Plotting Hitler's Death

by Joachim C. Fest

  * * *

  The aura of failure that surrounded the German resistance from the outset continued after its demise. As we have seen, some of the con­spirators, especially those in the Kreisau Circle, entertained the idea of a united Europe, but they can hardly be said to have laid its foun­dations, since no one built on their work or even referred to it. If the resistance had any legacy at all, it was the aversion to totalitarianism that characterized all political parties in the early days of the German Federal Republic, regardless of their other differences. Although this sentiment was a reaction to the entire experience of the Hitler years, it was the resistance that did most to bolster and legitimize it.

  Among the enduring lessons of the failed resistance is that it is virtually impossible to overthrow a totalitarian regime from within. Even the events in the Communist world in 1989-90 do little to challenge this point. The most promising act of resistance was actually undertaken before the fact, when Kurt von Hammerstein, the chief of army command, went to see Hindenburg on the morning of January 26, 1933, to voice his grave misgivings about Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. All the later plans, deeds, and sacrifices of the resistance may have represented moral victories, but politically they were con­demned to failure.

  The question has periodically been raised as to what would have happened if either the July 20 assassination attempt or the coup had succeeded. The sobering-and virtually unanimous-consensus is that nothing would have changed. The Allies would not have altered their aims, abandoning their demand for unconditional surrender, nor would they have modified the decision made later at Yalta to occupy and divide Germany. It is also unlikely that the myth that Germany had been sabotaged from within would yet again have arisen, as many feared it would. There is little reason to share Goerdeler’s optimism that, if he and his colleagues had gained access to the radio waves “for just twenty-four hours” and freely proclaimed the truth about the Nazis, a wave of indignation would have swept the Reich. Even less justified was his hope that Hitler could then have been deposed with­out violence. There is, however, at least a grain of truth to Goerdeler’s version of events: although many individuals have pub­lished defenses of their activities during the Hitler years, no signifi­cant attempt has ever been made to exculpate the Third Reich itself. Public horror over the depth and extent of its crimes-the thing Goerdeler always counted on-has not permitted such forgiveness. The Nazi regime, like totalitarian governments everywhere, proved unable to generate a sustaining mythology, except among the few diehards whose fate was linked to Hitler.

  In the final analysis, the German resistance cannot be measured by the futility of its efforts or by its unfulfilled hopes. Although it had very little influence on the course of history, it nevertheless radically changed how we view those years. History consists not only of those dates and great events we commemorate but also, and perhaps more tellingly, of deeds motivated by self-respect and moral commitment. Beck, Schulenburg, Goerdeler, and others believed that the issue of whether the Nazi regime was ultimately brought down from without or overthrown from within would have an enormous effect on Ger­many’s reputation and reacceptance into the ranks of civilized na­tions.35 On a moral plane, failing in the attempt is as worthy as succeeding.

  The importance of the resistance cannot seriously be challenged. Opinions continue to vary on almost every facet of it: its alliances, its view of society, its illusions, its passivity, and the resolve it finally mustered. The main questions about it, though, were raised early on. The day after the attack on Hitler, Emmi Bonhoeffer returned to Berlin to find her husband, Klaus, and her brother, Justus Delbrück, clearing the wreckage of a neighbor’s house. When they sat down to rest amid the ruins, she asked whether the two men could draw any lesson at all from the failure of the plot. There was a momentary pause while they weighed their answer. Finally Delbrück responded in a way that captured the pathos and paradox of the resistance: “I think it was good that it happened, and good too, perhaps, that it did not succeed.”36

  NOTES

  Preface

  1. Among the major titles discussed here are Hans Bernd Gisevius, Bis zum bittern Ende (Zurich, 1954); Helmuth Groscurth, Tagebücher eines Abwehroffiziers, 1938-1940 (Stuttgart, 1970); Ulrich von Hassell, Die Hassell-Tagebücher 1938-1944: Aufzeichnungen vom Andern Deutschland, ed. Friedrich Hiller von Gaertingen, rev. and exp. ed. (Berlin, 1988); and Hans Rothfels, Deutsche Opposition gegen Hitler Eine Würdigung, exp. ed. (Tübingen, 1969). See also A Note on the Texts at the end of this volume.

