Plotting Hitler's Death

by Joachim C. Fest

  When Hitler finished speaking there was a moment of stunned silence. But he had scarcely left the room before the marshals be­sieged Commander in Chief Brauchitsch, talking and gesticulating wildly. No one had any doubt, it seems, about the real meaning of Hitler’s words. Brauchitsch stood firm against the waves of com­plaints and references to international law, saying he had already done all he could but Hitler was not to be dissuaded. According to a Statement that Jodl made at the Nuremberg trials, Brauchitsch and Hitler did indeed have a number of “very heated conversations.” Halder tried to persuade Brauchitsch that the two of them should resign together, but the commander in chief was incapable of making a decision of that magnitude.4

  Hitler knew better than to rely solely on appeals for harshness. A number of preparatory guidelines were soon issued transferring the Wehrmacht’s responsibility for the administration of the occupied territories to special Reich commissioners. Heinrich Himmler and four Einsatzgruppen were commissioned to undertake “special tasks” arising “from the final battle of two opposed political systems.” The dry administrative language outlining directives for the planned “war of ideologies” could hardly disguise the extent to which the basic principles of international law and warfare were being thwarted. Two of the most infamous directives were the decree on military law and the so-called Commissar Order. The former transferred responsibility for punishing crimes against enemy civilians from military courts to individual division commanders, while the latter required that Red Army political commissars be segregated upon capture and, “as a rule, immediately shot for instituting barbaric Asian methods of warfare.” When Oster produced the documents at a meeting in Beck’s house, “everyone’s hair stood on end,” according to one who was there, “at these orders for the troops in Russia, signed by Halder, that would systematically transform military justice for the civilian population into a caricature that mocked every concept of law.” They all agreed that, “by complying with Hitler’s orders, Brauchitsch is sacrificing the honor of the German army.”5 In the first half of June, two weeks before the invasion was launched, the “Commissar Order” was issued to the staffs at the front as the last of a series of prepara­tory edicts.

  * * *

  Henning von Tresckow was the first general staff officer of Army Group Center, headquartered in Posen at the time. Those who were close to him all recalled the strong impression he made, his “leader­ship qualities,” “distinguished manner,” “sense of honor,” and “Prussianness.” These descriptions do more, however, to obscure his character than to illuminate it.

  Next to Stauffenberg, he was the most remarkable figure in the military resistance, displaying not only the mental discipline and passionate moral sense of the other conspirators but also great coolness under pressure, decisiveness, and daring. The so-called Kaltenbrunner reports of the interrogations carried out after the July 20 assassination attempt describe him as the “prime mover” and the “evil spirt” behind the plot.6 Originally an admirer of National Socialism, Tresckow did not have to wait for Hitler’s blatant warmongering to see the error of his ways. The continual illegal acts, the persecution of minorities, the suppression of free speech, and the harassment of churches had long since turned him against the party. Unlike many others, he realized early on that the “excesses” of the Nazi regime were not excesses at all but its real nature. And with the same frank­ness with which he had once supported Hitler, he now began to criticize him. When one of his army comrades defended the regime, Tresckow vehemently disagreed and ended by predicting that a dis­pute like this could easily lead to their taking up arms on opposite sides some day. Indeed, the commander of the First Regiment of Foot Soldiers had once prophesied that young officer Tresckow would end up as either chief of general staff or a mutineer mounting the scaffold.7

  At the time of the dispute over the western offensive, Tresckow attempted “in total despair” to organize a revolt. He urged his uncle Fedor von Bock, commander in chief of Army Group B, as well as Rundstedt and his chief of staff Erich von Manstein, to take action. But the generals “did not want to hear about any schemes directed against Hitler.” They were merely experts in military strategy, they replied, closing their minds to further persuasion. For the first time, Tresckow felt “contempt for the army leaders,” according to his biographer, Bodo Scheurig, and steeled himself to take matters into his own hands. But ironically, it was probably he who ensured that Brauchitsch and Halder did not scuttle Manstein’s “scythe-cut” strat­egy for penetrating deep into France with tanks and other armored vehicles, which later proved so successful. Tresckow’s former regi­mental comrade Rudolf Schmundt was now serving as Wehrmacht adjutant at Hitler’s headquarters, and Tresckow succeeded in per­suading him to present Manstein’s plan to Hitler, who immediately saw its daring ingenuity and revised the invasion strategy.8

