Plotting Hitler's Death

by Joachim C. Fest

  Nevertheless, Hitler’s power hung in the balance for a time. Everything depended on how the Reichswehr would react. Certainly it had participated in the intrigue against Röhm; it had been more complicit and had provided far more assistance than its good name would allow. The ensuing bloodbath, however, far exceeded anything it had imag­ined and clearly violated the most basic legal norms. If the social order had truly been under the threat of an imminent uprising by the SA, as Blomberg claimed in an attempt to justify Hitler’s action, then the Reichswehr would have been duty-bound to intervene; but every­one knew that this was not the case. If the social order was not threatened, then the army should have acted to put down the lawless outburst. Instead the Reichswehr had fanned the conflict and helped bring it to a head, making weapons available and finally giving the SS free rein, all to ensure its own victory.

  Uncertainty about the reaction of the Reichswehr was not the least of Hitler’s reasons for leaving Berlin immediately after the massacre and lying low for a while. Not until ten days later did he surface and return to the capital. After all, two generals-former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and Ferdinand von Bredow-had been murdered in the wave of violence. No self-respecting army, let alone an officer corps that believed it had a right to participate in the affairs of state, could let such acts pass without account. In a tense and often contra­dictory speech before the Reichstag on July 13, 1934, Hitler offered the official explanation that Schleicher had been in contact with the ambassador of a foreign power, an assertion that failed to convince or satisfy anyone.

  A few senior officers, including Erich von Manstein, Gerd von Rundstedt, and even Erwin von Witzleben (who had greeted the news of the murder of the SA leaders with a curt “Splendid!”18) insisted that a court-martial be convened to investigate the charge. Blomberg mollified them with the promise that proof would soon be provided. But the results of the investigation were suppressed, and there the situation remained. Eventually, in response to the concerns voiced by a few other officers, General Werner von Fritsch (who had, in the meantime, relieved Hammerstein as commander in chief of the army) demanded an explanation of Blomberg. But the minister evaded the issue, and in the end Fritsch allowed it to die.

  These evasions and prevarications on the part of the minister of defense were rooted, of course, in his own complicity. Blomberg had even approved the orders for General Schleicher’s “arrest,” while Reichenau formulated the official announcement that Schleicher was shot while resisting arrest (an assertion disproved by the criminal investigation).19 As chief of army command, Fritsch may well have felt that he could not afford to expose his political superiors; as the sources unanimously show, however, like most other senior officers he was horrified by the bloodbath despite feeling satisfaction at the taming of the SA.

  Nevertheless, Fritsch rebuffed all demands for a protest by point­ing to his low position in the hierarchy. He could not take action “without explicit orders,” he later said. “Blomberg was vehemently opposed, and Hindenburg could not be reached and was apparently misinformed.”20 Be that as it may, the fact that the chief of army command did not insist on a military investigation plainly indicates that other factors were also at work. When the aged field marshal August von Mackensen took steps to restore the honor of the murdered generals, Fritsch distanced himself from the attempts. To crown it all, he meekly informed the troops of Blomberg’s “muzzle edict,” which forbade them to make any personal statements about the purge. Furthermore, neither Fritsch nor the officer corps at large raised any objections when Blomberg ordered that they not attend Selileicher’s funeral. Those seeking the first signs of the army’s retreat to a narrow, formalistic emphasis on a soldier’s duty to obey-an emphasis on which all will to resist ultimately foundered in the fol­lowing years-will find it here.

  Fritsch’s evasiveness cannot, however, be explained solely by his sense of loyalty and his belief in military obedience, though he did feel very much bound by these concepts. Nor can it be fully ac­counted for by his career-long adherence to the ideal of an apolitical army, which had been introduced by General Hans von Seeckt under the Weimar Republic. At least as important as these factors was the feeling that the army had many interests in common with the new regime; as a result, its commanders were inclined to restraint even in the face of obvious crimes. Defeat in the First World War and the harsh burdens imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles had instilled in the officer corps an obsession with redress-not only for their military defeat but, more importantly, for the moral stain that had marked Germany ever since. In Hitler the officer corps perceived a man who could succeed on both these counts. Some officers even deluded themselves into believing that now, after the bloody break with Röhm, they could lure Hitler away from National Socialism and the narrow convictions of his youth; by offering ever-greater blandish­ments and concessions, they hoped to win him over to their views and perhaps even make him their lackey.

