In a scene of a German movie called Downfall, Adolf Hitler, with several of his henchmen present (including Goebbels), he exposits on a insane scheme to win the war (Keep in mind, this movie takes place in April 1945)
He claism that the Battle of Berlin was part of a huge decoy manouvre to trick the Soviets into thinking they have won. He claims that Donitz is mobilizing in the north of Germany with Kesselring mobilizing in the south. He says that three armies, launching from Prague, will attack the Russians simultaneously from behind. Hitler tells one of his generals that he made sure that the general will have 1000 of 'the most modern jets' at his disposal.
Now, I've heard that Hitler was beyond insane in the last days of the Reich, but was he seriously this delusional? Is there any proof that this insane scheme was actually spoken of by Hitler?
Follow-up question that seems appropriate to this discussion. I've read that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed in April of 1945 by direct command of Himmler, who was possibly ordered to do so by Hitler himself. That late in the war, how did the Nazis still have the logistical capability to track down and execute specific prisoners? More importantly why did Hitler/Himmler continue with politically motivated executions after the war was clearly lost?
You are referring to a very specific scene in a movie, and much of said movie is fictionalized. Take the very famous (and often meme-ified) scene where Hitler stays in the room with Keitel, Jodl, Krebs, Burgdorf and Goebbels and then screams at the military leaders because of the failure of Angriff Steiner, the attack of Felix Steiner's unit.
Now, Keitel, Jodl, Krebs, Burgdorf, Goebbels and of course Hitler himself never would have been able to testify about what happened in that room. Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Hans Krebs and Wilhelm Burgdorf committed suicide in April and early May of 1945, Alfred Jodl and Wilhelm Keitel were executed after Nuremberg without having testified about the incident. So the dialogue in the scene which Bruno Ganz screams in his role as Hitler is of course sensationalized or at least adapted by screenwriters to have a good flow and sound good on camera.
But here is what we do know: Angriff Steiner was a real thing, and Felix Steiner was a real person, an SS officer, last in the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Waffen-SS. In March of 1945, Steiner had been placed in charge of Armeegruppe Steiner, "Army Group Steiner". The strength of the army group, on paper with a baseline in the tens of thousands, never exceeded a few regiments of men and not enough equipment to even fill that. Steiner's task was to liberate Berlin in the north. On April 27th, 1945, he was relieved of command of his phantom unit due to his insubordination.
Thanks to witness reports, especially by Hitler's private secretary Traudl Junge, who survived until long after the war and was one of the prime sources for the film in question, we know that Hitler at times was outright ecstatic because of the impending liberation by Steiner's units. The man actually believed that there were tens if not hundreds of thousands of fresh German troops coming to crush into the northern Soviet flank and free the capital.
Now, I cannot attest to the three armies at Prague, but neither Kesselring nor Dönitz were even aware that they were supposed to mobilize anything. In fact, Kesselring could not have been mobilizing anything, as he was pretty busy being the supreme commander of the western front trying to somehow stop hundreds of thousands of western allied troops from crossing the Rhine river into the German heartlands.
So, in retrospect:
Now, I've heard that Hitler was beyond insane in the last days of the Reich, but was he seriously this delusional?
Yes.
Is there any proof that this insane scheme was actually spoken of by Hitler?
Only partially.
Sources and Further Reading:
Arnold-Forster, Mark: The World at War. (1974)
Dirks, Carl: Der Krieg der Generäle. (1999)
Guderian, Heinz: Erinnerungen eines Soldaten. (1951)
Junge, Traudl: Bis zur letzten Stunde - Hitlers Sekretärin erzählt ihr Leben. (2002 [1947])
Kershaw, Ian: Hitler. (2008)
Manstein, Erich v.: Aus einem Soldatenleben. (1958)
Manstein, Erich v.: Verlorene Siege. (1955)
Mazower, Mark: Hitler's empire: how the Nazis ruled Europe. (2009)
Piekalkiewicz, Janusz: Der Zweite Weltkrieg. (1985)
Wucher, Albert: Marksteine der deutschen Zeitgeschichte 1914-1945. (1991)
Zentner, Christian: Der Zweite Weltkrieg. (1981)
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