The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

by William L. Shirer

  Halder became the first Bavarian and the first Catholic ever to become Chief of the German General Staff—a severe break with the old Protestant Prussian tradition of the officer corps. A man of wide intellectual interests, with a special bent for mathematics and botany (my own first impression of him was that he looked like a university professor of mathematics or science) and a devout Christian, there was no doubt that he had the mind and the spirit to be a true successor to Beck. The question was whether, like his departed chief, he lacked the knack of taking decisive action at the proper moment. And whether, if he did not lack it, at that moment he had the character to disregard his oath of allegiance to the Fuehrer and move resolutely against him. For Halder, like Beck, though not at first a member of a growing conspiracy against Hitler, knew about it and apparently, again like Beck, was willing to back it. As the new Chief of the General Staff, he became the key figure in the first serious plot to overthrow the dictator of the Third Reich.

  BIRTH OF A CONSPIRACY AGAINST HITLER

  After five and a half years of National Socialism it was evident to the few Germans who opposed Hitler that only the Army possessed the physical strength to overthrow him. The workers, the middle and upper classes, even if they had wanted to, had no means of doing it. They had no organization outside of the Nazi party groups and they were, of course, unarmed. Though much would later be written about the German “resistance” movement, it remained from the beginning to the end a small and feeble thing, led, to be sure, by a handful of courageous and decent men, but lacking followers.

  The very maintenance of its bare existence was, admittedly, difficult in a police state dominated by terror and spying. Moreover, how could a tiny group—or even a large group, had there been one—rise up in revolt against the machine guns, the tanks, the flame throwers of the S.S.?

  In the beginning, what opposition there was to Hitler sprang from among the civilians; the generals, as we have seen, were only too pleased with a system which had shattered the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty and given them the heady and traditional task of building up a great army once again. Ironically, the principal civilians who emerged to lead the opposition had served the Fuehrer in important posts, most of them with an initial enthusiasm for Nazism which dampened only when it began to dawn on them in 1937 that Hitler was leading Germany toward a war which it was almost sure to lose.

  One of the earliest of these to see the light was Carl Goerdeler, the mayor of Leipzig, who, first appointed Price Controller by Bruening, had continued in that job for three years under Hitler. A conservative and a monarchist at heart, a devout Protestant, able, energetic and intelligent, but also indiscreet and headstrong, he broke with the Nazis in 1936 over their anti-Semitism and their frenzied rearmament and, resigning both his posts, went to work with heart and soul in opposition to Hitler. One of his first acts was to journey to France, England and the United States in 1937 to discreetly warn of the peril of Nazi Germany.

  The light came a little later to two other eventual conspirators, Johannes Popitz, Prussian Minister of Finance, and Dr. Schacht. Both had received the Nazi Party’s highest decoration, the Golden Badge of Honor, for their services in shaping Germany’s economy for war purposes. Both had begun to wake up to what Hitler’s real goal was in 1938. Neither of them seems to have been fully trusted by the inner circle of the opposition because of their past and their character. Schacht was too opportunist, and Hassell remarked in his diary that the Reichsbank president had a capacity “for talking one way and acting another,” an opinion, he says, that was shared by Generals Beck and von Fritsch. Popitz was brilliant but unstable. A fine Greek scholar as well as eminent economist, he, along with General Beck and Hassell, was a member of the Wednesday Club, a group of sixteen intellectuals who gathered once a week to discuss philosophy, history, art, science and literature and who as time went on—or ran out—formed one of the centers of the opposition.

  Ulrich von Hassell became a sort of foreign-affairs adviser to the resistance leaders. His dispatches as ambassador in Rome during the Abyssinian War and the Spanish Civil War, as we have seen, had been full of advice to Berlin on how to keep Italy embroiled with France and Britain and therefore on the side of Germany. Later he came to fear that war with France and Britain would be fatal to Germany and that even a German alliance with Italy would be too. Far too cultivated to have anything but contempt for the vulgarism of National Socialism, he did not, however, voluntarily give up serving the regime. He was kicked out of the diplomatic service in the big military, political and Foreign Office shake-up which Hitler engineered on February 4, 1938. A member of an old Hanover noble family, married to the daughter of Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, the founder of the German Navy, and a gentleman of the old school to his finger tips, Hassell, like so many others of his class, seems to have needed the shock of being cast out by the Nazis before he became much interested in doing anything to bring them down. Once this had happened, this sensitive, intelligent, uneasy man devoted himself to that task and in the end, as we shall see, sacrificed his life to it, meeting a barbarous end.