  2. Alexander Stahlberg, Die verdammte Pflicht: Erinnerungen, 1932-1945 (Ber­lin and Frankfurt, 1994), 456ff.

  3. Karl Dietrich Bracher, Das deutsche Dilemma: Leidenswege der politischen Emanzipation (Munich, 1971), 158.

  4. Peter Hoffmann lists a large number of these organizations in Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat: Der Kampf der Opposition gegen Hitler, 3rd ed. (Munich, 1979), 34ff, 226ff. The motives, goals, and activities of some of them, however, remain virtually unknown.

  1. The Resistance That Never Was

  1. Walter Frank, “Zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus,” Wille und Macht (1934), 1.

  2. Count Harry Kessler, Tagebücher, 1918-1937 (Frankfurt, 1962), 702. For more about Hitler’s seizure of power, about which only a little can be said here, see Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die deutsche Diktatur: Entstehung, Struktur, Folgen des Na­tionalsozialismus (Cologne and Berlin, 1969), 209ff.

  3. Wilhelm Hoegner, Flucht vor Hitler (Munich, 1977), 56.

  4. Goebbels’s introduction to Hitler’s speech in the Berlin Sportpalast on Feb. 10, I933; rpt. in Hitlers Machtergreifung, by Josef and Ruth Becker (Munich, 1983), 59-60.

  5. See Heinz Höhne, Die Machtergreifung: Deutschlands Weg in die Hitlerdiktatur (Reinbek, 1983), 279ff.

  6. Fritz Stern, “Der Nationalsozialismus als Versuchung,” Der Traum vom Frieden und die Versuchung der Macht: Deutsche Geschichte im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1988).

  7. Qtd. in Dorothea Beck, Julius Leber: Sozialdemokrat zwischen Reform und Widerstand (Berlin, 1983), 257.

  8. Hoegner, Flucht, 111ff., esp. 122-23.

  9. Letter to her parents, Jan. 30, 1933; qtd. in Ger van Roon, “Widerstand und Krieg,” Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus: Die deutsche Gesellschaft und der Widerstand gegen Hitler, ed. Jürgen Schmädecke and Peter Steinbach (Mu­nich, 1986), 55.

  10. Martin H. Sommerfeldt, Ich war dabei: Die Verschwörung der Dämonen (Darmstadt, 1949), 42.

  11. See Peter Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat: Der Kampf der Opposition gegen Hitler, 3rd ed. (Munich, 1979), 31-32.

  12. Qtd. in André François-Poncet, Botschafter in Berlin, 1931-1938 (Berlin and Mainz, 1962), 136.

  13. Heinrich Brüning, Memoiren, 1918-1934 (Stuttgart, 1970), 657.

  14. Julius Leber, qtd. in Hagen Schulze, Weimar: Deutschland, 1917-1933 (Ber­lin, 1982), 313.

  15. Breitscheid qtd. in Fabian von Schlabrendorff, Offiziere gegen Hitler (Frank­furt and Hamburg, 1959), 12; Leber, Ein Mann geht seinen Weg: Schriften, Reden und Briefe von Julius Leber (Berlin, 1952), 123-24.

  16. Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichishof Nürnberg, 14. November 1945-1. Oktober 1946 (Nuremberg, 1949), vol. 41, 267.

  17. Qtd. in Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, Es geschah in Deutschland. Menschenbilder unseres Jahrhunderts (Tübingen and Stuttgart, 1951), 147; Politische Studien 10 (1959): 92.