  Such dreams were as vain as Papen’s long-defunct hope of “taming” Hitler, though the ghost of that hope seemed to be reemerging in some army circles. With his highly developed sense for almost imperceptible shifts in the balance of power, Hitler immediately grasped that an army that had closed its eyes to the murder of two of its generals would not block his breakthrough to unfettered domina­tion. Just three weeks later he moved to exploit the obvious weakness of the army leadership. On July 20 he recognized the “great accom­plishments” of the SS, “particularly in connection with the events of June 30,” by conferring on it the status of an independent organiza­tion directly responsible to him. Blomberg was required to provide “weapons for one entire division.” Instead of a state built on the SA, as the impatient, ham-handed Röhm had insisted on, there now be­gan to emerge, bit by bit, a state built on the SS.

  At the same time the tightly closed ranks of the army began to crack. A number of officers who later joined the military resistance pointed to the events of June 30 and July 1, 1934, as the beginning of their break with the Nazis, among them Henning von Tresckow, Franz Halder, and Hans Oster, who even in the interrogations follow­ing July 20, 1944, denounced the “methods of a gang of bandits.” Erwin Rommel also became disenchanted with the Nazis, saying that the Röhm affair had been a failed opportunity “to get rid of the entire bunch.”21 These officers remained isolated individuals, however, and none of them was in a position of real power. The army commanders, by contrast, were overjoyed that they had achieved their great objec­tive, dealing the SA a death blow without attracting much attention to themselves. They failed to understand that the cleverness of Hitler’s ploy had been to involve them in the massacre just enough to taint them but not so much that he owed them his success. Although once more his fate had lain in the hands of the Reichswehr, that would never be true again, as Hitler already knew during those critical days of June and July. The army’s moment of opportunity had come and gone.

  * * *

  Hitler made his next move much more quickly than expected, when fortune handed him the opportunity to complete his seizure of power by taking over the last independent position in the government. In mid-July President Hindenburg’s health went into steep decline, and his entourage expected his death at any moment. Until shortly before this time disappointed conservatives had still imagined the president as a possible rival to Hitler. Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau, Hindenburg’s clear-sighted friend from the neighboring estate, had, however, been speaking for quite some time, in the bluff manner he liked to affect, of the president “whom we actually no longer have.” In any ease, the office still existed and was the last institution of government that had not fallen into Hitler’s hands. Furthermore, the president, as commander in chief of the armed forces, was the only remaining authority to whom the army could appeal over the head of the gov­ernment-the presidency was thus the last bastion of army indepen­dence.

  This office and the powers attached to it were all that separated Hitler from outright dictatorship. On August 1, 1934
, though the news from Hindenburg’s estate in Neudeck seemed more hopeful, Hitler moved with unseemly haste, presenting to the cabinet for im­mediate signature legislation that would merge the offices of presi­dent and chancellor, to take effect when the old marshal died. The proposed law was based, to be sure, on the Act for the Reconstruction of the Reich of January 1934, which gave the government authority to pass new constitutional laws, but it deliberately ignored article 2 of the Enabling Act, which enjoined the government from making any changes to the office of Reich president. Hitler thus concluded his putative “legal revolution” with an open violation of constitutional law, a move emblematic of his duplicitous intentions all along.

