The Devil's Disciples Hitler's Inner Circle

1005 Pages·2004·22.99 MB·English

by  Anthony Read

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THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLES
Hitler's Inner Circle
ANTHONY READ
M
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NORTON & COMPANY
New York· London
HINSDALE PUBLIC LIBRARY
HINSDALE, IL 60521
Copyright © 2003 by Anthony Read
First American Edition 2004
Originally published in Great Britain under the title The Devil's Disciples: The Lives
and Times of Hitler's Inner Circle
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue,
New York, NY 10110
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Production manager: Julia Druskin
ISBN 0-393-04800-4
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
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CONTENTS
Prologue I
PART ONE: Roots I9I8-I923
I 'Our time will come again' I3
II 'If only there could be fighting again' 39
III Fighting the November Criminals 6I
IV Beer Hall Revolution 85
PART TWO: The Years of Struggle I924-I933
v Regrouping I05
VI A Star in the Making I26
VII 'Chief Bandit of Berlin' I54
VIII 'We come as enemies' I76
IX 'SS-Man, your loyalty is your honour' 202
x
'Now the chess game for power begins' 223
XI The Turning Point 248
PART THREE: Power and Revolution I933-I936
XII Power 275
XIII Co-ordination 292
XIV The End of the Brown Revolution 3I7
xv
Night of the Long Knives 345
XVI 'We always approve everything our Fuhrer does' 375
XVII The Four-Year Plan 404
VIII THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLES
PART FOUR: Expansion:
The Greater German Reich I937-I939
XVIII The Blomberg-Fritsch Affair
43I
XIX Anschluss 456
xx
The Sudetenland Crisis 480
XXI Kristallnacht 505
XXII 'I'll cook them a stew that they'll choke on' 528
XX III 'I have the world in my pocket' 554
XXIV 'If we lose this war, then God have mercy on us' 574
PART FIVE: War: Germany Triumphant
xxv
Blitzkrieg 595
XXVI 'Yellow' 6q
XXV II Eagles and Sea Lions 64I
XXV III 'The whole world will hold its breath' 664
XXIX 'The greatest deception operation in military history' 693
xxx
Barbarossa 7IO
PART SIX: War: Defeat
XXXI The Final Solution 737
XX XII The Beginning of the End 76I
XX XIII 'Do you want total war?' 783
XX XIV 'Call Me Meier!' 809
xxxv
Last Throw of the Dice 83I
XXXVI Gotterdammerung 860
XXXVII The End of the Road 89I
Acknowledgements 925
Notes 926
Select Bibliography 948
Index 957
PROLOGUE
THEY called it ASHCAN, a sardonic acronym for Allied Supreme
Headquarters Centre for Axis Nationals. Into it, in May 1945, the
American and British victors of the Second World War dumped what
remained of the leadership of Hitler's Third Reich: fifty-two assorted
politicians, military commanders and high officials to be interrogated,
investigated, and prepared for trial at Nuremberg as war criminals.
ASHCAN was housed in the Palace Hotel in Mondorf-les-Bains, a
genteel spa town with quiet, tree-lined streets around a manicured
public park, set amid woodland and vineyards in the rolling country
side of the south-east corner of the Duchy of Luxembourg. A small
stream on the southern edge of the town marked the border with
France; the border with Germany lay about six kilometres to the east,
in the gorge of the Mosel river. The Palace was the principal among
the town's dozen or so hotels, standing in a raised position in its own
extensive gardens and grounds. It was an undistinguished building,
eight storeys tall with the top two in a mansard roof, its two wings
forming a shallow V, its pale stuccoed walls enlivened with art-deco
style panels, a far cry from the tawdry glories of the Reich.
In peacetime, the Palace catered discreetly for well-to-do visitors
seeking relief from rheumatism and liver complaints at the town's two
thermal springs. But in May 1945, the fine fittings and furnishings -
chandeliers, carpets and drapes, soft furniture - were all stripped out.
In the bedrooms, folding camp cots with no pillows, straw-filled
palliasses and rough army blankets replaced the comfortable beds and
interior sprung mattresses. The only other furniture in each room was
a hard upright chair and a flimsy table designed to collapse immedi
ately under a man's weight, to foil any suicide attempt. The glass in
2 THE DEVIL'S DISCIPLES
the windows was replaced, first with wire netting and later with shatter
proof Perspex and metal bars. There were no lights or electricity in
the rooms, no mirrors, and no locks on the doors, but an opening was
cut into eacp to allow guards to look in at all times. Outside, a private
airstrip was laid in the grounds, which were enclosed by a barbed wire
stockade with an electric alarm system and four watchtowers equipped
with machine guns and searchlights, more for the protection of the
prisoners than to prevent escapes. 1
The Americans who had requisitioned the hotel were taking no
chances over the safety of their guests - but it was made abundantly
clear to those guests that their status had changed abruptly, and perma
nently. Only a few days before, they would have demanded every scrap
of luxury the hotel could provide. For years they had wallowed in
power, position and privilege. Now they were reduced to empty husks,
some pitiful, some posturing as they tried to hold on to their illusions,
clinging to the last shreds of authority.
From the moment they arrived, prisoners were subjected to humil
iation and obloquy, beginning with an intimate strip search by a prison
doctor. Their clothes were taken away and examined minutely for
poison capsules or suicide weapons, which were often found sewn into
uniforms or concealed in the heels of shoes. Anything sharp was confis
cated, including the pins on medals, insignia and badges of rank; so,
too, were shoe laces, belts, braces, suspenders, neckties, steel-shod
shoes, spectacles, and all walking sticks, canes and batons, a loss which
rankled particularly with the field marshals. In the face of such indig
nities, most of the men - for they were all men, women having been
restricted to supporting roles in Nazi ideology - found it difficult to
maintain any sort of dignity, let alone the hauteur which had become
second nature over the previous twelve years. 2
The first important Nazi to arrive was Arthur Seyss-Inquart, tall
and thin, limping heavily on his left leg as a result of a wound received
during the First World War when he had been an officer in the Austrian
army. His captors found it difficult to believe that this man, peering
vapidly about him through thick spectacles, had for seven y~ars exer
cised the power of life and death over millions. This was the man who,
in 19 3 8 as Minister of the Interior in Vienna, had handed Austria to
Hitler on a plate by opening the frontier to the German army. He had
then unleashed 40,000 police and Death's Head SS men on the country's
300,000 Jews, and provided a former palace of the Rothschilds as
headquarte.r~ for Adolf Eichmann and his 'Central Office for Jewish