Joachim Fest - Plotting Hitler's Death

Nevertheless, Fritsch rebuffed all demands for a protest by point­ing to his low position in the hierarchy. He could not take action “without explicit orders,” he later said. “Blomberg was vehemently opposed, and Hindenburg could not be reached and was apparently misinformed.” 20Be that as it may, the fact that the chief of army command did not insist on a military investigation plainly indicates that other factors were also at work. When the aged field marshal August von Mackensen took steps to restore the honor of the murdered generals, Fritsch distanced himself from the attempts. To crown it all, he meekly informed the troops of Blomberg’s “muzzle edict,” which forbade them to make any personal statements about the purge. Furthermore, neither Fritsch nor the officer corps at large raised any objections when Blomberg ordered that they not attend Selileicher’s funeral. Those seeking the first signs of the army’s retreat to a narrow, formalistic emphasis on a soldier’s duty to obey-an emphasis on which all will to resist ultimately foundered in the fol­lowing years-will find it here.

Fritsch’s evasiveness cannot, however, be explained solely by his sense of loyalty and his belief in military obedience, though he did feel very much bound by these concepts. Nor can it be fully ac­counted for by his career-long adherence to the ideal of an apolitical army, which had been introduced by General Hans von Seeckt under the Weimar Republic. At least as important as these factors was the feeling that the army had many interests in common with the new regime; as a result, its commanders were inclined to restraint even in the face of obvious crimes. Defeat in the First World War and the harsh burdens imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles had instilled in the officer corps an obsession with redress-not only for their military defeat but, more importantly, for the moral stain that had marked Germany ever since. In Hitler the officer corps perceived a man who could succeed on both these counts. Some officers even deluded themselves into believing that now, after the bloody break with Röhm, they could lure Hitler away from National Socialism and the narrow convictions of his youth; by offering ever-greater blandish­ments and concessions, they hoped to win him over to their views and perhaps even make him their lackey.

Such dreams were as vain as Papen’s long-defunct hope of “taming” Hitler, though the ghost of that hope seemed to be reemerging in some army circles. With his highly developed sense for almost imperceptible shifts in the balance of power, Hitler immediately grasped that an army that had closed its eyes to the murder of two of its generals would not block his breakthrough to unfettered domina­tion. Just three weeks later he moved to exploit the obvious weakness of the army leadership. On July 20 he recognized the “great accom­plishments” of the SS, “particularly in connection with the events of June 30,” by conferring on it the status of an independent organiza­tion directly responsible to him. Blomberg was required to provide “weapons for one entire division.” Instead of a state built on the SA, as the impatient, ham-handed Röhm had insisted on, there now be­gan to emerge, bit by bit, a state built on the SS.

At the same time the tightly closed ranks of the army began to crack. A number of officers who later joined the military resistance pointed to the events of June 30 and July 1, 1934, as the beginning of their break with the Nazis, among them Henning von Tresckow, Franz Halder, and Hans Oster, who even in the interrogations follow­ing July 20, 1944, denounced the “methods of a gang of bandits.” Erwin Rommel also became disenchanted with the Nazis, saying that the Röhm affair had been a failed opportunity “to get rid of the entire bunch.” 21These officers remained isolated individuals, however, and none of them was in a position of real power. The army commanders, by contrast, were overjoyed that they had achieved their great objec­tive, dealing the SA a death blow without attracting much attention to themselves. They failed to understand that the cleverness of Hitler’s ploy had been to involve them in the massacre just enough to taint them but not so much that he owed them his success. Although once more his fate had lain in the hands of the Reichswehr, that would never be true again, as Hitler already knew during those critical days of June and July. The army’s moment of opportunity had come and gone.

Hitler made his next move much more quickly than expected, when fortune handed him the opportunity to complete his seizure of power by taking over the last independent position in the government. In mid-July President Hindenburg’s health went into steep decline, and his entourage expected his death at any moment. Until shortly before this time disappointed conservatives had still imagined the president as a possible rival to Hitler. Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau, Hindenburg’s clear-sighted friend from the neighboring estate, had, however, been speaking for quite some time, in the bluff manner he liked to affect, of the president “whom we actually no longer have.” In any ease, the office still existed and was the last institution of government that had not fallen into Hitler’s hands. Furthermore, the president, as commander in chief of the armed forces, was the only remaining authority to whom the army could appeal over the head of the gov­ernment-the presidency was thus the last bastion of army indepen­dence.

This office and the powers attached to it were all that separated Hitler from outright dictatorship. On August 1, 1934, though the news from Hindenburg’s estate in Neudeck seemed more hopeful, Hitler moved with unseemly haste, presenting to the cabinet for im­mediate signature legislation that would merge the offices of presi­dent and chancellor, to take effect when the old marshal died. The proposed law was based, to be sure, on the Act for the Reconstruction of the Reich of January 1934, which gave the government authority to pass new constitutional laws, but it deliberately ignored article 2 of the Enabling Act, which enjoined the government from making any changes to the office of Reich president. Hitler thus concluded his putative “legal revolution” with an open violation of constitutional law, a move emblematic of his duplicitous intentions all along.

When Hindenburg died early the next morning, on August 2, 1934, Hitler’s goals were all achieved. In the rush of events, the Reichswehr seemed most concerned about not being left out of the action. Blomberg attempted a coup de main of his own. Solely on the basis of his power to issue ministerial decrees, he ordered all officers and enlisted men to swear an oath of allegiance to their new supreme commander, the “Führer Adolf Hitler,” that very day. The wording of this oath violated both the Oath Act of December 1, 1933, and the constitution by requiring soldiers to swear unconditional obedience to Hitler personally, not just to the office he held. The consequences of this fateful step would continue to make history long after the illu­sions of those days had been dashed.

A premonition seemed to sweep the ranks the day that the oath was administered. Numerous memoirs speak of the “depressed mood” in the barracks after Blomberg’s surprise maneuver. The radical break with military tradition made apparent by the oath led General Ludwig Beck, head of the troop office and still one of Hitler’s declared supporters, to call it the “blackest day of his life,” 22while Baron Rudolph-Christoph von Gersdorff, then regimental adjutant in a cavalry unit, spoke of the oath as something “coerced.” For the first time doubts had been sowed in the minds of younger officers, who had hitherto been unstinting in their trust and confidence. 23Once roused, these doubts would eventually lead some of them to distance themselves from the regime and a few to resist it, despite the numer­ous obstacles in their way-not the least of which was the oath of personal loyalty they had sworn to the Führer.