by Danny Orbach
The most effective strategy for winning cooperation from senior commanders was to surround them with conspirators, to pressure them, and, finally, if all else failed, to confront them with a fait accompli.4 The resistance leaders tried several times to win over influential generals—Kluge in particular—in that manner. For that to happen, however, the network had to be dependent on cooperation with dubious allies such as Halder and, even worse, Brauchitsch. The political and military responsibility of Halder led him to demand cooperation from the British. Hence, the conspirators were dependent on internal politics in Zossen and London alike. Needless to say, these factors were completely outside of their control. To succeed, therefore, the clique had to enjoy an extremely fortuitous coincidence: good work in Berlin, and cooperation with Zossen and London. The probability of such multiple coincidences was low.
In conclusion, the smaller a network is, the lower its revolutionary autarky and the more it depends on outsiders, events, and decisions beyond its control. The case of Georg Elser is an even more extreme example of that pattern. Elser, an exceptionally talented assassin who operated without a network at all, had no ability to correct mistakes, because he was completely dependent on coincidences, chance, and the decisions of others (for instance, Hitler’s unusual vulnerability in the beer-hall ceremony). One unfortunate coincidence was enough to compromise his well-prepared plan. To increase autarky, the network had to grow. From 1938 to 1942, through four years of bitter disappointments, the conspirators gradually learned that lesson and changed their strategy accordingly.
Connected Cliques: 1942
For reasons discussed in chapter 11, the structural transition the conspiracy went through from the end of 1941 to the closing months of 1943 was related to a shift in its basic strategy. As the Berlin clique’s dependence on nonmembers such as Halder failed the movement again and again, the obvious response was to increase its revolutionary autarky. This strategy had been developed by Oster in 1938 and enthusiastically adopted by Tresckow in 1942. The resistance ought to assassinate Hitler independently, without asking the generals for permission. Then, when confronted with a fait accompli, the high-ranking military commanders would cooperate. However, the stringent wartime security regulations meant Hitler could be assassinated only when he was visiting one of the fronts.
The vast area of the eastern front, its isolation, and the difficulty of monitoring subversive activities created better conditions for such an assassination attempt. Nonetheless, in order to prepare a simultaneous coup in Berlin, the resistance fighters had to establish two distinct, geographically separate cliques and had to constantly coordinate their activity. Hence, the role of brokers such as Kaiser and Schlabrendorff became crucial, much more so than had been necessary in 1938. Strategically speaking, this structural shift was for the better: revolutionary autarky was bolstered (Tresckow was able to plan the assassination attempt without dependence on outsiders), and the resistance, for the first time, developed an infrastructure that enabled it to methodically plan assassination attempts that would occur simultaneously with a Berlin coup.
The cost, as the conspirators learned to their dismay, was that their security was seriously compromised. The increase in revolutionary autarky required separate cliques and significant expansion of the networks. As the number of participants grew, the danger of reckless remarks, leaks, and treachery became significantly higher, which undermined mutual trust. Despite the potential structural weakness of treachery, the chance of its taking place was still low, because the charismatic clique leaders, especially Tresckow, had a high degree of control over their respective groups. However, the relative independence of the cliques could potentially lead to careless acts that would expose the brokers to danger. And the brokers, as we have seen, were the Achilles’ heel of the structure. The proceedings against Hermann Kaiser, along with the downfall of Oster and Dohnanyi, proved that. Reckless remarks (Schulenburg and Kaiser) or noble but dangerous rescue operations (Oster and Dohnanyi) could lead to the downfall of the entire conspiracy. Only luck prevented the arrest of Schulenburg and Kaiser and the demotion of Oster from becoming irrevocable disasters.
