I am certain that if German troops cross the Czech border by force . . . it will bring about a World War. As at the end of July 1914 I am sure that Britain will march with France. Do not let yourselves be deceived, I beg you. Such a war would, once begun, be fought to the bitter end as was the last. All of us should think less about what could happen in the first few months and more about where we will all find ourselves at the end of the third or fourth year of war.47
Canaris was said to have mentioned this letter in a report he delivered to Hitler, Weizsäcker included an extract of it in a memorandum quoting overseas opinion on a possible conflict between German and Czechoslovakia, naming Churchill as author but not stating where he had obtained the letter.48
On 30 August the British Government advised the Czechs to accept Henlein’s Carlovy Vary programme and guarantee Sudeten German autonomy within the Czech State.49 That evening Canaris discovered that when the Navy warned Hitler that it had only one pocket battleship and eight U-boats operational, he replied: ‘That is not important, I know that Britain will stay neutral.’50
On 2 September 1938 Hitler told Henlein that he would move within the month. Henlein informed his British contact, a colleague of the ‘neutral’ negotiator Lord Runciman, that Hitler was interested in a peaceful solution, which was untrue, and supported the efforts at appeasement, but the next day Hitler set the date for the attack as 1 October.51 On 2 September Canaris had been in Rome,52 where he met the chief of the Italian General Staff, Pariani,53 who informed Hitler on his return that Italy would not fight and strongly urged Germany against war. Hitler was unimpressed, believing that Mussolini had differences of opinion with his General Staff similar to those that Hitler had with his.54
Keitel gave Canaris strict orders not to forward any more political reports and alarming signals to the Army or Luftwaffe; Goering had sent Hitler a file ‘Reports Advising Against War’ and garnished the cover with the words ‘This is how OKW (Keitel) works against you.’55 Meanwhile, Frank was working to set up the incidents in Czechozlovakia ordered by Hitler. On 7 September an SdP commission had travelled to Mährisch-Ostrau to investigate the legality of the arrest of eighty-three Sudeten Germans on charges of arms smuggling and espionage, and Sudeten German deputies and police had clashed during an organised demonstration outside the court building;56 Groscurth believed ‘Incidents in Mährisch-Ostrau are doubtless provoked.’57 Frank’s handiwork had the desired effect. He and Henlein broke off the negotiations with Benes that had been underway since the latter caved in to British pressure and stated that he was ready to concede the demands of the Carlsbad programme. When Canaris returned from the Nuremberg Rally on 11 September, he told Groscurth that Henlein had now completely fallen in line behind Hitler and Frank. One day later Hitler delivered his long-awaited speech of warning should the Sudeten Germans be denied self-determination.58
On 13 September Keitel addressed departmental heads. ‘Wild complaints against the Army,’ Groscurth wrote, ‘Admiral protests about it.’59 Jodl noted in his diary:
People have begun complaining to the Führer about alarmism and are implicating OKW as well. Abwehr reports – conversation between Canaris and Pariani, and a memorandum from military–economic Staff about the strength and invulnerability of British armaments industry give unjustified cause . . . General Keitel emphasised that he will not tolerate any officer at OKW who involves himself in criticism and alarmism . . . there was a cold and frosty atmosphere at Nuremberg and it is very sad that the Führer had the whole country behind him but not the senior Army generals.60
Since May 1938, the SdP had been building the Voluntary German Protection Service (FS) from their military trained forces, to function as a kind of security and police service, gathering information about political opponents, spying on the border fortifications, arranging provocative actions and raids and organising general chaos. Its members were trained in Germany and the Abwehr recruited from amongst them.61 During the Nuremberg Rally the time came for the FS; up to 9 September the number of arranged incidents had been small, but on 11 September the first injuries were reported on both sides.62
Radiosender Breslau broadcast a provocative speech by Hitler to the Sudeten Germans on 12 September and marches and mass demonstrations followed. On 13 September when Prague imposed emergency rule in the disputed region there were casualties, and on 15 September the SdP leaders broke off all negotiations with Prague, closed down their office and flew to Germany.63 On 17 September Hitler ordered the formation of a ‘Sudeten German Legion’ to guarantee the protection of the Sudeten Germans and maintain the unrest and disturbances; terror squads were to be formed from the Freikorps’s sub-unit to create constant unrest in the border region and the Führer himself would arrange major actions through the OKW.64
The Freikorps Staff was billeted at Schloss Donndorf in Bavaria. OKW, SS and SA sent liaison officers. Groscurth was responsible for the link with the Abwehr65 and saw the arrangement as ‘the politics of adventure’ but ordered the support of the Freikorps. This resulted in a violent argument with Canaris, but the next day, after receiving an OKW directive, Canaris ordered ‘the fullest support of the Freikorps’,66 Groscurth noting with horror in his diary on 20 September that ‘the Freikorps, entering behind the Army’, would ‘mop up’,67 and take its orders from Himmler instead of the Army, contrary to the OKW directive.
