by Danny Orbach
[back]
32. When the Gestapo officials confronted him with his mother: Maria Elser (interrogation, 19.6.1950), Karl Hirth (interview, 5.8.1950), Bürgerbräuattentat, IfZ ZS/A 17-1, http:://www.ifz-muenchen.de/archiv/zsa/ZS_A_0017_01.pdf, pp. 80, 112; Elser, Autobiographie, 75, 119.
[back]
33. “I wanted to kill the leadership”: Elser, Autobiographie, 23, 156–57.
[back]
34. He enjoyed relatively good conditions in return: For photographs of the reconstructed bomb, see Bürgerbräuattentat, IfZ ZS/A 17-5, http:://www.ifz-muenchen.de/archiv/zsa/ZS_A_0017_05.pdf, pp. 6–15; Steinbach and Tuchel, Georg Elser, pp. 70–71, 108–9.
[back]
35. “I do not regret what I did”: For a moving testimony on Elser’s last days, see Lechner (interview), Bürgerbräuattentat, IfZ ZS/A 17-2, http:://www.ifz-muenchen.de/archiv/zsa/ZS_A_0017_02.pdf, pp. 26, 39–40 (the quote is taken from p. 26).
[back]
7. The Point of No Return: Pogrom and War
1. Among them were the Grynszpans: Martin Gilbert, Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction (London: HarperPress, 2006), 23–25.
[back]
2. Goebbels gave a speech of incitement: Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 110.
[back]
3. “A pogrom that burgeoned into a mass frenzy”: Ibid., 111.
[back]
4. For the first time, Jews were incarcerated: Nuremberg Blue (USA-261, 1816-PS), 28:499–540.
[back]
5. Others were deeply disappointed: General Halder confessed after the war that the high command was completely indifferent to the pogrom and its consequences. This, probably, was also true of his own attitude. See Halder to Krausnick, 28.4.1955, 3/11, Deutsch Papers, series 3, box 3, round 1.
[back]
6. Hitler . . . was “beyond redemption”: Arthur P. Young, X Documents (London: Deutsch, 1974), 153.
[back]
7. “We loved Germany”: Gerhard Ritter, Carl Goerdeler und die deutsche Widerstandsbewegung (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1954), 200–201; compare with Sabine Gillmann and Hans Mommsen, Politische Schriften und Briefe Carl Friedrich Goerdelers (Munich: Saur, 2003), 2:819–20.
[back]
8. Prof. Johannes Popitz, for example: Hans A. Jacobsen, ed., “Spiegelbild einer Verschwörung”: Die Opposition gegen Hitler und der Staatsstreich vom 20. Juli 1944 in der SD-Berichterstattung: Geheime Dokumente aus dem ehemaligen Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Stuttgart: Seewald, 1984), 1:449.
[back]
9. “Germany is controlled by 10,000 of its worst elements”: Young, X Documents, 152–53, 158–61.
[back]
10. the “persecution of the Jews will continue”: Ibid., 153.
[back]
11. “I write under the gloomy impression”: Ulrich von Hassell, Die Hassell-Tagebücher, 1938–1944: Aufzeichnungen vom anderen Deutschland, ed. Friedrich Freiherr Hiller von Gärtringen (Munich: Goldmann, 1994), 62. Beck’s response was very similar. See Klaus-Jürgen Müller, Generaloberst Ludwig Beck: Eine Biographie (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 2008), 375–76.
[back]
12. “A small bureaucrat”: Albert Krebs, Fritz-Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg: Zwischen Staatsraison und Hochverrat (Hamburg: Leibniz-Verlag, 1964), 172–73.
[back]
13. Luck did not favor the conspirators: Peter Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat: Der Kampf der Opposition gegen Hitler (Munich: Piper, 1985), 132.
[back]
14. “The provinces of Bohemia and Moravia”: Max Domarus, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945: Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen (Würzburg: Schmidt, Neustadt a.d. Aisch, 1962), 1908.
[back]
15. Foreign Minister Halifax, already skeptical about appeasement: John Charmley, Churchill, the End of Glory: A Political Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1993), 360.
[back]
16. “In the event of any action”: E. L. Woodward and Rohan Butler, eds., Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939, 3rd ser. (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), 4:553.
[back]
17. His own private notes reveal the distress: Chamberlain Papers, HULL, NC 4/5/29, NC 4/5/30, 1.
[back]
18. the British were rearming: For data on British rearmament, see Mark Thomas, “Rearmament and Economic Recovery in the Late 1930s,” Economic History Review, n.s., 36, no. 4 (November 1983): 554–55. For more general discussion, see Andrea Mason, “Opponents of Hitler in Search of Foreign Support: The Foreign Contacts of Dr. Carl Goerdeler, Ludwig Beck, Ernst von Weizsäcker, and Adam von Trott zu Solz” (master’s thesis, McGill University, 2002), 9–15.