An equally pressing problem was control, which was also seriously eroded after 1938. The model of connected cliques required strong brokers, but a broker was not necessarily a leader. At the end of the day, strong ties existed inside the cliques (especially Tresckow’s), but not necessarily between them. Erika von Tresckow related that up to autumn 1943, her husband had been worried that the cliques were not coordinated enough, that there was no one military leader to hold all the strings.5 According to Gerhard Ringshausen, even the decisions of Tresckow and Witzleben to assassinate Hitler at the end of 1941 were made at first separately, and only later as part of a coordinated effort.6 This state of affairs necessitated daily, tedious negotiations that racked the ringleaders’ nerves. The early 1943 entries in Kaiser’s diary reflect this: endless squabbling (“there is only contempt”), depression, and, most of all, uncertainty.7 Would Olbricht act? Would Tresckow use the opportunity to assassinate Hitler? What would happen if Goerdeler were to give his usual anti-Nazi speech to the wrong person? And what about Fromm? Interacting variables led to deep uncertainty and severe mental tension.
In conclusion, the model of connected cliques substantially increased the chance of assassinating Hitler and putting a coup d’état in motion. However, despite the continuous efforts of talented brokers like Schlabrendorff and Kaiser, the chronic problems of coordination decreased the likelihood of success, even if Hitler was successfully knocked offstage. An improvement in one aspect increased the risk in others.
The Wheel Conspiracy: 1944
Stauffenberg’s wheel conspiracy was an attempt to increase both revolutionary autarky and control without damaging overall security. According to the pattern mentioned earlier, the task was difficult, if not impossible. On the one hand, to bolster autarky, there was a need for more confidants and partners. On the other, when the conspiracy expanded, control and security suffered.
Stauffenberg tried to square the circle through a unique, charismatic style of leadership and ability to command. The demise of a competing center of power in the Abwehr and the decline in Tresckow’s power because of his transfer to the Second Army left the ground open for Stauffenberg. The new cells were mainly dependent on him and his associates, and thus he became the hub of the wheel, a “superconnector” dominating the flow of information throughout the entire structure. However, he did not fulfill that function alone. Contact with the cell in Paris, for example, was maintained through Stauffenberg’s cousin Caesar von Hofacker, the broker for the western front. The connections and brokerage of Goerdeler and Kaiser were still very important. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that Stauffenberg held unprecedented power. A less energetic charismatic hub could never have maintained such a structure and the level of control he had over it. Stauffenberg set strict laws of secrecy and compartmentalization to ensure that the arrest of one member would not expose the whole network.
The results were mixed. As regards revolutionary autarky, Stauffenberg’s achievements were certainly impressive. The resistance movement became much more extensive. (This was also due to the deteriorating situation at the fronts.) The troops under the control of trusted allies, such as Stülpnagel’s forces in Paris, became more numerous than ever. Stauffenberg and his associates at the hub, who dominated resistance cells in many fronts and provincial towns, hoped that Hitler’s death might ignite a general rebellion all over the Reich and the occupied territories. It’s important to note that since the autarky was still partial, the conspirators had to obtain the cooperation of fickle allies such as Field Marshal Kluge.
As far as security was concerned, Stauffenberg’s stringent compartmentalization rules lessened the danger but failed to extinguish it altogether. At the hub, any reckless decision of Stauffenberg was far more dangerous than a similar blunder made by a rank-and-file member. Adolf Reichwein’s talks with the Communist
s, for example, exposed him to a Gestapo agent and threatened to dismantle the entire conspiracy. Stauffenberg, who was usually very careful, behaved recklessly in authorizing talks with civilians unknown to him. The expansion of the networks inevitably increased the danger of a security breach, and, in fairness, all the precautions in the world could not have eliminated this danger altogether.
Control, presumably the greatest advantage of Stauffenberg’s wheel conspiracy, became its Achilles’ heel. In this respect, Stauffenberg’s talent did more harm than good. So many people fell for his charms and admired him like a demigod that he doubted that anyone would betray him. However, on July 20, 1944, the spokes of the wheel disintegrated one by one. Some generals refused to cooperate, and others “disappeared” when they heard that Hitler was alive: Stieff betrayed Stauffenberg, Hoepner was unenthusiastic and ineffectual, and Kluge’s promises evaporated into thin air. Stauffenberg’s last-minute telephone pleas to officers “not to let him down” only highlight these failures.
Trusting Maj. Otto Remer was perhaps Stauffenberg’s oddest blunder. He placed the most important mission—the siege of the government quarter and Goebbels’s arrest—in the hands of an unknown officer, fully confident that Remer would follow orders. Stauffenberg didn’t even bother to send a conspirator to watch him, so confident was he that people would not disobey his commands.