  There were others, lesser known and mostly younger, who had opposed the Nazis from the beginning and who gradually came together to form various resistance circles. One of the leading intellects of one group was Ewald von Kleist, a gentleman farmer and a descendant of the great poet. He worked closely with Ernst Niekisch, a former Social Democrat and editor of Widerstand (Resistance), and with Fabian von Schlabrendorff, a young lawyer, who was the great-grandson of Queen Victoria’s private physician and confidential adviser, Baron von Stockmar. There were former trade-union leaders such as Julius Leber, Jakob Kaiser and Wilhelm Leuschner. Two Gestapo officials, Artur Nebe, the head of the criminal police, and Bernd Gisevius, a young career police officer, became valuable aides as the conspiracies developed. The latter became the darling of the American prosecution at Nuremberg and wrote a book which sheds much light on the anti-Hitler plots, though most historians take the book and the author with more than a grain of salt.

  There were a number of sons of venerable families in Germany: Count Helmuth von Moltke, great-grandnephew of the famous Field Marshal, who later formed a resistance group of young idealists known as the Kreisau Circle; Count Albrecht Bernstorff, nephew of the German ambassador in Washington during the First World War; Freiherr Karl Ludwig von Guttenberg, editor of a fearless Catholic monthly; and Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a descendant of eminent Protestant clergymen on both sides of his family, who regarded Hitler as Antichrist and who believed it a Christian duty to “eliminate him.”

  Nearly all of these brave men would persevere until, after being caught and tortured, they were executed by rope or by ax or merely murdered by the S.S.

  For a good long time this tiny nucleus of civilian resistance had little success in interesting the Army in its work. As Field Marshal von Blomberg testified at Nuremberg, “Before 1938–39 German generals did not oppose Hitler. There was no reason to oppose him, since he produced the results they desired.” There was some contact between Goerdeler and General von Hammerstein, but the former Commander in Chief of the German Army had been in retirement since 1934 and had little influence among the active generals. Early in the regime Schlabrendorff had got in touch with Colonel Hans Oster, chief assistant to Admiral Canaris in the Abwehr, the Intelligence Bureau of OKW, and found him to be not only a staunch anti-Nazi but willing to try to bridge the gulf between the military and civilians. However, it was not until the winter of 1937–38, when the generals were subjected to the successive shocks engendered by Hitler’s decision to go to war, his shake-up of the military command, which he himself took over, and his shabby treatment of General von Fritsch, that some of them became aware of the danger to Germany of the Nazi dictator. The resignation of General Beck toward the end of August 1938, as the Czech crisis grew more menacing, provided a further awakening, and though none of his fellow officers followed him into retirement as he had hoped, it immediately became ev
ident that the fallen Chief of the General Staff was the one person around whom both the recalcitrant generals and the civilian resistance leaders could rally. Both groups respected and trusted him.

  Another consideration became evident to both of them. To stop Hitler, force would now be necessary, and only the Army possessed it. But who in the Army could muster it? Not Hammerstein and not even Beck, since they were in retirement. What was needed, it was realized, was to bring in generals who at the moment had actual command of troops in and around Berlin and who thus could act effectively on short notice. General Halder, the new Chief of the Army General Staff, had no actual forces under his command. General von Brauchitsch had the whole Army, but he was not fully trusted. His authority would be useful but he could be brought in only, the conspirators felt, at the last minute.

  As it happened, certain key generals who were willing to help were quickly discovered and initiated into the budding conspiracy. Three of them held commands which were vital to the success of the venture: General Erwin von Witzleben, commander of the all-important Wehrkreis III, which comprised Berlin and the surrounding areas; General Count Erich von Brockdorff-Ahlefeld, commander of the Potsdam garrison, which was made up of the 23rd Infantry Division; and General Erich Hoepner, who commanded an armored division in Thuringia which could, if necessary, repulse any S.S. troops attempting to relieve Berlin from Munich.

