Helmuth Groscurth had been a courier for Org-C and, after a period in farming, joined the Abwehr in 1935 and in June 1938 was appointed to Abteilung II (Sabotage). Groscurth was not an opponent of Nazism from the outset, but became disillusioned at the racial theory, its policy towards the Church (he was a member of the Evangelical Church), the overthrow of the Constitution and the rule of terror by party and SS.48 It was Groscurth who brought Lahousen into Oster’s Vienna circle in 1938, and later suggested him as his successor at Abteilung II ‘to maintain the continuity of Resistance activity’.49 On Lahousen’s arrival in Berlin on 1 June 1938, Oster had told him: ‘There is a criminal at the head of the Reich.’50
Canaris knew the former Stahlhelm leader Theodor Duesterberg briefly after the war. In the spring of 1936 Canaris warned him that he was being watched by the Gestapo51 and guaranteed him emergency sanctuary at Abwehr Headquarters should a dangerous situation arise. His son Georg, until 1935 at Stahlhelm, who had Jewish ancestry and could not find work, was recruited by the Abwehr; by 1940 he was working for Oster as head of finance, setting up secret foreign exchange funds in Switzerland for resistance groups around Oster and Dohnanyi.52
Another ex-Stahlhelm leader at Abwehr was Werner Schrader, whom Canaris had met at the 1936 Olympic Games. He was installed at Abwehrstelle Munich under Marogna-Redwitz as a Hauptmann (E) in a specially created Referat office.
The Abwehr became the destination for many ex-Naval Brigade, GKSD and Stahlhelm personnel who had fallen foul of the regime. Canaris even managed to extract the Jewish Fritz Grabowsky, a confidant of Pabst, the press chief at GKSD Staff, from Oranienburg concentration camp in 1938. In Denmark Grabowsky worked with Horst von Pflugk-Harttung to set up a network of Abwehr agents, and when his activities were discovered at the end of 1938, Canaris sent him to France.53 Hans von Dohnanyi, the part-Jewish lawyer who had joined Oster’s circle during his work in the Fritsch case, joined the Abwehr in August 1939.54
The Abwehr was by no means a refuge for the Resistance or an asylum for opponents of the regime, however. Of the 13,000 officers, officials and clerks working for the wartime Abwehr, fifty at most could be considered active conspirators55 and as a convinced anti-Communist Canaris would never accept former KPD, SPD or other Marxist activists.56
Oster was relentless in his efforts to unify the opposition to Hitler. After failing to coerce the Wehrmacht generals to act during the Fritsch crisis, he next set out to expand the circle around Canaris and himself with men such as Army judge Karl Sack, Berlin Police-President Graf Helldorf and his deputy Graf von der Schulenburg,57 a specialist in constitutional law appointed at the end of 1937 who favoured an Army uprising against the SS and party.58 General Erwin von Witzleben, the first senior military commander to work consistently for the removal of Hitler, had been admitted to a Dresden sanatorium during the Fritsch crisis, and Schulenburg did not met him until March 1938. Schulenburg was probably introduced to Heinz by Oster; on his first visit to Heinz’s house he spoke out volubly against the regime. Earlier both had men been supporters of the Strasser clique within the NSDAP and were oriented towards conservative leading personalities such as Oswald Spengler; it was through Schulenburg that the so-called ‘Graf Group’ of opponents to the regime, including Yorck von Wartenburg, Graf Üxküll and Adam von Trott zu Sulz came into contact with Heinz.59 Schulenburg had no qualms about taking people such as Hermann Maass from illegal trade unions or the SPD.
On 1 June 1938 after Keitel had restructured the OKW, Canaris now headed Ausland/Abwehr. The former Abwehr Gruppen were rearranged into Abteilungen such as Abwehr-Abteilung II (Sabotage, Psychological Warfare, Incitement and German Invasions).60
Head of Abteilung Ausland was Kapitän zur See Leopold Bürkner, who had worked with Ribbentrop on the London Naval Treaty in 1935 and was now liaison officer to the Foreign Ministry. His responsibility was to keep Keitel, the Wehmacht Command Staff through Jodl and the chiefs of the General Staffs of the three Wehrmacht services informed and to instruct the German overseas attachés. He was also liaison officer to the Wehrmacht Plenipotentiary of the Triple Power Pact and accompanied their representatives in meetings with Hitler. Bürkner recounted later how Canaris had given him a free hand to run the combined offices and protected him in awkward situations.61 The next foreign policy crisis would be the first test of character for the growing opposition movement.
