Plotting Hitler's Death
Joachim C. Fest
In Plotting Hitler’s Death Joachim Fest, acclaimed biographer of Adolf Hitler, brings together the full story of those Germans who, from 1933 almost until the moment the Third Reich collapsed, plotted to kill the Führer.
Fest recounts in vivid detail Count von Stauffenberg’s famous planting of a time-bomb at Hitler’s feet on 20 July 1944. But he also describes lesser-known plan by leading Wehrmacht generals who, reluctant to go to war, plotted in 1938 to have Hitler arrested, tried and shot—a plot they called off when Neville Chamberlain opted for appeasement at Munich. Included, too, are heroic attempts by isolated individuals and numerous conspiracies even among Germany’s highest-ranking officers.
Time and again, small numbers of Germans, civilian and military, noble and ignoble, schemed to topple the Führer, and on several occasions they came within minutes – or inches—of succeeding. In this compelling, definitive work Fest explores why they tried, why they found so little support either in Germany or outside it, and why they failed. As he places the resistance in the larger political and social context, we come to understand the difficulties of opposition in an age of totalitarianism.
PLOTTING HITLER’S DEATH
The German Resistance to Hitler
1933–1945
By JOACHIM FEST
Translated by Bruce Little
PREFACE
On July 20, 1944, a powerful bomb ripped through Adolf Hitler’s East Prussian headquarters during a briefing between the Führer and his senior officers. The bomb, planted by a dashing, highly decorated young count named Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, blew pieces of wreckage and columns of smoke high in the air and completely destroyed the wooden barracks that housed the crowded briefing room. Although it miraculously failed to maim or kill Hitler, the explosion dramatically announced to the world the existence of a secret, indigenous opposition to the Nazi regime.
These events are, of course, quite familiar to most readers. But what is less widely known is that well before July 20 a substantial number of Germans had come to despise Hitler and his policies, even as the Führer racked up impressive victories at the ballot box and on the battlefield. This nascent opposition formed clandestine groups to help Hitler’s victims escape from the country. Later, they plotted a coup d’état to rid Germany of Nazism and drafted plans for the society they wanted to create in place of the one they hoped to destroy. As many as fifteen assassination attempts were undertaken during the reign of National Socialism, but these efforts always failed: in some instances because of bad timing or poor planning; in others, because of the omnipresent scrutiny of the Gestapo or Hitler’s own unerring instinct for danger.
It was only in the summer of 1944, when the wholesale defeat of the German army was already in sight, that the plot to kill Hitler finally came to fruition. The Allies had landed in Normandy a few weeks earlier, signaling a decisive turn in the direction of the war. This is why many historians have argued that Stauffenberg’s bomb came too late to change the military and political course of the war, a fact of which the conspirators were only too well aware. Nevertheless, they wanted to send a message to the rest of the world that there had been men of principle in Germany who were prepared to lay down their lives to defeat Adolf Hitler.
There is ample reason to believe that the German resistance failed to achieve even this modest goal. The dark cloud of misfortune that hung over all of its endeavors has also cast a shadow on its historical legacy. Since the end of Hitler’s reign many books have appeared on the subject-both in German and English-but none of these has managed lo provide a full understanding of the conspirators and their actions.1 The earliest accounts were personal reminiscences by resistance leaders who survived, such as Fabian von Schlabrendorff and Hans Bernd Gisevius, and extracts from the journals left by Ulrich von Hassel, a lawyer and diplomat executed in 1944. In 1948 an émigré historian, Hans Rothfels, wrote his classic The German Opposition to Hitler: An Appraisal, the first comprehensive scholarly history. The subtle pathos of Rothfels’s book derived from his desire to make the public in the Allied countries aware of the history of the opposition movement, a history that had been largely suppressed.
A series of memoirs by less well known members of the resistance followed soon after the release of Rothfels’s book, as did the first attempts to assess the historical significance of the opposition (many of which tended to glorify their subject) and several scholarly works. During the 1960s a group of young historians published critical studies that examined the differing philosophies of the major resistance factions, as well as their clandestine dealings with the Allies. At about the same time the first significant biographies of the leaders of the resistance appeared. As the literature expanded, its scope broadened to include previously unknown opposition figures, as well as the diverse forms of political dissidence. Lastly, research into the resistance among workers brought entirely new themes and perspectives to light.
By now the flood of literature has become so vast, however, that it threatens lo submerge the real meaning and significance of the German opposition to National Socialism. Attention tends to focus on dramatic events like the idealistic and reckless actions of the White Rose, a group of students who distributed anti-Nazi leaflets in Munich; the courageous efforts of other groups are forgotten. Similarly, while the attempted coup d’état by a group of army officers on July 20, 1944, is quite well known, at least in its basic outline, little is remembered of the background: the various forces, motives, obstacles, and preparations that eventually culminated in Stauffenberg’s deed. An undertaking of that sort is always more than a date and a sequence of events, and only a consideration of its historical context can reveal its meaning and importance.
