idea that Hitler invaded vast Russia partly in order further to isolate tiny Britain might seem astonishing until one recalls Hitler’s racial beliefs and mind-set. He had fought and lost to the British on the Western Front, and he admired their imperial successes, especially in India. He considered their racially Anglo-Saxon background as essentially Aryan, which made them worthy opponents and logical allies; far more worthy, for example,