Most of Moltke’s associates did not share his radical vision of a federated Europe. Adam von Trott, the circle’s “foreign minister,” saw the national characters that the European countries had developed in the course of history as a feature of the old continent that merited preservation. For much the same reason, he opposed the idea of simply squeezing Germany into a “Western” constitutional tradition, despite his high hopes for what Anglo-German cooperation could achieve. He shared, though, the conviction of almost all the members of the circle that the age of the nation-state had passed and that some measure of sovereignty would have to be surrendered to a Federal European state if the survival of the various nations of Europe was to be ensured.
These ideas were obviously not fully thought out, but they pointed the way to the future. They attracted support for their own sake, not only because they were categorically opposed to Hitler’s approach of conquest and subjugation but also because their vision of the future stood in stark opposition to the nationalistic fervor of the times. This vision, like all the other plans and designs of the German resistance, eventually faded from memory, and during the actual process of European unification after the war it was not even mentioned. For this very reason, however, it deserves to be recalled now.
* * *
It is hardly surprising that the “notables” around Goerdeler viewed the pan-European ideas of the Kreisau Circle as little more than idealistic or eccentric fantasies. They had grown up at time when Germany was rising into the ranks of the great powers of the world and to them concepts as nation-states, great-power status, zones of influence, and national interest were like the laws of physics-they could not simply be abolished. Virtually all the members of the Goerdeler group thought that at least the “greater German territories” should remain within the Reich. This has given rise to accusations that there were strong underlying similarities with the regime-or even that the national-conservative opposition was simply striving to realize Hitler’s aims without Hitler.
As far as the first revisionist interpretation is concerned, there is some truth to this accusation. When Hitler pointed time and again to the injustices of the Treaty of Versailles as the grounds for his demands, people like Beck, Goerdeler, and Hassell could only nod in agreement, all the more so as his arguments were widely shared abroad, especially in Britain. Those who most strenuously indict the Goerdeler group, however, ignore an essential distinction: although the national conservatives generally agreed with Hitler’s border claims, they did not agree with his methods. Ludwig Beck, for instance, said as early as 1938 that war was not only militarily absurd but anachronistic, and he attempted to resist, though perhaps not forcefully enough. At about the same time, Goerdeler called Hitler a “national bandit” for risking Germany’s honor and reputation on one adventure after another.25
The inconsistencies within the conservative position therefore became all the more apparent with the outbreak of the war. Although Goerdeler repeatedly called for peaceful cooperation in Europe after Hitler and a renewal of the League of Nations, the papers he wrote after the conquest of France spoke unabashedly of “German leadership” on the continent. Among other contradictory positions, he assured the Western powers that Poland would be restored but he insisted on Germany’s eastern frontiers of 1914. Hermann Graml has demonstrated convincingly that the “notables” clung to the familiar. They could only imagine, for instance, a unification of Europe and a distribution of power that would resemble the unification of Germany under Prussia.26
The conservatives’ reflexive belief in the concept of the great powers, so deeply rooted in their psyches, began to disappear, however, by the end of 1941-and not just because of the spread of the war to the Soviet Union and the entry soon thereafter of the United States. More important was the mounting awareness of the destruction wrought by arbitrary German policies in southeastern Europe after the Reich smashed Czechoslovakia and extended its dominance deep into the Balkans. Most important of all were the rampant reports of massive crimes in the East, which cast a pall over all talk of the “Reich’s mission to bring order and peace.”
Despite the persistent disagreements between the two main civilian opposition groups, contacts were gradually established. Ulrich von Hassell played an especially important role in this regard. Although he was always uneasy with the utopianism of the Kreisau Circle, he shared many of its objections to Goerdeler and believed that the two most important resistance groups should not waste their strength nursing differences when they were in such extreme danger. The rest of the work necessary for a rapprochement was accomplished thanks to his skill as a negotiator. There were also contacts between Yorck and Jessen, Schulenburg and Goerdeler, and Popitz and Gerstenmaier. After strained preliminary negotiations, the two groups met for the first time on January 8, 1943, in Yorck’s house, with Beck serving as chairman. They made little progress in narrowing the differences between them, partly because Goerdeler “trivialized all attempts to get to the heart of matters,” as Moltke noted with great exasperation. But in the end a majority of the Kreisau group supported the selection of Goerdeler as chancellor of a transitional government, despite some complaints that the decision represented a dangerous “Kerensky solution.”27
Now, under the influence of the Kreisau Circle, the national-conservative resistance moved even more quickly to drop its insistence that Germany play a leadership role in the new Europe. By mid-1943 Goerdeler himself had discarded a number of hitherto cherished notions. With all the impulsive exuberance of his nature, he began to speak of a European “peace confederacy” that no nation would dominate and in which “inner-European borders” would play “an ever-diminishing role.”