  When Hindenburg died early the next morning, on August 2, 1934, Hitler’s goals were all achieved. In the rush of events, the Reichswehr seemed most concerned about not being left out of the action. Blomberg attempted a coup de main of his own. Solely on the basis of his power to issue ministerial decrees, he ordered all officers and enlisted men to swear an oath of allegiance to their new supreme commander, the “Führer Adolf Hitler,” that very day. The wording of this oath violated both the Oath Act of December 1, 1933, and the constitution by requiring soldiers to swear unconditional obedience to Hitler personally, not just to the office he held. The consequences of this fateful step would continue to make history long after the illu­sions of those days had been dashed.

  A premonition seemed to sweep the ranks the day that the oath was administered. Numerous memoirs speak of the “depressed mood” in the barracks after Blomberg’s surprise maneuver. The radical break with military tradition made apparent by the oath led General Ludwig Beck, head of the troop office and still one of Hitler’s declared supporters, to call it the “blackest day of his life,”22 while Baron Rudolph-Christoph von Gersdorff, then regimental adjutant in a cavalry unit, spoke of the oath as something “coerced.” For the first time doubts had been sowed in the minds of younger officers, who had hitherto been unstinting in their trust and confidence.23 Once roused, these doubts would eventually lead some of them to distance themselves from the regime and a few to resist it, despite the numer­ous obstacles in their way-not the least of which was the oath of personal loyalty they had sworn to the Führer.

  Blomberg himself was not at all troubled by such doubts, but the Reichswehr would never recover from the blow he delivered, with no outside prompting, by the introduction of the oath. Henceforth the army would be in Hitler’s pocket. Blomberg and the military com­manders, feeling quite pleased with what they thought they had accomplished, namely boosting the army to a position of unquestion­able power, happily set about trying to extend their newfound influ­ence to the political realm as well. They urged an initially hesitant Hitler to forge ahead with rearmament and to accelerate his plans for the army. When concerns were voiced in the Foreign Office that such a policy would heighten diplomatic tensions, the officers managed to dispel them. Their success in doing so may have encouraged them in their erroneous belief that the army would indeed play a major role on the political stage. Shortly thereafter, brushing aside economic objections raised by the president of the Reichsbank, Hjalmar Schacht, the army succeeded, this time with Hitler’s help, in estab­lishing the fundamental primacy of military objectives.

  Anticipating Germany’s return to military might, though it was far from being realized, Hitler decided in early March 1936 to reoccupy the demilitarized zone in the Rhineland-another in the series of bold moves with which he continued to surprise the world. After the introduction of universal conscription one year earlier, the occupation of the Rhineland represented the final step in eliminating the shackles imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. This step, like all the preceding ones, was accompanied by much reassuring talk. However, when the Council of the League of Nations passed a resolution for­bidding Germany to construct military fortresses in this zone, Hitler tartly replied that he had not restored German sovereignty in order to countenance immediate limitations on it. For the first time since the defeat of 1918, Germans began to feel a swelling sense of national self-respect; the moment had come to put an end to the era when the whole world could address Germany in the tone of the conqueror. The seizure of the Rhineland was accomplished with only a handful of semitrained units facing vastly superior French forces, and Hitler concluded from this startling victory that, in the words of André François-Poncet, the French ambassador to Berlin, he “could do anything he wanted and lay down the law in Europe.”24

  It was, above all, the senior officers who found the hopes they had placed in Hitler vindicated. They forged determinedly ahead with rearmament despite mounting concerns about the domestic reserva­tions. The wisdom of rearmament from a foreign policy viewpoint was also questioned: people wondered, with increasing unease, how much longer the great powers of Europe would tolerate Hitler’s breaches of treaty obligations, responding, as they had in the past year, with mere protests and empty threats. That the army overlooked these concerns and single-mindedly devoted its skills and energy to a task that would benefit only Hitler suggests not only the officer corps’s lack of politi­cal acumen but also the extent to which its leaders had been trauma­tized by their helplessness after the war.