Beck’s successor as chief of the General Staff was Franz Halder, whose aversion to Hitler occasionally drove him to ‘primitive outbursts of hate’.68 He was prepared to participate in a coup d’état, and at the beginning of September he sounded out Schacht, president of the Reichsbank, von Weizsäcker and General von Witzleben; the latter confirmed his readiness to handle the military preparations for a coup if Oster and Gisevius assisted him, and he had the orders of Halder or Brauchitsch to proceed.69
On 2 September Halder despatched former Stahlhelm leader retired Oberstleutnant Hans Böhm-Tettelbach to London to urge Vansittart to make no further concessions to Hitler.70 He failed to obtain an appointment to meet Vansittart and saw instead an old friend, together with a major in the British intelligence service of the General Staff, who promised to forward the message to Vansittart; that was the only success of his visit.71
Von Weizsäcker at the Foreign Office had co-workers conspiring against Hitler, amongst them members of the ‘Graf Group’ and the Kordt brothers, Erich and Theo, who were senior civil servants with contacts in London;72 Weizsäcker, Canaris and Oster thus held the key positions in a complicated web of connections. Although Halder considered Canaris ‘by nature a difficult person to converse with’73 and often complained that much of Weizsäcker’s information came to him incomplete because of the peculiar manner Canaris had of expressing himself, he developed a close relationship with the Abwehr chief, while the contact between Canaris and von Weizsäcker was also close. In his memoirs the latter wrote of Canaris with a mixture of admiration and respect: ‘One cannot pass over this phenomenon . . . Canaris had the gift of getting people to talk without giving anything away of himself. His watery blue eyes gave nothing away. Very rarely, and only through a small chink, one saw his character, clear as a bell, the ethical and tragic depths of his personality.’74 Canaris was one of the few people to whom von Weizäcker spoke ‘without reservations’.75
If it served the interest of the conspiracy, Weizsäcker would reveal it and his links to Canaris and potential allies. On 1 September he secretly met the High Commissioner of the Danzig People’s League, Professor Carl Jacob Burckhardt, in a remote corner of the Berlin Zoo. When he explained to Burckhardt the efforts being made in London, the professor recognised that ‘the whole thing was a conspiracy with a potential enemy to preserve peace, a double-game of the most extreme danger’. Weizsäcker spoke with the openness of the desperate man gambling all on the last card; he mentioned a secret mission that Theo Kordt had undertaken with Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax:
He pleaded with me to go to Switzerland to info
rm the British Foreign Office that one must speak to Hitler unequivocally, only then would he back-track. Even then Weizsäcker made no secret of the fact that he believed it was only possible to save the general peace and Germany if the one human figure in whose hands all power resided were to disappear. He indicated to me that he was in contact with Canaris.76
In fact, the planned mission of the Kordt brothers did not take place until after he had gone back to Switzerland;77 Burckhardt sought out an intermediary to Chamberlain, and Theo Kordt met Lord Halifax, to whom he made himself known as a member of the ‘internal German Resistance’ and asked that the BBC ‘broadcast a warning to the German people’ that they should get ‘their Army leaders’ to ‘intervene against Hitler’s policies by force of arms’.78
These missions were all fruitless, for the British Government had long since decided to surrender the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Czechs for the sake of peace.79 A few weeks after the Munich Conference Lord Halifax told Kordt: ‘We are not in the position to be as frank with you as you were with us. At the time when you gave us your message, we were already considering sending Chamberlain to Germany.’80