  Tresckow’s own plans for a coup began to take shape after he was assigned to Posen and the preparations for war against the Soviet Union had begun in earnest. He systematically placed officers who shared his views on the army group general staff, eventually filling all the key positions. First, to the astonishment and probably also the chagrin of his colleagues, he hired the strictly “civilian-minded” law­yer and reserve lieutenant Fabian von Schlabrendorff. Tresckow val­ued Schlabrendorff’s prudence and judgment and made him his closest adviser. Tresckow also had General Staff Major Rudolph-Christoph von Gersdorff transferred from an infantry division. Gers­dorff was a cavalry officer who, as Tresckow had discovered in the course of a chance encounter, agreed with him about the contempt­ible nature of the Nazi regime. Gersdorff combined rectitude with great presence of mind and courage, as well as a charmingly adroit manner. Tresckow also attracted two other majors, Count Carl-Hans Hardenberg and Berndt von Kleist, and Count Heinrich Lehndorff, a lieutenant, all of old Prussian stock. Eventually they were joined by Lieutenant Colonels Georg Schulze-Büttger and Alexander von Voss, First Lieutenant Eberhard von Breitenbuch, Georg and Philipp von Boeselager, and a number of others. It was later observed quite cor­rectly that the largest and most tightly knit resistance group of those years could be found right on the general staff of Army Group Center.

  When the edict on the application of military law and the Commissar Order arrived at Army Group Center, Tresckow immediately had the commander in chiefs plane prepared for takeoff and went, with Gersdorff, to see Bock. On a pathway through a small park leading to Bock’s villa, Tresckow suddenly stopped. “If we don’t convince the field marshal to fly to Hitler at once and have these orders canceled, the German people will be burdened with a guilt the world will not forget in a hundred years. This guilt will fall not only on Hitler, Himmler, Göring, and their comrades but on you and me, your wife and mine, your children and mine,” he said to Gersdorff. “Think about it.”9

  Bock, who had attended the officers’ meeting on March 30, 1941, must therefore have been expecting these orders, but he expressed outrage upon receiving them, repeatedly exclaiming “Unbelievable!” and “Horrible!” during Gersdorff s summary of their contents. Never­theless, he turned a cold shoulder to the suggestion that he immediately fly to Führer headquarters with Gerd von Rundstedt and Wilhelm von Leeb, the commanders in chief of Army Groups South and North, and disavow obedience to Hitler. The Führer, Bock said, would simply “throw him out” and possibly install Himmler in his place.Tresckow answered coldly that he could handle that.

  After reflecting for a while Bock decided despite Tresckow’s constant objections to send Gersdorff to OKH (Army) headquarters in Berlin with the message that Field Marshal Bock vehemently protested the orders and demanded that they be rescinded at once. Since Brauchitsch was absent, Gersdorff met instead with General Eugen Müller, who informed him that the high command did not disagree with the army group. In fact Brauchitsch had already attempted on numerous occasions to have the orders canceled or at least amended. But each time, Hitler burst into a rage; during Brauchitsch’s last visit, he had even “
hurled an inkwell” at him. “He won’t go see the Führer anymore,” Müller concluded laconically. Returning to the army group that evening, Gersdorff found Bock dining with his chief of general staff, Hans von Greiffenberg, and Tresckow, Hardenberg, and Lehndorff. When Gersdorff reported the failure of his mission a deep hush descended. Then Bock, who was the first to regain his compo­sure, remarked “almost triumphally”: “Let it be noted, gentlemen, that Field Marshal Bock protested.”10

  Gersdorff later pointed out that if the commanders in chief of the army groups had jointly refused to obey Hitler, as Tresckow sug­gested, the Führer would have been forced to yield. It would have been impossible to replace such key commanders just ten days before the start of the campaign. We also know through Gersdorff that all the senior officers, at least in Army Group Center, objected to the orders and did what they could to prevent their being carried out. Tresckow made some attempts to influence the other two army groups in this direction. Considerable controversy persists, however, as to the extent to which these and other such efforts were successful.