16
Between Obedience and Conscience
On 28 March 1938, Hitler received at the Berghof Foreign Minister Ribbentrop together with leaders of the Sudetendeutsche Party (SdP), Konrad Henlein and Karl Hermann Frank. Henlein had informed Hitler in a letter the previous November that an understanding between Germans and Czechs was practically impossible and that a solution to the Sudeten question, ‘the incorporation of the Sudeten-German region, even the entire area of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia into the Reich’1 could only come from the Reich. Hitler let Henlein know that he intended ‘to resolve the Czech problem in the not-too-distant future’,2 by making unacceptable demands to Prague ‘so as to avoid the Czech Government giving in at some stage to British pressure to make concessions to the Sudeten Germans’.3 Within a month, at the SdP rally in Carlsbad, Henlein announced the demands of his party to the Prague Government, extending to autonomy for the Sudetenland and a cancellation of the Czech mutual assistance treaties with France and Soviet Russia.4 This was an open confrontation with Prague, and within four weeks Europe was on the verge of war.5
The Sudeten situation was a knock-on effect of the annexation of Austria. In 1938 there were about 3.2 million Czech citizens of German blood, of whom at the end of March 770,000 were SdP members; the traditional German parties left the Czech Government and joined with the SdP after the annexation. With the entry of other organisations, by July 1938 the SdP had 1.3 million members, about 41.6 per cent of the German population of Czechoslovakia,6 and the hope was that the Sudetenland was next on the Wehrmacht list.
Since 1935, when Henlein had won a spectacular election victory, the Abwehr had operated a large network of agents directed mainly from Abwehrstellen at Breslau and Dresden.7 They had competition from the SS and SD attempting to extend their influence to the pro-Nazi sections of the Sudeten Germans and the radical elements in Henlein’s SdP. The Abwehr supported the ‘traditionalists’ and Henlein, who had had been agitating for an autonomous Catholic region and not necessarily for a war to satisfy Sudeten interests.8
According to former Abwehr officer Erwin Stolze, it had been Abwehr II that in 1937 had arranged for Henlein’s deputy and SdP propaganda chief, Karl Hermann Frank, to infiltrate the Czech armed forces with SdP help, with the aim of setting up Resistance cells and an organisation that could offer effective support to the Wehrmacht if it invaded.9 Since 1935 Frank had had links with the SS-led Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle, and on discovering this Canaris relieved him of his operational duties in 1937, replacing him in 1938 by former Austrian officer Richard Lammel.10
Around the end of 1936 ‘an upright man of the people’, Oskar Schindler, entered the Abwehr; he was held and interrogated by the Czech secret police in the summer of 1938 during an attempt to recruit an informer for the Abwehr, the Czechs concluding in a highly confidential report that Schindler was ‘a high calibre spy and additionally very dangerous’.11 After the war his name was on a list of nine people who had been involved in especially daring activities – sabotage and commando operations – in connection with the invasion of Poland.12
Keitel had ordered plans to be drawn up for the military intervention in Czechoslovakia, ‘Fall Grün’, although no date for the attack existed at this point. Meanwhile, chief of the General Staff, Beck, warned in a memorandum of 5 May that Germany, by reason of its ‘poor economic and military situation’ was not ‘capable of fighting a long war’. Moreover everything must be done ‘to prevent Britain entering a war on the side of our enemies. That is, however, to be expected if Germany tries to force a solution of the Czech problem against British w
ishes.’13
Hitler reacted angrily to this memorandum, parts of which Keitel and Brauchitsch had forwarded him without Beck’s knowledge.14 ‘A Foreign-Political Assessment of the Situation Following the Annexation of Austria’, authored by Oster and Heinz, recommended an accommodation with Britain because a war against Czechoslovakia at this time would involve too high a risk. They pleaded for an agreement with the Soviet Union to avoid a war on two fronts.