The expansion of the conspiracy decreased control, as expected, but Stauffenberg’s charisma created an illusion of increased control. So great was the illusion that the conspirators believed, as was ironically noted by one of their rivals in the Bendlerstrasse, that “both the Wehrmacht and the civilian population would cheer them along. It never crossed their minds that they might encounter resistance.”8 The illusion blinded Stauffenberg to the disloyalty of some officers. When it became clear that Hitler was alive, his power dissolved completely.
EPILOGUE
Knights in Dirty Armor:
Heroes of the Resistance and Us
TERMS LIKE heroes and heroism tend to make contemporary historians suspicious. In our age, they sound pompous and smack of discredited ideologies like fascism or Stalinism. Scholars of history are trained not to believe everything they read and to fearlessly criticize even the most celebrated “heroes” of the past. For every historical hero, there is a new historian—usually more than one—eager to bust the myth and add another slaughtered sacred cow to his or her résumé. Yet because the phrase “heroes of the resistance” is still in common use, it makes sense, just as we did with motives and morality, to revisit the basic definition. What does hero mean? Do the German resistance fighters, with all of their flaws, mistakes, and failures, suit the definition? Most importantly, what does the story mean for us, as readers of history and citizens of the twenty-first century?
A tough question, indeed. As I was writing this book, over ten years, I never stopped grappling with it. To start looking for a solution, it may be worth taking a step back from the resistance literature, and even from the story altogether. I have found my first hint in Jews for Sale?, Yehuda Bauer’s classic study of the efforts to save Jews in Hungary. Here is what he wrote on the Jewish activists who worked to save their brethren in the dark years of the Holocaust:
The Jewish heroes were not knights in shining armor. Weissmandel was a fanatic, ultraorthodox opponent of Zionism; Brand was an adventurer, a drinker, and a person whose devotion to the truth was not the most prominent mark of his character. Kasztner was an ambitious, overweening and authoritarian personality, guilty of rescuing Nazis from post-war justice to satisfy his sense of honor and power . . . Mayer was a pedantic philanthropist—and so on. Yet heroes they all are. Their attempt to save Jews involved tremendous self-sacrifice, courage and devotion.1
The German resistance fighters, too, were not “knights in shining armor” as they were portrayed by some early historians. In fact, they were a relatively random group of people, taken from all walks of life and barely distinguishable from others before they joined the conspiracy. An opponent of the Nazi regime could be an educated, sophisticated colonel from the nobility, a craggy combat officer at the front, a button-down conservative mayor or intellectual, a labor-union activist, a diligent schoolteacher, or an unassuming carpenter. True, as we have seen, most of them had some special mental attributes that left an imprint on the minds of their associates: strong religious beliefs, bravery, and empathy for others. These attributes, though, were not always evident before the time of emergency.
Prone to human failings, they were not saints, and at certain junctures they were inclined to be aggressive and manipulative, at times even cruel. Oster, for example, was described by some of his colleagues in the Abwehr as a scheming and slippery officer who flirted with the secretaries in his office. Dohnanyi forbade his wife to complete her dissertation because, he asserted, academic studies would conflict with her wifely duties.2 Goerdeler was, in the minds of many, a conservative, antagonistic, and narrow-minded bureaucrat.3 Tresckow was implicated in antipartisan warfare (which may well have entailed atrocities). And Hase, in his role as the Greater Berlin commandant, condemned deserters to death even while trying to help other political “criminals.”4 Human beings are always complex and often conflicted; the conspirators were no different. However, given the difficult circumstances they found themselves in, the great majority consented to risk their lives for others. In that sense, and only in that sense, they were true heroes.
Once we have understood that their armor is not shining but rather tarnished and scratched, we can see “heroes” for what they are in the real world: people able, perhaps only briefly, to transcend ideology and selfishness and even existential dangers for the sake of a greater good. Any other interpretation makes life much too easy for us, the readers of history. If Stauffenberg, Tresckow, and Goerdeler were perfect, larger than life, “heroic” in the mythical sense, while we are not, their lessons would not be useful to us. Ordinary people cannot follow the example of demigods. If, by contrast, the German resisters are seen as pure opportunists, we again receive a soothing message. It is reassuring to measure oneself against wicked criminals, embodiments of evil. When new historians in Germany go out of their way to show how evil Tresckow was (using late-twentieth-century moral standards), the underlying message is “I am a new German. I am not like him. See how righteous I am?”