  Tresckow realized, of course, that opposition from army commanders could do little to prevent the Einsatzgruppen from carry­ing out mass murders behind the front. Army Group Center could, however, bring some influence to bear. Arthur Nebe, the leader of Einsatzgruppe B in its area, had moved in opposition circles since 1938 and had only accepted his assignment after great emotional conflict and largely at the urging of Oster and Gisevius, who hoped that he would be able to supply the opposition with information from the innermost sanctums of power in the SS. Nebe hinted to Tresckow that he intended to report his missions completed when in fact they were not. Ultimately, Field Marshal Bock came to an agreement with Field Marshals Kluge and Weichs and General Guderian that it was “undesirable” for the orders to be carried out. In the spring of 1942, almost one year later, the Commissar Order was officially rescinded.11

  Still, the army had hardly covered itself with glory. For the first time Hitler had tried to make it an accomplice in his crimes without receiving a clear refusal. Since the Röhm affair, the army had been careful not to allow itself to be drawn directly into criminal activities; at most, it exposed itself to accusations of standing aside and failing to help the victims. Now Hitler had succeeded on his first attempt in eliminating the distinction-still maintained in Poland up to this point-between military men engaged in traditional warfare and the murderousEinsatzgruppen. The one became caught up with the other in a war of annihilation that criminalized everyone who took up arms in the name of the German Reich. There could be no more talk of the sort that was common in the apologia written by former members of the Wehrmacht after the war, of having been “swept away” by events against one’s will and without sufficient knowledge. Hitler had without a doubt been encouraged to believe that he could get away with this final step by the supine resignation demonstrated by the generals over the years, their occasional outbursts of indignation not-withstanding.

  This failure meant that the last opportunity of demonstrating to Hitler the limits to his power had been squandered. Brauchitsch would later claim that he sabotaged Hitler’s criminal orders by issuing special instructions stressing that a soldier’s primary duty was to fight and move on, not to engage in search-and-destroy operations. This strategy, however, amounted merely to a repetition of the failed tactic that the army had already practiced in Poland of abandoning conquered territories to the violence of the Einsatzgruppen and con­spicuously washing its hands of any responsibility for what would follow.

  It is true, of course, that opposition would have had little more than a delaying effect. This is no excuse, however, for either Brauchitsch or the other commanders. They failed to see that the restoration of the long-lost moral integrity of the army was at stake. Their failure to act seems even more egregious in the light of the unanimous sense of outrage expressed by the officers, of which so much was made following the war. It illustrates not only the wide­spread awareness of criminal activity but also the broad support that a determined commander who refused to carry out orders would have enjoyed. It is difficult to comprehend why three or more command­ing generals could not agree to protest the orders as a body. It has repeatedly been argued that such a gesture would have been point­less, but it must be said that it was never really tried. Rundstedt’s aide, Hans Viktor von Salviati, remarked shortly before the Russian campaign began that almost all the field marshals were well aware of what was happening, “but that’s as far as it goes.”12

  * * *

  At 3:15 a.m. on June 22, 1941, Hitler launched the war against the Soviet Union under the code name Operation Barbarossa. He had enjoyed an unbroken string of victories, including the last-minute campaigns against Greece, Albania, and Yugoslavia and the brilliant expedition in North Africa, where Rommel had succeeded in less than twelve days in reconquering all of the Libyan territory lost by Germany’s Italian allies. Although these victories had fueled a wide­spread feeling of invincibility, a nagging sense of foreboding began to arise for the first time. “When Barbarossa starts, the world will hold its breath and keep still,” Hitler crowed just a few days before the invasion.