At about this time there began to form ‘a conspiracy in a conspiracy’,81 or ‘a plot within the plot’.82 Doubts as to the resolve of Halder and Canaris decided Witzleben, Oster, Schacht, Gisevius and Heinz to carry out a coup without Halder’s order. Witzleben believed he could count on his long-standing contacts with commanders and officers, above all General Walter Graf von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt – commanding officer of the 23rd Division at Postdam – who had indicated the previous autumn his readiness to move against the SS and Gestapo with force. Other conspirators in this group were Henning von Tresckow, Graf Bandissin,83 Paul Hase, later commandant of Berlin, and probably also Erich Hoepner.84 In early September Gisevius and Brockdorff discussed which ministries, barracks and strategically important installations in and around Berlin were to be occupied when Hitler was seized, and Gisevius spoke to Nebe and Helldorf regarding the police measures. The conspirators wanted to capture Hitler by means of a stormtroop operation using experienced soldiers and Freikorps men under Witzleben’s command. Canaris, Witzleben, Schacht and Gisevius were not in favour of assassinating Hitler; they felt he should be forced to resign and then either be put on trial or certified insane and confined in a security hospital. Attornies Dohnanyi and Sack had begun the preparations to try him as a common criminal using the evidence Dohnanyi had accumulated at the Ministry. The psychiatric opinion would be obtained from a medical team led by Dr Karl Bonhoeffer, Dohnanyi’s father-in-law.85
The assault troop in this plan would be made up of courageous, unscrupulous, motivated but politically unambitious men prepared, after the coup, to step back into the shadows.86 Heinz was asked by Witzleben and Oster at the beginning of September to head a unit of about thirty men,87 comprised of old street-fighters such as Liedig and Ludwig Gehre88 alongside Abwehr officers Groscurth and Dohring and with Heinz’s friend, Abwehr official Hans-Wolfram Knaak, as the tactical leader. Former members of the Stahlhelm and student ring were involved, as were Hans-Albrecht Herzner of Abwehrstelle Breslau, who one year later would lead the first commando operation of the Second World War, and journalist and military writer Albrecht Günther.89
The group around Halder and Canaris wanted a military dictatorship under Beck, leading eventually to civilian government, while Heinz and others preferred a kind of constitutional monarchy on the British model and had obtained from Prince Wilhelm of Prussia an assurance that he would step in should there be ‘a change in government circumstances’.90 Canaris knew little about these plans, and nothing of Heinz and Oster’s schemes to eliminate Hitler, even though it was he alone who gave the order to procure weapons and explosives for the conspirators.91
The date for Hitler to be arrested was apparently originally mid-September. On the evening of 14 September, Groscurth, his wife Charlotte and brother Reinhard waited at their Berlin flat; Groscurth seemed nervous and excited, once exclaiming, ‘Can’t you be quiet? Tonight Hitler will be arrested!’ Next morning he told his brother tersely that there had been an intervention.92 By this he can only have been referring to Chamberlain’s dramatic plea for a meeting with Hitler; the British prime minister arrived at Obersalzberg on 15 September to speak with Hitler.93
In Munich Chamberlain was greeted by cheering masses, but he, his aides and ambassador Henderson saw one troop transport after another pass them towards the Czech frontier. Nevertheless Chamberlain held firm to his belief that the Sudeten question was not worth war because his negotiator, Lord Runciman, considered Czech policy towards the national minorities as discriminatory and had suggested that Germans in the border regions should have the right to self-determination. Later Chamberlain put it in a nutshell: ‘It was like a long neglected disease. A surgical operation was necessary to save the life of the patient.’94
At the first meeting with Hitler, Chamberlain said he would leave immediately if Hitler had the definite intention to use force, but Hitler assured his visitor that in negotiating the Sudeten question the important thing was to recognise the right of the Sudeten German population to self-determination; if that were conceded then talks could follow. Chamberlain needed to consult his Cabinet colleagues and suggested another meeting, obtaining Hitler’s agreement not to use force in the meantime, unless he was provoked.95 After diplomatic discussions, Chamberlain returned to Germany on 22 September and met Hitler at the Dreesen Hotel in Bad Godesberg.96 He brought with him an attractive package: the agreement of the London, Paris and Prague governments to the principle of self-determination, a plan for the annexation of Sudeten German territory to Germany, transfer deadlines, border guarantees and a Non-Aggression Pact between Germany and Czechoslovakia. Hitler refused: ‘I am very sorry, Herr Chamberlain, but I can no longer discuss these things. After developments in recent days the solution is no longer valid.’97 By this he meant new Polish and Hungarian claims on Czechoslovakia, requiring prior clarification. Hitler then demanded agreement to his immediate occupation of the Sudetenland. At this Chamberlain left the discussion, and instead of appearing for the scheduled meeting the following morning sent a letter refusing Hitler’s demand. Two hours later Chamberlain suggested that he would put the new German demand to the Czechs and asked for it in writing. The German memorandum wanted the evacuation of the Czech Army from an area sketched on a map by 28 September – four days hence. Despite a report that Czechoslovakia had mobilised, Hitler stated that despite the provocation he would make no move while Chamberlain remained in Germany. The next morning the prime minister returned to London.98
