Hitler Adolf - Hitler at war: meetings and conversations, 1939-1945

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Adolf Hitler

Meetings and Conversations
1939-1945

Edited and with an Introduction by Robert L. Miller

Enigma Books

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Copyright 2015 by Enigma Books

ISBN: 978-1-936274-78-9
e-ISBN: 978-1-936274-79-6

Printed in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

[Available on request]

T his selection is based on documents from several published archives, and historical reconstructions in an effort to provide an accurate picture of the plans, thoughts, and objectives of Adolf Hitler at various key moments of the Second World War. The archival texts are reprinted in their entirety with minimal commentary and bibliographical suggestions. The military conferences, on the other hand, include the notes by German historian Helmut Heiber and American military historian David Glantz. The full account of each meeting offers the best insights into Hitlers thinking and reactions to major events as he issued fateful orders that were immediately carried out by his adjutants.

The selected documents are roughly divided into two broad areas: the early part of the war from September 1, 1939 to June 22, 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, and the period from the attack on the Soviet Union to the collapse of the Third Reich in May 1945.

The first section includes mostly political and diplomatic conferences with foreign leaders and diplomats. The final period from July 1941 to April 1945 is mostly centered on military operations concerning the war in Russia. A large sub-section is assigned to the Italian crisis from July to September 1943, triggered by the invasion of Sicily and the overthrow of Mussolini. Those dramatic events constituted a major blow to Germanys prestige, sowing doubt in the minds of the German people, along with the many Nazi collaborators and sympathizers in Europe and elsewhere.

This documentary record of the meetings and conversations held by the Nazi dictator from September 1, 1939 to April 27, 1945, is a selection and remains necessarily incomplete. The transcribed daily military conferences alone, of which only a little more than 1,000 pages remain, represents a mere ten percent of the estimated total. The bulk of that archive was burned by the SS in May 1945. At times additional documents have been authenticated and added to the existing collection.

Hitler was far more explicit than one may expect in his conversations with various personalities. While several important texts help us understand the evolution of the politician and the war leader over a relatively short period, many important areas remain unknown. The twelve-year Third Reich reached its apex in the summer of 1942, when the overextended Wehrmacht was stopped in its advance into the Caucasus and at Stalingrad on the Volga River. The defeat at El Alamein in November 1942 ended the winning streak of Rommels Afrika Korps at that same moment. With the surrender of von Paulus at Stalingrad in February 1943, the Supreme Warlord, while forever in denial, had to know that full victory was no longer within his grasp.

In the fall of 1942 Hitler ordered that stenographers keep an accurate record of the daily military conferences that he chaired at OKW headquarters. The purpose of that record was to document the discussions and decisions made for posterity, given the strategic and tactical disagreements that had surfaced within the High Command.

As Gerhard Weinberg explains in his preface to Hitler and His Generals :

As he was being told that the German army was unable to punch through Red Army resistance in the western Caucasus on the road to Tuapse, while at the same time the German forces heading toward the main oilfields at Grozny and Baku, as well as those heading for Stalingrad, were making very slow progressif anyHitler blew up. He temporarily took over command of Army Group A in the Caucasus himself; he replaced the chief of staff of the German army; and he considered replacing his immediate assistants in the High Command of the Armed Forces [Oberkommando der Wehrmacht OKW].