But what if one were to find oneself in circumstances such as Stauffenberg’s, Tresckow’s, or Goerdeler’s? Fallible, imperfect individuals as we are, susceptible to stereotyping and other failings, what would we do when moral dilemmas abounded: in the midst of a propaganda storm, receiving news of the death of loved ones, not to mention colossal genocide? The terrible history of the twentieth century has proved more than once that such nightmares are never too far away. “Responsible action,” wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “takes place in the sphere of relativity, completely shrouded in the twilight that the historical situation casts upon good and evil. It takes place in the midst of the countless perspectives from which every phenomenon is seen. Responsible action must decide not simply between right and wrong, good and evil, but between right and right, wrong and wrong.”5
Under such circumstances, the complex type known as a “hero” perpetually challenges everyone and everyone’s definition. You, the senior civil servant—would you be ready to sacrifice your career in order to protect the persecuted, as Goerdeler did? You, the officer—would you refuse “one out of ninety-nine commands,” as Olbricht declared he was ready to do, or put the lives of your friends, loved ones, and family at risk, as Tresckow, Oster, and Stauffenberg did? How would you cope with a whirling array of moral dilemmas in a “sphere of relativity, completely shrouded in the twilight”? If these questions make you ponder, then I have done the job I set out to do.
Acknowledgments
The Plots Against Hitler could not have been published but for the generous help of a dense network of family members, friends, teachers, and colleagues to whom I owe endless gra
titude.
Andrew Lownie, my dedicated agent, cleverly navigated in the stormy water of the international literary market in order to publish this book in English and in translation. I also thank Jemma McDonough from the March Agency for her help in negotiating the Italian edition of this book. My dear mother, Lily Orbach, invested considerable time and effort in reading the first drafts of the manuscript and giving valuable comments. Ned Pennant-Rea, one of the best language editors I’ve ever encountered, worked very hard to make this book readable. Kristen Hamilton (“Kristen Corrects”) also helped during the editing process.
I am also deeply indebted to the wonderful publishing team of Eamon Dolan Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Eamon Dolan, my editor, believed in this project and made an enormous effort to bring it into print. Rosemary McGuinness showed incredible patience with my nagging on an endless array of administrative issues, and Tammy Zambo did an excellent job with the copyediting.
Prof. Niall Ferguson from Harvard University, through his sharp and pointed criticism, directed the way to the rewriting of this book while I worked under him as a teaching fellow—a truly unforgettable experience. Prof. Moshe Zuckermann, my most esteemed teacher from Tel Aviv University and an expert in German intellectual history, stood by this project since its inception, when I was only an (overly) ambitious high school student with no experience in research. Prof. Moshe Zimmermann from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem gave me valuable insights. Prof. Peter Hoffmann from McGill University, an eminent historian of the German resistance movement, graciously supported me through many barren years of research with kind help and advice, even when he deeply disagreed with my conclusions and methodology. Dr. Maximilian Schich (Zurich Technical University), along with two of my Harvard friends, Anshul Kumar and Mazen Elfakhani, first inaugurated me into the fascinating world of social-networks analysis and tirelessly answered even my most uninformed questions. Linda von Keyserlingk, a curator from the Military History Museum in Dresden and a PhD candidate at Potsdam University, graciously shared some of her findings about social networks in the German resistance. I have benefited in the same way from the free instruction given by Prof. Lada Adamic, a renowned expert in social networks, through the academic internet site Coursera; and from the instruction of the network analyst Smadar Porat. Prof. Winfried Meyer, a historian of German military intelligence, gave me precious advice and documents from his personal collection. I am also grateful to my adviser at Harvard, Prof. Andrew Gordon, who was always willing to listen and showed remarkable tolerance toward the time I invested in the research for this book, at the expense of my yet-to-be-finished dissertation project.