  The plan of the conspirators, as it developed toward the end of August, was to seize Hitler as soon as he had issued the final order to attack Czechoslovakia and hale him before one of his own People’s Courts on the charge that he had tried recklessly to hurl Germany into a European war and was therefore no longer competent to govern. In the meantime, for a short interim, there would be a military dictatorship followed by a provisional government presided over by some eminent civilian. In due course a conservative democratic government would be formed.

  There were two considerations on which the success of the coup depended and which involved the two key conspirators, General Halder and General Beck. The first was timing. Halder had arranged with OKW that he personally be given forty-eight hours’ notice of Hitler’s final order to attack Czechoslovakia. This would give him the time to put the plot into execution before the troops could cross the Czech frontier. Thus he would be able not only to arrest Hitler but to prevent the fatal step that would lead to war.

  The second factor was that Beck must be able to convince the generals beforehand and the German people later (during the proposed trial of Hitler) that an attack on Czechoslovakia would bring in Britain and France and thus precipitate a European war, for which Germany was not prepared and which it would certainly lose. This had been the burden of his memoranda all summer and it was the basis of all that he was now prepared to do: to preserve Germany from a European conflict which he believed would destroy her—by overthrowing Hitler.

  Alas for Beck, and for the future of most of the world, it was Hitler and not the recently resigned Chief of the General Staff who proved to have the shrewder view of the possibilities of a big war. Beck, a cultivated European with a sense of history, could not conceive that Britain and France would willfully sacrifice their self-interest by not intervening in case of a German attack on Czechoslovakia. He had a sense of history but not of contemporary politics. Hitler had. For some time now he had felt himself reinforced in his judgment that Prime Minister Chamberlain would sacrifice the Czechs rather than go to war and that, in such a case, France would not fulfill her treaty obligations to Prague.

  The Wilhelmstrasse had not failed to notice dispatches published in the New York newspapers as far back as May 14 in which their London correspondents had reported an “off-the-record” luncheon talk with Chamberlain at Lady Astor’s. The British Prime Minister, the journalists reported, had said that neither Britain nor France nor probably Russia would come to the aid of Czechoslovakia in the case of a German attack, that the Czech state could not exist in its present form and that Britain favored, in the interest of peace, turning over the Sudetenland to Germany. Despite angry questions in the House of Commons, the Germans noted, Chamberlain had not denied the veracity of the American dispatches.

  On June 1, the Prime Minister had spoken, partly off the record, to British correspondents, and two days later the Times had published the first of its leaders which were to help undermine the Czech position; it had urged the Czech government to grant “self-determination” to the country’s minorities “even if it should mean their secession from Czechoslovakia” and for the first time it had suggested plebiscites as a means of determining what the Sudetens and the others desired. A few days later the German Embassy in London informed Berlin that the Times editorial was based on Chamberlain’s off-the-record remarks and that it reflected his views. On June 8 Ambassador von Dirksen told the Wilhelmstrasse that the Chamberlain government would be willing to see the Sudeten areas separated from Czechoslovakia providing it was done after a plebiscite and “not interrupted by forcible measures on the part of Germany.”24

  All this must have been pleasing for Hitler to hear. The news from Moscow also was not bad. By the end of June Friedrich Werner Count von der Schulenburg, the German ambassador to Russia, was advising Berlin that the Soviet Union was “hardly likely to march in defense of a bourgeois state,” i.e., Czechoslovakia.25 By August 3, Ribbentrop was informing the major German diplomatic missions abroad that there was little fear of intervention over Czechoslovakia by Britain, France or Russia.26