Notwithstanding the celebrated events of July 20, the German public has long had difficulty acknowledging the resistance to Hitler and has never sufficiently appreciated the extent to which the existence of a relatively broad opposition helped ease Germany’s acceptance back into the ranks of respectable nations. Foremost among the many reasons for this diffidence is the feeling-one deeply rooted in Germany’s authoritarian heritage-that the opposition committed treason by abandoning the German people to its collective fate at a critical moment. This accusation has been leveled frequently and emphatically at opposition leaders like Brigadier General Hans Oster. Although it has been almost universally rejected in academic circles-no one charges Oster with deliberately seeking to harm his country-arguments such as this have done little to change received ideas and biases.
Perhaps a different approach to assessing the opposition’s motives would succeed in convincing those who regard treason as an unpardonable offense. After several unsuccessful attempts to overthrow the regime, the conspirators’ sole remaining ambition by July 20, 1944, was to save as much of Germany’s “substance” as possible from the impending catastrophe. Recent evidence proves how well founded their motives were: one study shows that, while slightly more than 2.8 million German soldiers and civilians died during the nearly five years between the beginning of the war on September 1, 1939, and the attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944, 4.8 million died during the nine and a half months before the war ended in early May 1945. These figures appear even more shocking if we calculate how many were killed on average every day during those two periods. Before the attempted coup some 1,588 Germans were killed daily; after it 16,641-more than ten times as many-perished, even though the war had obviously been lost.2
To this human cost must be added the destruction visited upon cities, industry, and cultural treasures. The cities of Stuttgart, Darmstadt, Braunschweig, Würzburg, Kiel, Hildesheim, Ulm, Mainz, Dresden
, and Potsdam were all laid to ruin after the coup attempt, most of them having already suffered gravely in earlier bombing raids. The air war also continued virtually unimpeded against other cities, which were left defenseless following the complete collapse of German air power. Berlin did not suffer its most devastating attack until early 1945. Overall the destruction wrought in the last nine months of the war far exceeded that of the previous fifty-nine months, not to mention the countless casualties in other countries or the victims of Hitler’s extermination policy, which continued to the very end.
One of the factors inhibiting appreciation of the German resistance has been the cacophony of voices in which it found expression. Opponents of the regime were motivated not only by a simple concern for human rights but also by Christian, socialist, conservative, and even reactionary beliefs. There is much truth to the claim that the German resistance to the Third Reich never existed in the sense of a unified group or movement sharing a common set of ideals.3 In fact, the term resistance, which was not coined until after the war, encompasses numerous groups that acted separately and often held differing views. Although some of these groups eventually joined forces, for the most part they labored in isolation. Many organizations worked in such secrecy that to this day they are rarely mentioned in historical studies. The Solf Circle, which formed to assist the persecuted, is one such case, and others include the Stürmer group and the revolutionary left- and right-wing militants from the Weimar era who were brought together by former Freikorps leader “Beppo” Römer. We have some idea of the size of this last group only because nearly 150 members were tried before the so-called People’s Court in 1942 and 1943. In it’s early days the German resistance was dominated by left-wing groups such as Beginning Anew, the Socialist Front, the Saefkow group, and the International Socialist Fighting League. Most important of all was the group led by the young Luftwaffe lieutenant Harro Schulze-Boysen, which joined with Arvid and Mildred Harnack and their friends in the early 1940s to form what become known as the Red Orchestra, a name given to it by the Gestapo.4
Of all the various resistance groups, however, only three were able to forge closer ties over the years and develop a strategy that posed a genuine threat to the regime. These were the conservative circle around Carl Goerdeler, a former mayor of Leipzig, and Ludwig Beck, who had resigned as army chief of staff; the Kreisau Circle, which was led by Count Helmuth von Moltke and dominated by a Christian and socialist philosophy; and finally the regime’s opponents within the military. Around these groups moved a number of isolated individuals, including lawyers, former trade union leaders, businessmen, church officials, and state bureaucrats. Many developed resistance cells in their own offices, often with the tacit support of their superiors, such as Military Intelligence chief Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and Ernst von Weizäcker, the secretary of state in the Foreign Office. For a time, the Military Intelligence group actually played a leading role within the opposition.
It was this branch of the resistance whose motives were the clearest and whose efforts came closest to succeeding. And it was this branch that ultimately found expression in one symbolic act, for that is what the events of July 20, 1944, represented and how they were understood by most of the participants. The long road to this day, the internal tensions and setbacks, as well as the manifest futility of the effort are the subjects of this book.
Some might object that this is precisely the part of the resistance that has already drawn the lion’s share of attention, to the neglect of other opposition efforts. It is all the more surprising, therefore, that of the literally hundreds of books that have been published on this topic not one both relates the fascinating story of the plotters and attempts to analyze it. Christian Müller’s study of Stauffenberg, Peter Hoffmann’s groundbreaking works, and those of Klaus-Jürgen Müller, Helmut Krausnick, Hans Mommsen, and many others have made important contributions to our knowledge of the German resistance. All these works, however, are aimed at the limited number of experts in the field.
