Joachim Fest - Plotting Hitler's Death

Everything was now rushing toward a final resolution. The very next day, when Brauchitsch and Halder visited the commanders in the West to canvass their views once again on the impending offen­sive, Stülpnagel invited Groscurth to come along and assigned him the task of “starting the preparations.” He offered encouragement and concrete information, especially about the position of reliable units and the commanders who could be counted on, and asked that Beck and Goerdeler be informed. Beck himself was discussing with Wilhelm Leuschner, a former trade union leader, the possibility of a general strike. A day later Oster was summoned to Zossen and asked to get out the previous year’s plans and update them if necessary. In his diary Gisevius captured the feeling of hectic excitement that filled him and the other conspirators, who had known nothing until then: “It’s going ahead… . Great activity. One discussion after another. Suddenly it’s just as it was right before Munich, 1938. I rush back and forth between OKW, police headquarters, the Interior Ministry, Beck, Goerdeler, Schacht, Helldorf, Nebe, and many others.” 36Meanwhile, in Zossen, arrangements were made “to secure head­quarters.”

Once again everything was ready. Much as the coup a year earlier was to be sparked by the order to attack Czechoslovakia, this time everything would be set in motion by Hitler’s command to attack in the West. Since Hitler had set November 12 as the date of the offen­sive, the orders would have to be issued by November 5 at the latest. On that date Brauchitsch had an appointment to see Hitler in the Chancellery; he intended to make one final attempt to dissuade the Führer from this “mad attack” by underscoring the unanimous oppo­sition of the generals. Halder’s plans were based on the expectation that when the commander in chief returned from his meeting at the Chancellery, rebuffed and quite possibly humiliated as well, he would not hesitate, as he had in 1938, to issue the marching orders, which only he could sign.

At noon on the appointed day, while Halder waited in the ante­chamber, Brauchitsch began his presentation to Hitler in the con­ference room of the Chancellery. Although the commander in chief formulated his concerns more pointedly than originally planned, Hitler listened quietly at first. However, when Brauchitsch began arguing that an offensive was impossible at that time, not only for technical reasons but also because of the failings and lack of disci­pline that the troops had demonstrated in Poland-particularly while on the attack-Hitler flew into a rage. He hurled accusations at Brauchitsch, demanded to see proof of his allegations, wanted to know what had been done about them and whether death sentences had been imposed on soldiers guilty of cowardice. Hitler loudly sum­moned Keitel into the room, and as Brauchitsch fumbled for words and became entangled in contradictions, he raged against “the spirit of Zossen,” which he knew all about and would soon destroy. Then he abruptly left the room, “slamming the door” and leaving the com­mander in chief standing there. 37

Brauchitsch, who had turned “chalky-white… his face twisted,” according to one observer, found his way back to Halder. 38Together they set out for Zossen, Brauchitsch exhausted and in a state of col­lapse, Halder apparently composed. When Brauchitsch casually men­tioned Hitler’s threat about the “spirit of Zossen,” however-he had not really made much of it-Halder’s ears pricked up and he, too, was seized by panic. Just a few days earlier, he had been warned by the chief signal officer, General Erich Fellgiebel, that Hitler suspected something, or at any rate was making increasingly suspicious-sounding comments about the army high command. This, coupled with Brauchitsch’s revelation, made Halder fear that the plans for a coup had been betrayed or been uncovered by Hitler in some way. As soon as he was back at headquarters, therefore, Halder ordered all coup-related documents destroyed immediately. Not long afterwards, the order to launch an offensive in the West arrived.

By late afternoon Brauchitsch had regained his composure. Hitler, he said, had simply caught him completely by surprise. Although the order to launch an offensive had once again created precisely the situation that was supposed to spark the coup, Brauchitsch now declared that the attack in the West could no longer be stopped. He added, “I myself won’t do anything, but I won’t stop anyone else from acting.”

Halder, alternating between resignation and apprehension, expressed similar sentiments. He told Groscurth that now that their undertaking had been abandoned, “the forces that were counting on us are no longer bound to us.” Halder felt that there was no one who could succeed Hitler and that the younger officers were not yet ready for a putsch. Groscurth insisted that they act, arguing that the factors cited by Halder had been just as true before the scene in the Chancel­lery and reminding him that Beck, Goerdeler, and Schacht were still on board, not to mention the determined Canaris. Halder responded angrily, “If they’re so sure at Military Intelligence that they want an assassination, then let the admiral take care of it himself!” 39

Groscurth immediately carried this challenge back to Military Intelligence on Tirpitzufer, infuriating Canaris. At this point the opposition forces began falling apart at a pace so rapid it was almost visible. Canaris took Halder’s message, which was possibly exaggerated in the retelling, to mean that the OKH was foisting the assassination attempt off on him because it could no longer do it. One of the questions that remains unanswered to this day is why Oster, who witnessed Canaris’s outburst, failed to point out that an assassin was now available in the person of Erich Kordt, who had relatively easy access to the Chancel­lery and Hitler, was prepared to put his life on the line, and awaited only the necessary explosives, which a section head named Erwin von Lahousen had promised to procure. Most likely Oster was all too aware of Canaris’s long-standing antipathy toward political assassinations of any kind. But Oster’s silence also highlights how contradic­tory and uncoordinated the plans of even the innermost core of conspirators remained until the very last moment.

Soon Oster and Gisevius received further evidence that the resistance was unraveling. For encouragement, they went to see Witzleben, who had heretofore been steadfast in his determination, at his headquarters in Bad Kreuznach. But even he expressed strong doubts that Hitler could still be stopped from launching the offensive. Witzleben believed that the only remaining possibility would be for the three army group commanders in the West-Leeb, Rundstedt, and Bock-to refuse to transmit the order to attack when the time came. On the way back from Bad Kreuznach, Oster stopped in Frankfurt am Main to see Leeb and explore the potential for such a step. How­ever, when Oster not only mentioned the names of many of the con­spirators but also drew from his pocket two proclamations, both written by Beck, to be read during the military takeover, Leeb’s first general staff officer, Colonel Vincenz Müller, responded with outrage. Muller castigated Oster for his recklessness and eventually per­suaded him to “burn the two documents in my big ashtray.” Witzleben, too, was indignant when he heard about Oster’s indiscre­tion and announced that he would not see Oster anymore. 40

Shortly before their departure on the evening of November 8, Oster and Gisevius heard news that Hitler had narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich by unexpect­edly cutting short a speech that was scheduled to last several hours. Gisevius immediately conceived the idea of blaming the assassination attempt on Himmler and using it to justify a coup, in much the same way as the fictitious attempt on the Führer’s life discussed by several of the plotters in September, 1938. But the main consequence of the assassination attempt was the immediate tightening of security mea­sures, which heightened the already considerable difficulties that Lahousen was experiencing in procuring explosives for Erich Kordt. Nevertheless, Kordt was assured once more on November 10 that everything would be ready the next day. There was a catch, however. Under the new restrictions, Lahousen was only able to acquire an extremely complicated detonator that required special training to op­erate. Kordt declared that he was still prepared to proceed, but now Oster got cold feet and backed out. Thus was Hitler spared thanks to the first of many “providential” events that would henceforth occur regularly, preserving him for the “Herculean tasks” that he believed himself destined to carry out.