[back]
19. General Beck was following events by radio: Nicholas Reynolds, Treason Was No Crime: Ludwig Beck, Chief of the German General Staff (London: Kimber, 1976), 181–82. For Goerdeler’s view, see Gillmann and Mommsen, Goerdelers, 2:1176–78.
[back]
20. The new recruit was the anti-Nazi jurist: Abschrift Huppenkothen, IfZ ZS 0249-1, p. 24.
[back]
21. he in fact devoted all his time to underground activity: Marikje Smid, Hans von Dohnanyi, Christine Bonhoeffer: Eine Ehe im Widerstand gegen Hitler (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2002), 145–46; Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat, 159; Abschrift der Aufzeichnungen von Frau Christine v. Dohnanyi geb. Bonhoeffer (post war, undated), 1, Deutsch Papers, series 3, box 3, round 1 Material.
[back]
22. A triumph for Hitler . . . was for him intolerable: Harold C. Deutsch, The Conspiracy Against Hitler in the Twilight War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1970), 82–84; Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat, 165–67; Etzdorf an Deutsch, 14.11.1947, Deutsch Papers, series 3, box 2.
[back]
23. “Dr. Müller, you are now in the central headquarters”: Helmut Krausnick’s inverview with Josef Müller, 1958, 5–6, Deutsch Papers, series 3, box 1, Müller interviews.
[back]
24. Accordingly, he told Goerdeler, active support: Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat, 132–33.
[back]
25. the tortures he endured gave him the ability: Dorothea Beck, Julius Leber: Sozialdemokrat zwischen Reform und Widerstand (Berlin: Siedler, 1983), 155, 161.
[back]
26. In 1939, there were no concrete plans: Nuremberg Blue, 12:548–49; Nuremberg Green, 12:1087–88.
[back]
27. The best the emissaries could get: Harold C. Deutsch’s interview with Josef Müller, 1958, 8–10, Deutsch Papers, series 3, box 1, Müller interviews; Hedva Ben Israel, “Matarot Mitstalvot: Ha-Teguvot Ha-Beritiyot La-Hitnagdut Ha-Anti-Nazit be-Germania,” in Ha-Hitnagdut La-Nazism, ed. Moshe Zimmermann (Jerusalem: Koebner Institute for German History, 1984), 66–76.
[back]
28. no one would agree to revolt: On April 12, 1939, Halder had approached the American envoy in Berlin and told him that the “German army dreaded a European war, but would march if ordered to do so by Herr Hitler.” See NA, FO 371/22969, p. 89.
[back]
29. “That is the end of Germany”: Hans B. Gisevius, Bis zum bittern Ende (Zurich: Fretz & Wasmuth, 1946), 139; Nuremberg Blue, 2:445, 3:25.
[back]
30. The resistance of the Polish army: Christopher Browning, Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942 (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem Press; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 15–25; compare with the description of the Einsatzgruppen’s evolution and their role in Abschrift Huppenkothen, 11.7.1947, IfZ 0249-1, pp. 4–7. This account is detailed but apologetic (for the SS), and has to be read with extreme caution.
[back]
31. “Unless the German Government are prepared”: Woodward and Butler, Documents on British Foreign Policy, 7:488.
[back]
32. General Beck . . . was expecting the worst: Reynolds
, Treason Was No Crime, 181–82.
[back]
33. “I have accordingly the honor to inform you”: Woodward and Butler, Documents on British Foreign Policy, 7:535.
[back]
8. The Spirit of Zossen: When Networks Fail
1. they were completely unprepared: See Goerdeler’s message to a British emissary (Dr. Shairer), 28.8.1939, NA, FO/37122981, pp. 155–59.
[back]
2. to “demonstrate the military might”: Fabian von Schlabrendorff, The Secret War Against Hitler, trans. Hilda Simon (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1994), 105; Kunrat Freiherr von Hammerstein, Spähtrupp (Stuttgart: Govert, 1963), 79–80.
[back]
3. “it became my job to inform the British”: Schlabrendorff, Secret War Against Hitler, 106.