On 19 September Canaris had visted Abwehrstelle VIII Breslau to discuss demarcation lines with Sudeten-Deutsches Freikorps (SDF) leaders. Together with Groscurth on 21 September at the Reichsschule Donndorf in Bavaria they obtained a negative impression of Henlein, ‘nervous with dictator-allure’.99 Himmler’s representative SS Oberführer Gottlob Berger had set up his headquarters in the SDF Staff quarters100 and after the war he stated that Canaris came every other day for talks with Henlein.101 On 21 September Groscurth noted in his diary, with an exclamation mark, that he had seen Henlein at the Bellevue Hotel where Heinz Jost had his headquarters. Jost would become head of Amt III (SD) of the SS administrative headquarters (Sicherheits-Hauptamt – SHA) and, as head of the Dresden Einsatzgruppe, he would be active during the invasion of Czechoslovakia with the Einsatzstab Prag.102 Contrary to the situation when Austria was annexed, SD Amt III under Jost would control affairs instead of Gestapa because it involved an action ‘abroad’, but in fact the task was more than SD could handle because it lacked structure and personnel. The typical structure of an Einsatzgruppe was Sipo, Ordnungspolizei (uniformed civilian police) and SD.103
On 24 September Heydrich and Kurt Daluege, Ordnungspolizei chief, paid a visit to the Bellevue Hotel at Dresden. Two days later, after it became known that Prague had turned down the German demands, Hitler delivered a strong spee
ch to an audience of twenty thousand in the Berlin Sportspalast in which he gave Benes a final ultimatum.
Canaris went to Keitel and drew his attention to Heydrich’s preparations to eliminate the German Communists in the Sudeten German region, ‘which do not coincide with our mobilisation directive’.104 He pointed out that Army High Command had the unlimited right to operate militarily in operational areas beyond the Reich without the need to have ‘the Sipo and SD mopping up after it’.105 Daluege received orders immediately to ensure that his preparations coincided with those of OKW. Groscurth wrote with surprise that Heydrich had threatened his Gestapo people with ‘the strongest measures for criminal acts – extraordinary!’106
Although there were high-priority arrest lists in existence, Canaris’s counterpart Best promised in his ‘Guidelines for the Activities of Gestapo Einsatzkommandos in the Sudeten German Regions’ that ‘under no circumstances are innocent people to be molested about trifling matters’, ‘the maltreatment and killing of prisoners is strictly forbidden.’107
The SDF, however, was neither under the control ofthe SD, the Einsatzgruppen or the Abwehr. ‘The SDF has three days’ freedom to hunt down all unwanted elements in Frank’s initiative for the Führer! Cleansing!’108 noted Groscurth on 28 September, the day when the ultimatum to Czechoslovakia expired.
The conspirators had meanwhile recovered from the Chamberlain intervention. Heinz wrote later that around the 20 September,109 after a meeting at Oster’s house attended by Witzleben, Heinz and Liedig, Oster asked Heinz privately afterwards why he seemed dissatisfied with the coup plan. ‘I answered that it did not seem to me that the stormtroop would find Witzleben’s method of committing suicide particularly original.’ Oster understood immediately and issued the order: ‘Hitler’s study is to be taken by force. Should the SS not resist, an incident is to be provoked in which Adolf Hitler and the greatest number possible of his staff are gunned down.’ This made it clear that there was no way back for the generals and that Hitler, even out of power, would still represent a deadly danger for any new government.110 On the afternoon of 23 September, however, when Oster was informed by Erich Kordt and Albrecht von Kessel about the most recent meeting between Hitler and Chamberlain, he said: ‘Now, thank God, we finally have the clear evidence that Hitler wants war no matter what. Now there can be no going back.’ He urged Kordt and Kessel: ‘But do everything you can to bring Hitler back to Berlin. The bird must come back to the barn.’111 Then he ordered Heinz to lead his stormtroopers to their waiting positions.
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