  18. See Erich Mathias and Rudolf Morsey, eds., Das Ende der Parteien 1933 (Dusseldorf, 1960), 152ff.

  19. Mathias and Morsey, Ende, 175ff.

  20. Mathias and Morsey, Ende, 692, 698.

  21. The term is Günther Weisenborn’s.

  22. Karl Otmar von Aretin, qtd. in Ulrich Cartarius, Opposition gegen Hitler (Berlin, 1984), 14.

  23. Konrad Heiden, Geburt des Dritten Reiches: Die Geschichte des Nationalsozi­alismus bis Herbst 1933, 2nd ed. (Zurich, 1934), 260.

  24. Qtd. in Wilfried Berghahn, Robert Musil in Se
lbstzeugnissen und Bilddokunwnten (Hamburg, 1963), 123.

  25. Notes of Albert Grzesinski, Prussian minister of state and prefect of the Berlin police until 1933, qtd. in Mathias and Morsey, Ende, 160.

  26. Qtd in Hans Rothfels, Deutsche Opposition gegen Hitler: Eine Würdigung, exp. ed. (Tübingen, 1969), 59.

  27. Hans Mommsen, “Der Widerstand gegen Hitler und die deutsche Gesellschaft,” Schmädecke and Steinbach, Widerstand, 8.

  28. Qtd. in Michael Krüger-Charlé, “Carl Goerdelers Versuche der Durchsetzung einer alternativen Politik 1933 bis 1937,” Schmädecke and Steinbach, Widerstand, 385.

  29. Helmut Krausnick, “Vorgeschichte und Beginn des militärischen Widerstandes gegen Hitler,” Die Vollmacht des Gewissens (Berlin and Frankfurt, 1960), vol. 1, 208.

  2. The Army Succumbs

  1. Christian Müller, Oberst i.G. Stauffenberg: Eine Biographie (Dusseldorf, 1970), 93ff. For von Tresckow and Mertz von Quirnheim, see Bodo Scheurig, Henning von Tresckow: Eine Biographie (Frankfurt and Berlin, 1980), 44.

  2. Baron Rudolph-Christoph von Gersdorff, Soldat im Untergang: Lebensbilder (Frankfurt and Berlin, 1979), 51.

  3. Report by Horst von Mellenthin, at the time second adjutant to Hammerstein, in Zeugenschrifttum des IfZ München, no. 105, 1ff.

  4. Notes of Major General Curt Liebmann. See Thilo Vogelsang, “Neue Dokumente zur Geschichte der Reichswehr, 1930-1933,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (1954), no. 2, 434-35.

  5. Herman Foertsch, Schuld und Verhängnis: Die Fritsch-Krise im Frühjahr 1938 als Wendepunkt der nationalsozialistischen Zeit (Stuttgart, 1951), 33.

  6. Rudolf Diels, Lucifer ante portas… Es spricht der erste Chef der Gestapo (Stuttgart, 1950), 278.

  7. Qtd. in Klaus-Jürgen Müller, Das Heer und Hitler: Armee und nationalsozialistisches Regime, 1933-1940 (Stuttgart, 1969), 53.

  8. Heinz Höhne, Mordsache Röhm: Hitlers Durchbruch zur Alleinherrschaft (Reinbek, 1984), 168.

  9. Helmut Krausnick, 20. Juli 1944, ed. Erich Zimmerman and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, special ed. of Das Parlament, 3rd ed. (Bonn, 1960), 319.

  10. Gerhard Rossbach, Mein Weg durch die Zeit (Weilburg, 1959), 150.

  11. Röhm’s words as reported to the commanders by Brigadier General Weichs. Reichenau, in an act of “effective direction,” may, however, have given an interpre­tive twist to the key sentences in Röhm’s memorandum. See Müller, Heer, 97, n. 53.

  12. Muller, Heer, 59.

  13. Ludwig von Hammerstein, personal interview, December 20, 1983.

  14. Exceptions were made for people who were civil servants before the First World War or who fought at the front, as well as for civil servants whose fathers or sons had fallen in the war. In the army, seventy officers and men came under this provision.