From 2 to 10 May Hitler surrounded himself with an enormous entourage of five hundred diplomats, officials, party functionaries, security men and journalists on a State visit to Italy in order to sound out Mussolini’s response if Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. Ernst von Weizsäcker, secretary of state at the Foreign Office, considered: ‘Our intentions towards Czechoslovakia are not of interest to Mussolini. He sees our intentions there as “arms by foot”. Is that an encouragement or a warning? The Führer believes it is the former. He is thinking of resolving the Sudeten-German question this year since the constellation could worsen.’15
On the night of 20 May 1938 Czech President Benes ordered a partial mobilisation of the Army and called up 180,000 reservists,16 beginning a weekend of hectic diplomatic consultations. Canaris watched the measures for mobilisation and recommended by cable: ‘I consider it essential that the Führer advise the commander-in-chief as to his intentions soon.’17 The situation intensified when two Sudeten Germans were killed in a minor incident with Czech police, which Hitler took as a personal humiliation.18
On 30 May, the revised Plan Grün was on the table, regarding which Hitler declared: ‘It is my unshakeable resolve to overcome Czechoslovakia in the near future by military action.’ The political leadership would await, or bring about, the politically and militarily suitable situation;19 Hitler had now decided on war even if the Western Powers intervened, and the Abwehr played a central role in the preparations. Primarily it was Groscurth’s Abteilung II which was to ensure the smooth running of the planned operation through propaganda, infiltration, cooperation with deserters, acts of sabotage and occupation of the border fortifications.20
Beck warned Brauchitsch in a letter of 15 july 1938 that ‘a military intervention by Germany against Czechoslovakia will automatically lead to a European, or World War, which from the human perspective will end not only in a military, but also a general catastrophe for Germany’,21 and in a memorandum to Brauchitsch the next day Beck remarked that ‘these decisions gamble with the nation’s existence; history will condemn these leaders with a debt of blood if they fail to act according to the principles of expert and State political knowledge and conscience. Your soldierly obedience has its limits where your knowledge, conscience and responsibility forbid you to carry out an order.’22
At this time, Hans Oster was with Beck almost daily asking his support for the planned coup attempt, and even Quartermaster-General Halder urged Beck to be more active in opposing Hitler’s plans – memoranda alone were not sufficient. Beck responded with a memorandum containing ideas propounded during the Fritsch crisis by Canaris and Hossbach or Oster;23 the document urged the self-assertion of the Wehrmacht against the SS and demanded a basic reform of the Third Reich. ‘Probably for the last time,’ Beck wrote on 19 July,
Fate offers us the opportunity to free the German people and the Führer himself from a Czech nightmare and the omens of a tyranny that will destroy the existence and welfare of the Reich:
1. There can and must be no doubt but that this struggle will be fought for the Führer.
2. There must never be even the slightest suspicion of a plot, yet the determination of the most senior military leaders must be manifest at every step . . . Brief, clear expressions: for the Führer! Against war! Against tyranny! Peace with the Church! Freedom of speech! An end to the methods in Czechoslovakia! The rule of law again in the Reich!24
Was Beck aiming for a programme of reform in which the Third Reich would be purified,25 or was this the agenda for a revolution which, had it been successful, would have destroyed the existence of National Socialism?26 The programme was illusory, for it proceeded from the false assumption that if only one could destroy the SS and SA, the State would come back to a sober course. Yet it was palpably Hitler himself who was steering, and Beck was speaking decisively to those power-holders upon whom Hitler was relying.27 In another memorandum on 29 July Beck wrote declining all responsibility of the generals for a war against Czechoslovakia and suggested the mass resignation of the generals and senior commanders should Hitler insist on going ahead with war.28 On 4 August Brauchitsch summoned a conference of the senior generals at the Bendlerstrasse but preferred Halder’s significantly more moderate memorandum of 16 July in which he expressed doubts about war, in regard to the current state of preparations. Beck gave up, and retired on 18 August.29