  It was on that day, August 3, that Chamberlain had packed off Lord Runciman to Czechoslovakia on a curious mission to act as a “mediator” in the Sudeten crisis. I happened to be in Prague the day of his arrival and after attending his press conference and talking with members of his party remarked in my diary that “Runciman’s whole mission smells.” Its very announcement in the House of Commons on July 26 had been accompanied by a piece of prevaricating by Chamberlain himself which must have been unique in the experience of the British Parliament. The Prime Minister had said that he was sending Runciman “in response to a request from the government of Czechoslovakia.” The truth was that Runciman had been forced down the throat of the Czech government by Chamberlain. But there was an underlying and bigger falsehood. Everyone, including Chamberlain, knew that Runciman’s mission to “mediate” between the Czech government and the Sudeten leaders was impossible and absurd. They knew that Henlein, the Sudeten leader, was not a free agent and could not negotiate, and that the dispute now was between Prague and Berlin. My diary notes for the first evening and subsequent days make it clear that the Czechs knew perfectly well that Runciman had been sent by Chamberlain to pave the way for the handing over of the Sudetenland to Hitler. It was a shabby diplomatic trick.

  And now the summer of 1938 was almost over. Runciman puttered about in the Sudetenland and in Prague, making ever more friendly gestures to the Sudeten Germans and increasing demands on the Czech government to grant them what they wanted. Hitler, his generals and his Foreign Minister were frantically busy. On August 23, the Fuehrer entertained aboard the liner Patria in Kiel Bay during naval maneuvers the Regent of Hungary, Admiral Horthy, and the members of the Hungarian government. If they wanted to get in on the Czech feast, Hitler told them, they must hurry. “He who wants to sit at the table,” he put it, “must at least help in the kitchen.”27 The Italian ambassador, Bernardo Attolico, was also a guest on the ship. But when he pressed Ribbentrop for the date of “the German move against Czechoslovakia” so that Mussolini could be prepared, the German Foreign Minister gave an evasive answer. The Germans, it was plain, did not quite trust the discretion of their Fascist ally. Of Poland they were now sure. All through the summer Ambassador von Moltke in Warsaw was reporting to Berlin that not only would Poland decline to help Czechoslovakia by allowing Russia to send troops and planes through or over her territory but Colonel Józef Beck, the Polish Foreign Minister, was casting covetous eyes on a slice of Czech territory, the Teschen area. Beck already was exhibiti
ng that fatal shortsightedness, so widely shared in Europe that summer, which in the end would prove more disastrous than he could possibly imagine.

  At OKW (the High Command of the Armed Forces) and at OKH (the High Command of the Army) there was incessant activity. Final plans were being drawn up to have the armed forces ready for the push-off into Czechoslovakia by October 1. On August 24, Colonel Jodl at OKW wrote an urgent memorandum for Hitler stressing that “the fixing of the exact time for the ‘incident’ which will give Germany provocation for military intervention is most important.” The timing of X Day, he explained, depended on it.

  No advance measures [he went on] may be taken before X minus 1 for which there is not an innocent explanation, as otherwise we shall appear to have manufactured the incident…. If for technical reasons the evening hours should be considered desirable for the incident, then the following day cannot be X Day, but it must be the day after that … It is the purpose of these notes to point out what a great interest the Wehrmacht has in the incident and that it must be informed of the Fuehrer’s intention in good time—insofar as the Abwehr Section is not also charged with organizing the incident.28

  The expert preparations for the onslaught on Czechoslovakia were obviously in fine shape by the summer’s end. But what about the defense of the west, should the French honor their word to the Czechs and attack? On August 26 Hitler set off for a tour of the western fortifications accompanied by Jodl, Dr. Todt, the engineer in charge of building the West Wall, Himmler and various party officials. On August 27 General Wilhelm Adam, a blunt and able Bavarian who was in command of the west, joined the party and in the next couple of days witnessed how intoxicated the Fuehrer became at the triumphal reception he was given by the Rhinelanders. Adam himself was not impressed; in fact, he was alarmed, and on the twenty-ninth in a surprising scene in Hitler’s private car he abruptly demanded to speak with the Fuehrer alone. Not without sneers, according to the General’s later report, Hitler dismissed Himmler and his other party cronies. Adam did not waste words. He declared that despite all the fanfare about the West Wall he could not possibly hold it with the troops at his disposal. Hitler became hysterical and launched into a long harangue about how he had made Germany stronger than Britain and France together.