  15. Helmut Krausnick, “Vorgeschichte und Beginn des militärischen Widerstandes gegen Miller,” Die Vollmacht des Gewissens (Berlin and Frankfurt, 1960), vol. 1, 319.

  16. Franz von Papen, Der Wahrheit eine Gasse (Munich, 1952), 344.

  17. For a fuller account of the events of June 30-July 1, see Müller, Heer, 88ff.; Höhne, Rohm, 247ff.; and Krausnick, “Vorgeschichte.”

  18. Walter Görlitz, Kleine Geschichte des deutschen Generalstabs, 2nd ed. (Ber­lin, 1977), 298.

  19. See Theodor Eschenburg, “Zur Ermordung des Generals Schleicher,” Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte (1953), no. 1, 71ff.

  20. Krausnick, “Vorgeschichte,” 234.

  21. Krausnick, “Vorgeschichte,” 243, 336-37.

  22. Hans Bernd Gisevius, qtd. in Müller, Heer, 136. See also pp. 136ff.

  23. Gersdorff, Soldat, 56ff.

  24. André Francois-Poncet, Botschafter in Berlin, 1931-1938 (Berlin and Mainz, 1962), 264.

  25. Friedrich Hossbach, Zwischen Wehrmacht und Hitler, 1934-1938 (Wolfenbüttel and Hannover, 1949), 219. For the idea that the military leaders, in their impatience to rearm, created the time pressures that Hitler now cited, see Klaus-Jürgen Müller, “Deutsche Militär-Elite in der Vorgeschichte des Zweiten Weltkrieges,” Die deutschen Eliten und der Weg in den Zweiten Weltkrieg, ed. Martin Broszat and Klaus Schwabe (Munich, 1989), 263ff.

  26. Fabian von Schlabrendorff, Offiziere gegen Hitler (Frankfurt and Hamburg, 1959), 49.

  27. Qtd. in Gert Buchheit, Ludwig Beck, ein preussischer General (Munich, 1964), 106. For the entire Blomberg affair, including the arguments as to whether it was at least partially the result of an intrigue, see Harold C. Deutsch, Das Komplott oder die Entmachtung der Generäle Blomberg- und Fritsch-Krise: Hitlers Weg zum Krieg (Munich, 1974).

  28. Walter Görlitz and Herbert A. Quint, Adolf Hitler: Eine Biographie (Stutt­gart, 1952), 489.

  29. Qtd. in Count Romedio Galeazzo von Thun-Hohenstein, Der Verschwörer: General Oster und die Militäropposition (Berlin, 1982), 70.

  30. Thun-Hohenstein, Verschwörer, 71.

  31. See Müller, Heer, 269-70.

  32. Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die deutsche Dikatur: Entstehung, Struktur, Folgen des Nationalsozialismus (Cologne and Berlin, 1969), 428.

  33. Qtd. in Michael Krüger-Charlé, “Carl Goerdelers Versuche der Durchsetzung einer alternativen Politik 1933 bis 1937,” Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus: Die deutsche Gesellschaft und der Widerstand gegen Hitler, ed. Jürgen Schmädecke and Peter Steinbach (Munich, 1960), 387.

  34. Scheurig, Tresckow, 59.

  35. Qtd. in Thun-Hohenstein, Verschwörer, 90. The reference to “rule by the bosses” was directed against the party and that to “Cheka methods” (those of the Soviet political police) against the SS.

  3. The September Plot

  1. See Klemens von Klemperer, Die verlassenen Verschwörer: Der deutsche Widerstand auf der Suche nach Verbündeten, 1938-1945 (Berlin, 1994), which pro­vides an extensive and highly informative description of the attempts to prompt France and especially Britain to adopt a clear, unyielding attitude toward Hitler. An overview can also be found in Peter Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat: Der Kampf der Opposition gegen Hitler, 3rd ed. (Munich, 1979), 79ff.