The present volume is intended for a broader audience with a general interest in history. Its purpose is not so much to convey new information as to recount an old story in the light of the latest research. It deals with folly and miscalculation, conflict and failure, human frailty and the ability to persevere in the face of adversity. The story is full of political and human drama that tends to be overlooked in strictly scholarly studies. What is new, here, above all, is the context in which this extraordinary drama was played out.
The lack of a comprehensive view, which is so integral to these events, has eroded the legacy of the German resistance. That legacy lies not in the political views of the opposition but rather in the insights that the plot to assassinate Hitler-like all momentous historical occurrences-offers us into the thoughts and actions of people operating under the most extreme circumstances. The fact that the subjects of this book failed in the end, after many attempts, does not in any way detract from their memory or from the example that they set.
1. THE RESISTANCE THAT NEVER WAS
Essential to the history of the German resistance is the sense of powerlessness that defined it from the outset. How Adolf Hitler managed in a single stroke and seemingly effortlessly to seize power and construct an unconstrained totalitarian system is a question that has been raised frequently since the end of his twelve-year rule. But this question was also on the minds of Germans who lived through that period. Contrary to what most of the Nazis’ defeated foes later claimed, it was not primarily by means of ruthless violence that Hitler rose to power, although terror and intimidation were certainly always present. Enabling factors far more complex were grasped relatively early on by astute observers of the Weimar Republic on the left as well as the right, who spoke not so much about how Hitler had overwhelmed the republic but about how the republic had caved in. The self-induced paralysis and shortsightedness of the democratic forces clearly played as great a role in the debacle as Hitler’s tactical and psychological skills or his ability to seize the historical moment.
First of all, Hitler did not emerge out of nowhere to claim power. Rather, he worked away patiently in the background for years, overcoming many obstacles and awaiting the day when he could tout himself as Germany’s “savior” from a parliamentary system entangled in countless intractable problems. The political parties of the Weimar Republic had long been set in their ways, embroiled in ideological disputes, and they were concerned much more with securing advantage for their members than with meeting the needs of the country. Years before, they had forfeited responsibility for forming governments and passing legislation to the president, who governed by emergency decree. It was precisely Hitler’s promise of a return to parliamentary rule that induced Hindenburg, after long hesitation, to ask the Nazi leader to form a cabinet. Thus, on the morning of January 30, 1933, Hitler became chancellor of a new coalition government with the conservative German National People’s Party.
No one could explain at the time how it had come to this. Hitler himself spoke of a “miracle” and interpreted his appointment as an “act of God.”1 Barely three months earlier he had suffered his first serious setback at the polls, losing over two million votes. Just two months earlier he had narrowly succeeded in holding his splintering party together with a dramatic appeal concluding in threats of suicide. Scarcely four days earlier, President Hindenburg had assured the army commander in chief, General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, that “he would not even consider making that Austrian corporal the minister of defense or the chancellor.” The extraordinary reversal was brought about by ambition, a thirst for revenge, and what one contemporary observer saw as a “mixture of corruption, backstairs intrigue, and patronage.”2
As if foreshadowing what was to come, Hitler’s adversaries permitted him to outmaneuver them on the very day he was appointed. As evening fell on January 30 a few lingering parliamentarians sat together in the Reichstag. Still confused by the events of that morning, t
hey had lost themselves in a lengthy discussion of the likely consequences when, from the darkness of the neighboring Tiergarten, movement and noise became perceptible, as if a great procession were under way. Outside, people streamed past the Reichstag in groups of varying sizes, heading toward the Brandenburg Gate. “Young people, all young people,” remarked Social Democratic Party (SPD) deputy Wilhelm Hoegner of Bavaria as they passed on their way to a torch-light parade whose flickering lights illuminated not only the broad expanses around the Brandenburg Gate but also Unter den Linden and Wilhelmstrasse, casting a red glow on the skies above. Thousands of uniformed, hastily gathered marchers swept through the streets, while crowds of onlookers stood and watched. “But we just slipped away into the darkness,” Hoegner later wrote, “crushed and wearied by the ferment of those days.”3
The events in Berlin were echoed in dozens of other cities. Count Harry Kessler, a prominent diplomat, recalled “an atmosphere like pure Mardi Gras”: Crowds, parades, bands, and flags filled the streets, though nothing more dramatic had happened than a change of government, like many others in the past. But there was undeniably a sense that a new era had dawned. A feeling of anticipation swept the nation, filling some with dread and others with hope. Hitler picked up on this mood in his radio address on the evening of February 1. Striking a moderate, statesmanlike tone, he recited the many hardships the people had known: the “betrayal” of November 1918, the “heartrending division” in the land, the hate and confusion. He described the self-inflicted “paralysis” of the multiparty state and held out the prospect of German society “coming together as one.” He spoke of dignity, honor, tradition, family, and culture. He assured the nation, which felt reviled by the entire world and humiliated by the victorious powers, that he would restore the pride of old. At the end he appealed for divine blessing.
Plotting Hitler's Death Page 1