Joachim Fest - Plotting Hitler's Death

The German emissaries, many of whom considered themselves particularly knowledgeable about Great Britain, believed that making material demands such as these would heighten their credibility with the British. It is certainly true that the conspirators would never have gained the necessary public support to overthrow Hitler if their new regime had begun by renouncing all that the Führer had achieved-for instance, by revoking the Anschluss with Austria-whether voluntarily or under foreign pressure. Still, it is hard to believe their fool­ishness in playing down the basically moral nature of the opposition to Hitler and emphasizing German territorial claims instead, all in the belief that they would be better understood by the materialistic Brit­ish, who are moved not by theory but by practical considerations.

Further confusing the issue for the British was the fact that nearly all these self-declared opponents of the regime held posts within it, some of them quite senior. At the end of a trip abroad in 1938, Adam von Trott wrote to his friend David Astor that, after giving the question much thought, he had decided to return to Germany solely in order to combat the Nazi regime. Suspicion lingered and grew, nev­ertheless, often leading to the breakup of long-standing friendships. The British, so blessed by nature and history, could hardly begin to understand the pretenses and subterfuges to which opponents of a totalitarian system had to resort. In the end, many in Britain could hardly distinguish between Hitler and these self-described opponents of his who seemed to endorse so many of his demands. “There is really very little difference between them. The same sort of ambitions are sponsored by a different body of men, and that is about all,” wrote Vansittart, even though he was quite sympathetic toward the main purpose of the emissaries, namely a firm stance toward Hitler. Hugh Dalton, future chancellor of the exchequer, remarked sarcastically that these German conservatives were nothing more than “a race of carnivorous sheep.” 9Finally, there was the conviction in Britain, by no means confined to readers of the gutter press, that Germans were innately evil, or at any rate inclined to be so, as a result of their historical and cultural heritage. Cast in this light, Hitler’s conservative opponents did not seem much different from the Führer himself, and considering the sins of Germany’s elites extending back to the days of the kaisers, they were certainly no better.

One additional consideration actually weighed in favor of Hitler against his opponents. It was well known that the Junkers had always been more strongly oriented toward the East than toward the West and had long had many interests in common with Russia, in addition to their neighborly, cultural, and even emotional ties; no one could rule out the possibility that this group would not one day come to an understanding with the Soviet Union-as they had before with Rus­sia-ideological impediments notwithstanding. Hitler, on the other hand, clearly lay above all reproach in this regard. Whatever else might be said about him, he was genuinely opposed to Communism, which was spreading into Western Europe through the Front Populaire in France, the Spanish civil war, and countless activities, mostly underground. Hitler himself described Germany under his leadership as a bulwark against the tide of Communism. He told Arnold Toynbee that he had been placed “on earth to lead humanity in its inevitable struggle against Bolshevism.” 10To people who saw the world in such sweeping, categorical terms, Hitler’s illegal acts and despotic style must have shrunk to relative insignificance, or at least seemed minor problems that the Germans themselves could handle. Hitler’s alien, sinister aura only heightened his credibility as the commander of a last bastion of Western civilization against the Communist hordes.

The efforts of the German conspirators were stymied by these as well as many other misunderstandings and misconceptions, which replicated on an international level the same delusions about Hitler shared by his would-be partners in domestic politics. In the end, therefore, there were insurmountable obstacles to any meeting of minds with the British, and if anything, the distance between the conspirators and the British only grew. When von Trott tried to prod Chamberlain in the direction of the German opposition, his words were received “icily.” The ultimate reason for the countless misun­derstandings in which the talks finally bogged down was clearly the two sides’ mutual lack of understanding. The Germans, especially those who had British ancestors, had studied in Britain, or took a particular interest in the country, greatly admired the vast British Empire. They invoked it frequently and, to the discomfort of their hosts, often expressed their hope that Germany might one day achieve for itself some modicum of the hegemony that Britain had over the world. The British tended to interpret this as a manifestation of the old Teutonic ambitions and the insatiable German desire for a “place in the sun” that had challenged Britain’s own status in the world for generations. Neither side perceived that the era of the great empires was actually drawing to a close, that imperialism had already become a relic of the past.

In the end, all that remained was disappointment and bitterness, and there is certainly some truth in the description of all these futile efforts as an Anglo-German tragedy. However, it was not only clumsiness and short-sightedness that led to failure; there were also conflict­ing interests at issue. With the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact in August 1939, the increasingly half-hearted contacts seemed to die away. They flickered to life again here and there, before disappearing completely toward the end of the war. Fifty years later British histori­ans are beginning to speak of Whitehall’s “needless war” against Hitler’s domestic opponents. 11

Despite the setbacks suffered by the resistance during these weeks, Oster remained undaunted. The clearer it became that Hitler was leading Germany straight into another war, the more numerous and open his opponents became. The opposition circles that had formed in the Foreign Office and in Military Intelligence were now joined by Hans Bernd Gisevius, a former assistant secretary in the Ministry of the Interior with an extensive knowledge of all the cliques and cote­ries in the corridors of power; Count Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, an assistant secretary to the Reich price commissioner; and Helmuth Groscurth, chief of the army intelligence liaison group on the general staff. All of them had friends in whom they confided as well as superi­ors and subordinates whom they informed and drew into opposition circles. Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg, for instance, won over the prefect of police in Berlin, Count Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorf; even more importantly, Oster revived his old connections with Erwin von Witzleben, the commander of the Berlin military district. Witzleben was a simple, unpretentious man with clear judgment. During one of his conversations with Oster in the summer of 1938, he did not hesi­tate to declare himself ready for action: “I don’t know anything about politics, but I don’t need to in order to know what has to be done here.” 12

Beck was continuing his efforts and for the first time he began to break out of the realm of mere counterproposals. At a meeting with Brauchitsch on July 16, he suggested that the generals join together to form a united opposition front. If this failed to sway Hitler and he continued on a course toward war, the generals should resign enmasse. “Final decisions” needed to be made, Beck wrote, arguing that if the officer corps felled to act its members would incur a “blood guilt… . Their soldiers’ duty to obey ends when their knowledge, their conscience, and their sense of responsibility forbid them to carry out an order. If their advice and warnings are ignored in such a situation, they have the right and the duty before history and the German people to resign.” 13