[back]
4. “most uncomfortable moments”: Ibid. On September 2, an informant in the General Staff suggested to the British military attaché, in veiled language, that an imminent overthrow of the regime was possible (NA, FO 371/22981, p. 56). Yet I was unable to find direct references to Hammerstein’s plot, or to the conversation between Schlabrendorff and Forbes, either in Forbes’s private papers (located at Aberdeen University) or in NA. Forbes, probably, did not find time or reason to report it during the hectic days after the outbreak of the war. It is clear, though, that he did not take the German opposition seriously, and he stressed that believing in a military coup d’état was a “dangerous fallacy. If and when Herr Hitler decides that a war with Britain is necessary, the Germans, extremists and moderates, will with their characteristic discipline follow him to a man, and any would-be opposition will be promptly and ruthlessly dealt with by the SS. It will be a long time and only after much reciprocal destruction that opposition will show its head with effect.” Still, rumors of an anti-Nazi military underground reached the British Foreign Office, through other quarters, on September 9 and 27. See Forbes to Viscount Halifax, 3.1.1939, NA, FO 371/22960, pp. 230–31. For the other sources of information mentioned here, see pp. 151, 162–63.
[back]
5. “These people turn me . . . into an anti-militarist”: Rudolf Pechel, Deutscher Widerstand (Zurich: Rentsch, 1947), 154; Ulrich von Hassell, Die Tagebücher, 1938–1944: Aufzeichnungen vom anderen Deutschland, ed. Friedrich Freiherr Hiller von Gärtringen (Munich: Goldmann, 1994), 68; Peter Hoffmann, The History of the German Resistance, 1933–1945, trans. Richard Barry (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1985), 113.
[back]
6. “Uprooting whole generations . . . could be done”: Helmuth Stieff, Brief HQ/u, 21.11.1939, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte (July 1954), 300. For similar remarks of Stieff about the Holocaust, see his letters quoted in Scheurig Papers, IfZ ZS/A 0031-3, http:://www.ifz-muenchen.de/archiv/zsa/ZS_A_0031_03.pdf, p. 119.
[back]
7. “The army is hungry for pillage”: Hermann Kaiser, Mut zum Bekenntnis: Die geheimen Tagebücher des Hauptmanns Hermann Kaiser, 1941, 1943, ed. Peter M. Kaiser (Berlin: Lukas Verlag, 2010), 29.5.1941, 203–4.
[back]
8. “These acts will be stopped only through shooting”: Based on an interview with Axel von dem Bussche, 7.3.1947, in Detlef Graf von Schwerin, Dann sind’s die besten Köpfe, die man henkt: Die junge Generation im deutschen Widerstand (Munich: Piper, 1991). Bussche gave similar testimony in a lecture delivered three weeks beforehand. See Axel von dem Bussche, “Eid und Schuld,” in Axel von dem Bussche, ed. Gevinon von Medem (Mainz: Hase & Koehler, 1994), 137.
[back]
9. “not to burden them with details”: Peter Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat: Der Kampf der Opposition gegen Hitler(Munich: Piper, 1985), 194; Klaus-Jürgen Müller, Generaloberst Ludwig Beck: Eine Biographie (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 2008), 377; Aufzeischnungen von Frau Inga Haag, Frankfurt A.M, 4.4.1948, 1, Halder an Krausnick, 1952, 3, Deutsch Papers, series 3, box 2, Material on Groscurth, series 4, box 9, Plot to Assassinate Hitler.
[back]
10. “There is just no point”: Aktenvermerk über die Besprechung im Führerzug am 12.9.1939 in Illnau. 14.9.1939, NARA, Rg. 238/3047-PS (US-80); Helmut Krausnick and Hans H. Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges: Die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitpolizei und des S.D. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1981), 64; Hassell,Tagebücher, 147.
[back]
11. “If, in the near future”: Max Domarus, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 1932–1945: Kommentiert von einem deutschen Zeitgenossen (Würzburg: Schmidt, Neustadt a.d. Aisch, 1962), 1394.
[back]
12. Most generals in the high command: Ankara Embassy to Viscount Halifax, 30.11.1939, NA, FO 371/23014, p. 149, as well as FO 371/23012, pp. 208–10; Harold C. Deutsch, The Conspiracy Against Hitler in the Twilight War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1970), 72–75, 210.
[back]
13. General Halder gave his final okay: Halder, “Protokoll der öffentlichen Sitzung der Spruchkammer München X, BY 11/47, am 15.9.1948,” BA-MA Msg 2/213, p.55(31); Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat, 173.
[back]
14. Erich Kordt was even ready to assassinate Hitler: Deutsch, Conspiracy Against Hitler, 224; Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat, 176–77; Erwin Lahousen, “Zur Vorgeschichte des Anschlages vom 20. Juli 1944,” 2, Deutsch Papers, series 4, box 9, Halder Franz. Again, rumors reached the British on November 10, this time through Greek diplomats. See NA, FO 371/23012, p. 33.
[back]
15. When Thomas tried to brief him: Georg Thomas, “20. Juli 1944,” BA-MA Msg 2/213, p. 8.
[back]
16. The conspirators believed they had reasons to be optimistic: Deutsch, Conspiracy Against Hitler, 226–27.
[back]
17. In his fury, Hitler said that he was well familiar: Ibid., 228; Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat, 177; Halder an Deutsch, 28.4.1952, 3, Deutsch Papers, series 3, box 2; Halder, “Protokoll,” BA-MA Msg 2/213, p. 41(17).