  Most of all, though, it was the Germans who held their breath. Everyone sensed that the mission that had been embarked on was too ambitious even for Hitler’s formidable nerves of steel, his keen intu­ition, and his eerie ability to stride from one triumph to the next. For the first time, the feeling arose that he was setting out to achieve the impossible. “Our German army is only a breath of wind on the end­less Russian steppes,” said a staff officer who knew the terrain well. Almost all contemporary reports of the mood of the German people speak of “dismay,” “agitation,” “paralysis,” and “shock.” Occasionally, as one of the secret agents noted, there were “references to the fate of Napoleon, who was vanquished in the end by the vast Russian spaces.”13

  As the German armies advanced, so did the Einsatzgruppen. They set about their work with such brutality that Colonel Helmuth Stieff wrote in a letter that “Poland was nothing by compari­son.” He felt as if he had become the “tool of a despotic will to destroy without regard for humanity and simple decency.” A gen­eral staff officer with Army Group North reported that in Kovno, Lithuanian SS squads had “herded a large number of Jews to­gether, beaten them to death with truncheons, and then danced to music on the dead bodies. After the victims were carted away, new Jews were brought, and the game was repeated!”14 Officers in this army group besieged their superiors with demands that the mas­sacres be halted. Similarly, the members of Army Group Center’s general staff, who had by this lime been transferred to Smolensk, urged Field Marshal Bock “with tears in their eyes” to put a stop to the “orgy of executions” being carried out by an SS commando unit about 125 miles away in Borisov and witnessed by Heinrich von Lehndorff from an airplane. Attempts were immediately made to stop the massacre, but they came too late. Bock demanded that the civilian commissioner in charge, Wilhelm Kube, report to him immediately and turn over the responsible SS commander for court-martial. Kube responded curtly that Bock ought rightly to be reporting to him and that he had no intention, in any case, of pro­ducing the SS commander. The army group could not even deter­mine his name; the commandant of army headquarters at Borisov, whom the army group accused of failing to prevent the slaughter, committed suicide.15

  As a result of the massacres in the East, relations between Hitler and the officer corps, which had always been cool, despite a momentary reconciliation at the time of the great triumphs in France, began to deteriorate rapidly. “By nature I belong to an entirely different genus,” Hitler had once said-and the feeling was mutual.16 Hitler’s speech to the assembled officers on March 30 and the subsequent orders putting his message into legal language had conclusively re­futed the belief that Nazi excesses were the work of “lower-level authorities” carrying on behind Hitler’s back, a misapprehension that had long inhibited action. Now the resistance gathered strong new sup
port. Yorck showed up at Army Group Center headquarters pas­sionately voicing his anger; Gersdorff finally overcame his lingering abhorrence of treason; Stieff turned away from the regime, sickened by what was happening. And it was apparently at this time, too, that Stauffenberg resolved to do everything in his power to remove Hitler and overthrow the regime.17 The biographies of several members of the resistance, especially the younger conspirators, show just how crucial the horrendous crimes in the East were in motivating them to act.

  Differences of opinion over military operations soon erupted between Hitler and his army commanders, exacerbating the latent tensions that already existed. German units had succeeded, to be sure, in slicing deep into the Soviet Union and running up an impressive series of victories. Yet it was becoming increasingly apparent that each triumph only carried them further and further into the endless expanses of the Soviet Union, while the front was becoming more and more disjointed.

  Attention therefore turned to how the army could use its available forces most effectively. Whereas the OKH and Army Group Center advocated a concentrated assault on Moscow, Hitler insisted on “pushing through the Ukraine into the Caucasus” and beyond to the oil fields of the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf. At the same time he ordered the troops to advance in the north so as to cut the enemy off from the Baltic Sea. The fractious dispute that ensued did not revolve around two rival strategies so much as around one strategy and one fantasy, consisting of Hitler’s faith in his own invincibility, concern about increasingly noticeable shortages of goods and raw materials, and an unrestrained lust for land. By August 1941 general staff officers were already muttering about Hitler’s “bloody amateurism.”18