On 6 August, the head of Amtsgruppe Ausland, Bürkner, informed Canaris and Oster of a statement by the British ambassador Henderson that Britain would agree to any sensible solution of the Sudeten crisis provided no force was used.30 The Foreign Office recorded: ‘As Kapitän Bürkner noted in conclusion that we too would welcome a peaceful solution, the ambassador expressed by means of a gesture that he probably doubts it. The conversations then ended.’31 Canaris informed Hitler of what Henderson had said, which fortified Hitler in his resolve for war. In his diary entry for 10 August Goebbels said: ‘In Czechoslovakia terror against Germans blooms again. Another death. We will now strike massively against those bush-rangers. The Führer is hesitant about the Prague question; he has already solved it mentally and divided it into Gaue.’32 Goebbels noted with satisfaction that propaganda companies were even being set up in the Army, and the preparations for the worst case scenario were therefore being made at full speed.33
Keitel’s adjutant, Eberhard, recorded a violent outburst by Canaris: ‘I cannot go along with this any longer. We will not allow ourselves to be used as propagandists of fables of atrocity.’34 Instructions for the Army propaganda units were set out by Groscurth’s Abteilung II, which was also responsible for the production of leaflets to intimidate the Czech population and provide the Sudeten Germans with their guidelines; Hitler reserved the right to edit these fly-bills.35
Canaris attempted to counteract Hitler’s warmongering by manipulating the flow of intelligence reports and gave Lahousen, who was responsible for reports from the east, secret orders for the handling of material from the Czech Republic:
Prioritise and OVERVALUE all reports and signals which mention the strength of the Czech land fortifications, the determination of the Czech people and government to resist as well as the probability of the intervention of the Western Powers and the Soviet Union (Russian air force). This will counteract the optimistic reports of the SD and similar party centres based on National Socialist ideology.36
On 15 August, just before Beck’s resignation, Ribbentrop accused the Army and General Staff of disseminating false information, insisting that ‘Britain and France will not come into the war.’37 Canaris and Oster were searching for a way to convince the British that a strong attitude towards Hitler was essential and accepted the offer of the Pomeranian landowner Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin to travel to London as emissary. Shortly after the annexation of Austria, Kleist had confided to the Central European correspondent of the News Chronicle, Ian Colvin, that Hitler had more far-reaching plans and his next objective was Czechoslovakia,38 and had asked for an interview with Lord Lloyd of Dolobran, president of the Navy League and chairman of the British Council.
Beck had told Kleist: ‘Bring me definite evidence that Britain will fight if we attack Czechoslovakia and I will make an end of this regime,’39 but Kleist’s mission was difficult because he was being watched by the Gestapo. Canaris and Oster procured a passport for him while Colvin contacted the British embassy and sources in London,40 and on 18 August, Kleist travelled to London, where he met the permanent under-secretary of state at the Foreign Office, Sir Robert Vansittart, opposition politicians and also opponents of
appeasement, Lord Lloyd and Winston Churchill.
Meanwhile the Hungarian regent, Admiral von Horthy, had planned a State visit to Germany for 22 August 1938, and with the agreement of Secretary of State von Weizsäcker, Canaris and Groscurth travelled to Budapest to stir up concern in Hungary at Hitler’s warmongering; Groscurth noted in his diary: ‘The regent is determined to protest to the Führer against war.’41 The regent obviously changed his mind once in Germany and von Weizsäcker concluded: ‘(a) Hungary is happy to expect to receive no final advices from us and (b) Hungary believes it will probably be able to join in the fighting fourteen days after the conflict begins.’42
On 22 August, twenty-six Sudeten Germans trained by the Abwehr were captured while arms smuggling, which Karl Hermann Frank took as an opportunity to call upon SdP supporters ‘to find in these Marxist terror acts their right to defend themselves’.43 He had previously declared to the German commercial envoy in Prague that the Czech State could not protect Sudeten German citizens, and this would provide the foundation for a German invasion.44 The same day Frank saw Hitler: ‘Führer is determined for war,’ he reported, and Groscurth noted: ‘orders creation of incidents in CSR. Insulted Benes, will capture him alive and string him up himself.’45 Canaris was attempting meanwhile to motivate the more moderate Henlein, who was not happy about war, to intercede with Hitler.46
Kleist returned from London on 24 August after a disappointing outcome to his mission; Vansittart had commissioned a speech of warning by Lord Simon, chancellor of the Exchequer, and there would be naval manoeuvres should the situation deteriorate further. This was hardly likely to convince the German generals that the British were going to fight. Churchill sent a letter to the British embassy in Berlin of which Kleist received a copy, one of the rare encouraging signs ever given to the German Resistance from abroad. Churchill wrote:
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