Similarly, the ideas of the Kreisau group were colored by its increasingly close contacts with the Goerdeler people. There is no convincing evidence, however, for the accusation raised from time to time that the Kreisauers became infected with old nationalist ideas. It is true that Adam von Trott began insisting somewhat more determinedly on a “reasonable peace plan” for post-Hitler Germany and warning against the ruinous consequences of a second Versailles. But an unbiased observer would have to acknowledge that both the Kreisau Circle and the Goerdeler group, as well as Oster, Leber, Gisevius, and many other opponents of the regime, rejected nationalism much more strongly than most of their contemporaries did, even if they were less than sure-footed as they ventured onto new terrain.
The progress they had made is evident when considered in the light of the fruitless efforts of the German resistance over the years to establish contacts with like-minded people in other countries through the World Council of Churches, Allen W. Dulles, head of the Office of Strategic Services in Bern, the lawyer Eduard Waetjen, Theodor Strünk, Ulrich von Hassell, Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz, and numerous others. Most of the politicians and military leaders whom they unsuccessfully courted in London, The Hague, and Washington still believed, however, that these Germans were committing “treason” and therefore regarded them with contempt. There was no appreciation of the fact that the opponents of the Nazi regime felt guided by new principles and laws whose legitimacy did not end at national borders. Even after the failed coup attempt of July 20, 1944, the New York Times commented reproachfully that the conspirators had plotted for an entire year “to kidnap or kill the head of the German state and commander in chief of the Army,” something one would not “normally expect within an officers’ corps and a civilized government.”28 But the German resistance deserves to be remembered precisely because of this break with “normalcy,” a feat achieved with great effort but one that only further reduced the already slim chances for success.
* * *
Out of the blue during the summer of 1941, alarm bells sounded at Military Intelligence, when the commotion attending the victory over France and Hitler’s celebration of himself as the “greatest general of all time” had not yet died down. The research office informed Canaris that the timing of the western off
ensive had probably been betrayed by a German officer. The monitoring service had taped Colonel Sas’s telephone conversation with The Hague on the eve of the attack and decoded telegrams from Belgian ambassador Adrien Nieuwenhuys, in which he mentioned an informant in Rome. Suspicion immediately fell on Josef Müller, whom Military Intelligence had sent to the Vatican, and then on Hans Oster himself.
In fact, it is remarkable that the constant bustle surrounding Oster and the other conspirators, their trips and often frantic telephone calls, as well as their unannounced visits and swiftly closed doors, could have failed to attract attention for so long in as highly organized a police state. Virtually none of the conspirators lived in a world of his own. Most worked in government departments where everyone was acutely aware of everyone else and where personal animosities and rivalries, ideological conflicts, and competition for positions abounded. Everyone in Military Intelligence would presumably have been aware of Oster’s friendship with Sas and his continuing contacts with Beck, Goerdeler, Popitz, Kordt, and others. Oster once gestured toward the five telephones on his desk and commented to a visitor, “That’s me. I’m the middleman for everything.”29 In his diary Hassell recorded numerous breakfast meetings in hotels with four or more people, as well as “gentlemen’s evenings” and walks in the Tiergarten. Occasionally he remarked on having all met at Beck’s apartment or Popitz’s or Jessen’s-and then gone together to Yorck’s place. Most of the conspirators demonstrated a similar lack of caution for years on end and were quite careless about whom they revealed their plans to. The likeliest explanation for why they were not apprehended sooner is that the military and the civil service, having fallen quickly into line after 1933, were not regarded with much suspicion by the security apparatus, whose gaze was still focused on the Nazis’ original foes- Communists, Social Democrats, labor union leaders, and church figures suspected of opposing the regime.
Canaris seemed to be deeply upset by the rising tide of evidence against Oster. Those who knew the admiral found him an enigmatic, inscrutable personality, who always maintained a certain distance from people as well as from his duties. Among all the competing elements of his nature there may even have been some part that could understand the treason of his closest collaborator, though there is no evidence of this. In any case, Canaris continued to protect both Oster and Müller despite the fact that Hitler himself had taken an interest in the issue and had ordered Canaris to join Heydrich in conducting the investigation. Canaris demonstrated great resilience and flexibility in drawing the inquiry into his own hands, leading it, and then letting it drop quietly, all at great personal risk. His performance revealed a poker-faced master strategist, cold-blooded, quick to react, and gifted with sure instincts. “He pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes-Heydrich, Himmler, Keitel, Ribbentrop, even the Führer himself,” a Gestapo official later lamented.30
Behind the cool mask lay a high-strung disposition; Canaris was agitated and tormented by fear after each passing danger yet was still addicted to new adventures. Like most cunning people, he hated violence. He was nimble in the face of danger, witty, and sardonic. During one of his trips to Spain he would spring to attention in his open car and raise his arm in the Hitler salute every time he drove past a herd of sheep. You never know, he said, whether one of the party bigwigs might be in the crowd. He called his immediate superior, Wilhelm Keitel-his total opposite in temperament-a blockhead. Some observers have deduced from all the incongruities in Canaris that he was an unprincipled cynic who sought only thrills from the resistance and who admired Hitler as an even greater gamesman than himself. These interpretations miss the mark. In his last years Canaris increasingly suffered from the conviction that he had served Hitler far too long and far too submissively, and he regretted not having turned the resources of Military Intelligence against the regime in a more determined fashion. It has been said that he was a master of the art of obfuscation, and his skill has tended to obscure his rigid adherence to a number of principles. He could not abide treason whatever the pretext, as his break with Oster shows, but neither could he bear the lack of basic humanity that made the Nazi regime so abhorrent in his eyes.
