And then, according to an underlined passage in the top-secret OKW notes of the meeting,62 Hitler announced the most fateful decision of all. “The beginning of the Barbarossa operation” he told his generals, “will have to be postponed up to four weeks.”† This postponement of the attack on Russia in order that the Nazi warlord might vent his personal spite against a small Balkan country which had dared to defy him was probably the most catastrophic single decision in Hitler’s career.