  The top military leaders saw the consequences of their brilliantly successful rearmament campaign when Hitler delivered his famous address of November 5, 1937, in the Chancellery in Berlin, which was recorded by his aide Friedrich Hossbach. In a four-hour harangue, delivered without pause, Hitler informed them that the time pres­sures generated by the rearmament campaign had led him to the “immutable decision to take military action against Czechoslovakia and Austria in the near future.” Foreign governments on all sides had begun to suspect the Reich and to quicken the pace of their own rearmament, and Hitler rightly feared that the balance of power would soon shift back to Germany’s disadvantage. The previous two years had shown Hitler the astounding results that could be achieved by appealing to the pride of the officer corps. He let it be known, therefore, in what was clearly a psychological ploy, that he was still dissatisfied with the pace of rearmament. Under the right circumstances, he informed them, he might even be ready to launch the invasions the following year. The Führer also made it clear that he considered Czechoslovakia as a mere stepping stone toward his far more ambitious plans for dealing with the German need for territory.

  Some of the officers present were openly aghast, and the ensuing discussion was marked at times by “very sharp exchanges.”25 Blomberg and Fritsch actively opposed Hitler as, to a lesser extent, did the foreign minister, Konstantin von Neurath, who had been sum­moned to the gathering. They warned emphatically against taking such an overt course toward war, which would inevitably jolt the Western powers to action and result in a global conflict. For the first lime, on November 5, 1937, the scales seemed to fall from the eyes of the military commanders: they realized that Hitler was deadly serious about the objectives he had been proclaiming for years. He had not the slightest intention, furthermore, of seeking the army’s counsel on decisions of war and peace, as Beck was still urging him to do in a memorandum written shortly thereafter. In short, the generals finally recognized that Hitler was no mere nationalist and revisionist like them but exactly what he had claimed to be.

  As far as Hitler was concerned, November 5 only confirmed his suspicion that he could not rely on these anxious, overly scrupulous members of the old elite to carry out his plans for conquest; they were not the steely adventurers he needed. Although Hitler used to remark on occasion that he had always imagined the military chiefs as “mastiffs who had to be held fast by the collar lest they hurl them­selves on everyone,” he now recognized how mistaken he had been: “I’m the one who always has to urge these dogs on.”26 Although there was disappointment on both sides, it was felt most keenly by the generals, who now saw their hopes of being treated as partners in government go up in smoke. Hitler, on the other hand, only found his disdain for the military commanders confirmed. He was so vexed tha
t his plans had been challenged in any way that all subsequent meet­ings with the military top brass took the form of audiences at which the officers simply received their orders. The Führer left Berlin for Berchtesgaden, where he nursed his anger, repeatedly refusing to receive his foreign minister and awaiting an opportunity to reap the benefits of the day’s events.

  * * *

  Once again circumstances played into Hitler’s hand, and he swiftly exploited them for political gain. Minister of War Blomberg, long a widower, decided to marry a woman whom he himself confessed was of “modest background.” Hitler and Göring acted as witnesses at the ceremony in mid-January 1938. Just a few days later, however, ru­mors began to circulate that Blomberg’s young wife was well-known in vice-squad circles, indeed that she had worked as a prostitute and even been arrested once. The officer corps was scandalized by such a misalliance at the highest levels of the German military. Beck went to see Wilhelm Keitel, who had taken over from Reichenau at the minis­try, and informed him that it was unacceptable for “the leading sol­dier” in the land to have “a whore” for a wife. Hitler, too, reacted with rage when Göring presented him with the evidence. A farewell appointment was set up for Blomberg only two days later. “I can no longer put up with this,” the Führer informed him. “We must part.” When, at the end of their discussion, the subject of Blomberg’s suc­cessor arose, Hitler flatly rejected the idea of promoting Fritsch to the post, referring to him as a mere “hindrance.”27 Göring, too, was excluded from consideration despite all he had done to fuel the in­trigue that made the minister’s fall inevitable and, in his insatiable thirst for power, position himself as successor. Blomberg finally took the opportunity to deal the army a fateful blow by suggesting that Hitler himself assume command.