For all my life, I have never been a man of the defensive.

We will now go from the defensive back on the attack.

Adolf Hitler.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century.

Music to the history of the 20th century. Episode 389

On the. On the Defensive

Adolf Hitler had tied his personal and political future to military victory.

Defeat at Stalingrad shocked most Germans and soured many of them on Hitler's leadership.

Hitler understood this intuitively.

He became withdrawn. The leader who seemed to thrive on appearances before huge crowds now shunned the public eye. He wouldn't even permit German newsreels to show him on film.

As early as November 1942, there were signs of a change.

Albert Schpair tells a story in his memoirs of Hitler traveling to Munich on his personal train

for the annual dinner with the Nazi party's old fighters.

This is the same train trip in which he first received the news that an allied invasion of

North Africa was imminent. I told you about that in episode 378. In happier times, Hitler was fond of

appearing at the window of his train at every station stop,

so he could wave at the people on the platform.

During a stop on this train trip, Schpayer tells us,

Hitler and his traveling companions had just sat down to a pleasant dinner in his personal dining car,

white tablecloths, silver flatware, china plates,

vases full of fresh flowers, the works. Then a freight train stopped alongside. Hitler and his

dining companions gradually came to be aware that the boxcar sitting just outside the dining car window was full of dirty,

...