Generals usually know when a war is lost. The German generals had never been absolutely convinced that they could win World War II. They had only hoped to win it mainly because Hitler had promised them that the enemy armies would suffer amoral collapse and that they themselves would not have to fight a two-front war.
German writer (1902-1993)
Curt Martin Riess (June 21, 1902 – May 13, 1993) was a German journalist and writer. Reiss was born of Jewish-German origins in Wurzburg, Germany, and later fled in 1933 to Paris, France not long after Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor in 1933.
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Curt Martin Riess
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It is true that in the National Socialist Letters, Goebbels put the accent on Socialism rather than on Nationalism, to such an extent that he sponsored an alliance between a Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia; he also flirted with an ideological alliance with other rebellious ‘have not’ counties such as India and China.
At the end of August 1943 Dr. Alexander Loudon, Netherlands Ambassador to Washington, made a most interesting forecast about the outcome and aftermath of the war. He predicted that, with defeat, the German General Staff, the Nazi leaders, and in particular the Gestapo, would go underground to prepare for the next war. As for this war, he said, the Nazis knew that they had already lost it, and were willing and eager to get it over with.
After the first few issues [of Nationalsozialistische Briefe] appeared most of its readers were convinced that Joseph Goebbels was a communist in disguise. In Rheydt, people had thought so for years. There was indeed very little difference between the language of Goebbels and the language of the communists. The Party ‘big shots’ became apprehensive.
By early 1943 Hitler had become perhaps the most isolated man inside the Third Reich, Every report was rewritten before it was given to him. He no longer saw the newspapers, though, to be sure, they contained little enough genuine information. He saw only clippings. The reason for all these precautionary measures was that nobody around Hitler fancied the hysterical outbreaks to which he was so addicted, and nobody wanted him to have any more brainstorms or intuitions of the kind which had already cost the army so dearly in Russia
The Nazis understood early that revolutionizing warfare meant revolutionizing espionage. An Intelligence Service which had been mediocre during the First World War was replaced by one which before and during the Second World War achieved enormous triumphs. The Nazis worked on the basis of total espionage.