One of his colleagues recounted that while visiting the Military Intelligence offices in Paris on his way back from Spain, Canaris learned that Hitler had issued orders to have former French prime minister Paul Reynaud and General Maxime Weygand not just arrested but quietly killed should the opportunity present itself. At dinner with his colleagues, Canaris sat sunk in silence until his feelings suddenly erupted in an angry denunciation of “these gangster methods of Hitler and his henchmen,” who were not only committing crime upon crime in the East but now bringing betrayal and murder to the West as well. Germany would lose more than just the war, he added before leaving the table, and its future would then be too frightful to contemplate.31
Because Canaris understood the nature of the Nazi regime better than most and yet never crossed irrevocably into the camp of its enemies, he exemplified the dilemma of many torn between emotion and reason. They felt proud of the restoration of German might yet were well aware of the repellent ways in which it had been achieved. They took great professional pleasure in their successes yet despaired over the “gangster methods of the regime.” They recognized that a catastrophe was looming for which they bore some responsibility yet felt paralyzed by such honorable principles as duty, loyalty, and a job well done. On March 10, 1938, Chief of General Staff Ludwig Beck was summoned to the Chancellery and asked to prepare mobilization plans for the entry into Austria. Although he plainly foresaw the disasters to which Hitler’s ambitions would lead, he threw himself into his task when it turned out that no plans existed because Hitler had been keeping the general staff in the dark. He spurred on his staff and his chief of operations, Erich von Manstein, to produce plans as fast as possible. Five hours later they lay ready. There was no escape from the fact that if opponents of the regime wished to avoid serving Hitler they had to turn their backs on all the values they believed in and even on longstanding friendships. Hans Oster was prepared to do precisely that. Franz Halder once remarked-half in grudging admiration, half in disapproval-that Oster was fired by a “burning hatred of Hitler,” which caused him to conceive notions “that the sober, critically minded listener simply could not accept.”32
6. THE ARMY GROUPS
The western campaign was barely three weeks old and still in full swing when Hitler turned his mind to new horizons. On June 2, 1940, he spoke in General Rundstedt’s headquarters about his hopes of soon concluding a peace treaty with Britain in order to gain “a free hand” for what he considered his “great, true mission: the struggle against Bolshevism.”1 Shortly thereafter, on July 21, he ordered the army high command to begin “mental preparations” for renewed operations in the East, which he considered launching as early as the fall of that year. This time, however, in contrast to his stubbornness after the Polish campaign, he allowed himself to be easily dissuaded from such an early date.
Above all it was his concern about the difficulty of waging a two-front war that made Hitler more uncertain and receptive. He had once said that avoiding such a predicament was a fundamental principle of German foreign policy. To get around it, he now elaborated a risky plan to divide the war into two phases: first the Wehrmacht would turn on the Soviet Union and conquer it in a lightning strike, then, after gathering its strength, it would turn to the task of polishing of Great Britain once and for all. Hitler’s confidence in his luck and invincibility, and his obsession with his “true mission,” which now lay so tantalizingly near, eventually laid to rest most of his concerns, and any lingering hesitation was overcome by his anxiety about timing- “Time, always time!” as he later grumbled. In mid-December he informed Alfred Jodl that “all problems on the continent of Europe” would have to be ironed out by 1941 because by 1942 “the United State s would be in a position to intervene.” To Mussolini he said that he felt like someone who had only one shot
left in his rifle as night began to fall. In his haste, before the final decision to invade had even been made, he ordered that suitable locations be found in the East for headquarters and command posts for the army groups and that construction begin “as quickly as possible.”2
At the same time, he began to make his entourage aware that this would be no ordinary war waged according to the traditional rules; it was to be a war of annihilation. His annoyance at repeated complaints from military leaders about atrocities committed in the Polish campaign led him to summon nearly 250 senior officers to the Berlin Chancellery on March 30, 1941, in order to explain this new kind of warfare to them. Everything they had previously experienced-the “flower wars,” the easy victories gained through happy circumstance and the battles fought on the wrong battlefields-was only a prelude, he told them, in a speech that was to last two and a half hours. The real war, his war, was about to begin. According to the notes taken by one of his listeners, it would be a “struggle of two ideologies.” Bolshevism was “equivalent to a social criminality, a tremendous danger for the future,” the Führer declared. “We must abandon the viewpoint of soldierly comradeship,” he cautioned. “What is involved is a struggle of annihilation. The commanders of the troops must know what is at stake.” He concluded by singling out Communist leaders and the secret police for special treatment. “Commissars and GPU men are criminals and must be treated as such. The fight will be very different from the fight in the West. In the East harshness is kindness toward the future. The leaders must demand of themselves the sacrifice of overcoming their scruples.”3
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