  2. Qtd. in Count Romedio Galeazzo von Thun-Hohenstein, Der Verschwörer: General Oster und die Militäropposition (Berlin, 1982), 93. According to Hans Rothfels, neither Fabian von Schlabrendorff nor Kleist’s son confirmed the wording of Beck’s statement, so some question remains (Deutsche Opposition gegen Hitler: Eine Würdigung, exp. ed. [Tübingen, 1969], 73).

  3. Erich Kordt, Nicht aus den Akten… Die Wilhelmstrasse in Frieden und Krieg: Erlebnisse, Begegnungen, und Eindrücke, 1928-1945 (Munich, 1949), 248.

  4. See Hoffmann, Widerstand, 92.

  5. Carl J. Burckhardt, Meine Danziger Mission, 1937-1939 (Zurich and Munich, 1960), 182.

  6. See Hoffmann, Widerstand, 81.

  7. Sebastian Haffner, Winston Churchill in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Reinbek, 1979), 102.

  8. Otto Hintze to Friedrich Meinecke; see Die deutsche Katastrophe (Wiesba­den, 1955), 89.

  9. Vansittart qtd. in Lothar Kettenacker, “Der nationalkonservative Widerstand aus angelsächsischer Sicht,” Die Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus: Die deutsche Gesellschaft und der Widerstand gegen Hitler, ed. Jürgen Schmädecke and Peter Steinbach (Munich, 1986), 715; Dalton qtd. in Hevda Ben-Israel, “Im Widerstreit der Ziele: Die britische Reaktion auf den deutschen Widerstand,” Schmädecke and Steinbach, 739.

  10. Hans Frank, Im Angesicht des Galgens (Neuhaus, 1955), 209.

  11. Ulrich Schlie, “Das Ausland und die deutsche Opposition gegen Hitler: Widerstandsforschung und politische Gegenwart seit 1945,” Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 52 (1993): 166.

  12. Rainer Hildebrand, Wir sind die Letzten (Neuwied and Bern, 1949), 92.

  13. Beck’s report as well as a related “note” are reprinted in Ursachen und Folgen: Vom. deutschen Zusammenbruch 1918 und 1945 bis zur staatlichen Neuordnung Deutschlands in der Gegenwart. Eine Urkunden- und Dokumentensammlung zur Zeitgeschichte, ed. Herbert Michaelis and Ernst Schraepler, vol. 12 (Ber­lin), 206ff.

  14. Klaus-Jürg
en Müller, Das Heer und Hitler: Armee und nationalsozialistisches Regime, 1933-1940 (Stuttgart, 1969), 336.

  15. Müller, Heer, 343.

  16. Harold C. Deutsch, Verschwörung gegen den Krieg: Der Widerstand in den Jahren 1939-1940 (Munich, 1969), 95. For Manstein’s comment in a letter, see Müller, Heer, 333.

  17. Christine von Dohnanyi (widow of Hans von Dohnanyi), qtd. in Kurt Sendtner, “Die deutsche Militäropposition im ersten Kriegsjahr,” Die Vollmacht des Gewissens, vol. 1 (Berlin and Frankfurt, 1960), 441.

  18. Ulrich von Hassell, Die Hassell-Tagebücher, 1938-1944: Aufzeichnungen vom anderen Deutschland, ed. Friedrich Hiller von Gaertingen, rev. and exp. ed. (Berlin, 1988), 289 (entry of Dec. 21, 1941); see also 345, 382.

  19. Hans Bernd Gisevius, Bis zum bittern Ende (Zurich, 1954), 318.

  20. Hoffmann, Widerstand, 96.

  21. Gisevius, Ende, 324.

  22. Qtd. in Gerhard Ritter, Carl Goerdeler und die deutsche Widerstandsbewegung (Stuttgart, 1984), 190. For Halder’s personality see the informative portrait in Helmut Krausnick, “Vorgeschichte und Beginn des militärischen Widerstandes gegen Hitler,” Die Vollmacht des Gewissens, vol. 1, 336ff.