[back]
18. “It is not possible to avert the western offensive”: Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat, 178; Helmut Groscurth,Tagebücher eines Abwehroffiziers, 1938–1940: Mit weiteren Dokumenten zur Militäropposition gegen Hitler, ed. Helmut Krausnick and Harold C. Deutsch (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1970), 225; Frau Inga Haag an Deutsch (date unknown), Aufzeichnungen von Frau Inga Haag, Frankfurt A.M, 4.4.1948, 2, Deutsch Papers, series 3, box 2, Material on Groscurth.
[back]
19. “The baleful character of the regime”: Hassell,Tagebücher, 16.6.1940, 167.
[back]
20. Beck was reluctant: Müller, Generaloberst Ludwig Beck, 407–8.
[back]
21. an “exercise in name calling”: Nicholas Reynolds, Treason Was No Crime: Ludwig Beck, Chief of the German General Staff (London: Kimber, 1976), 198. Halder, it seems, was unforgiving even after the war. In his later testimonies, he portrayed Beck and Goerdeler as having lost touch with reality. Never had they understood, he wrote time and again, the practical difficulties of staging a coup d’état. In a letter sent on September 6, 1952, Halder even called Beck “an utter fool” (reiner Tor). See Halder an Deutsch, 23.10.1954, 2–3, Abschrift Aussage Huppenkothen Der 20. Juli 1944, 6, Halder an Krausnick, 1952, 3–4, Halder an H. von Witzleben, 6.9.1952, 2, Deutsch Papers, series 4, box 9, General Opposition, series 3, box 2, Material on Halder, Huppenkothen, series 4, box 9, Plot to Assassinate Hitler; Franz Halder, “Zu den Aussagen des Dr. Gisevius in Nürnberg 24. Bis 26.4.1946,” BA-MA BAarch N/124/10, p. 1.
[back]
22. Beck and Halder parted on the “worst of terms”: Reynolds, Treason Was No Crime, 198; Müller, Generaloberst Ludwig Beck, 407–10.
[back]
23. The last chance appeared to have gone: Eidesstattliche Erklärung Erwin Lahousen, 1.7.1947, 1, Deutsch Papers, series 3, box 2, round 2 (revision); Georg Thomas, “20. Juli 1944,” 20.7.1945, BA-MA Msg 2/213, p. 5.
[back]
24. After a few meetings, an interview: Summary o
f Events, 18.11.1939, NA, FO 371/23107, pp. 25–28. Also available in GEAH, http://www.georg-elser-arbeitskreis.de/texts/venloakte.htm; Nuremberg Green, 12:1178–79.
[back]
25. Now, the British were ever more careful: Cable to Bland, 30.11.1939, NA, FO 371/23013 (C19889), pp. 97–98. Even Goerdeler, who kept cordial ties with many members of the British elite until the outbreak of the war (see, for example, Arthur P. Young, X Documents [London: Deutsch, 1974], 148–49), was disregarded. “It is not intended to make any use of this man,” advised the Foreign Office in May 1941. See NA, HS9/593/6; and also FO 371/23107, pp. 29–31; and Situation in Germany, October 1939, 16.11.1939, Chamberlain Papers, HULL, reel 45, NC8/29/1, 3.
[back]
26. More and more conspirators accepted Oster’s opinion: Allen W. Dulles (OSS Bern) to OSS director William J. Donovan, 20.7.1944, in American Intelligence and the German Resistance to Hitler, ed. Jürgen Heideking and Christof Mauch (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996), 233; Klaus-Jürgen Müller, “Über den ‘militärischen Widerstand,’ ” in Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus, ed. Peter Steinbach and Johannes Tuchel (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994), 277; Gotthard von Falkenhausen, “Bericht über Vorgänge in Paris am 20 Juli” (undated), Zeller Papers, IfZ ED 88/1, pp. 45–47.
[back]
27. “One may say I am a traitor to my country”: Helmut Krausnick’s interview with Franz Maria Liedig (date unknown), 5, Deutsch Papers, series 4, box 15, Liedig. English translation taken from Deutsch, Conspiracy Against Hitler, 99–100. There is also a basis to assume that Oster, probably through Goerdeler, tipped off the British about the impending Nazi-Soviet pact. Sir Robert Vansittart, who was in constant touch with Goerdeler and other resistance fighters, sent an urgent dispatch on May 18, 1939, to this effect, clearly specifying that the “reliable source” for his information was the “German General Staff.” See NA, FO 371/22972, pp. 145–47.