Plotting Hitler's Death: The German Resistance to Hitler 1933-45

2. THE ARMY SUCCUMBS

In the early evening of February 3, 1933, only four days after bcoming chancellor, Hitler hurried to 14 Bendlerstrasse to pay a first formal call on the leaders of the Reichswehr. The military commanders were reputed to be remote, secretive, and arrogant, and Hitler had gone to the meeting with some trepidation, because he knew they would play a key role in both his immediate schemes to seize power in Germany and his more long-range plans for expansion abroad.

Hitler understood well that many of the younger officers sympathized with him and his movement, albeit in a rather vague way. They felt that the Weimar Republic had suffered in both its internal and foreign dealings from a lack of courage and resolve, and they looked now to Hitler to cast off the Treaty of Versailles, restore the prestige of the army, improve their chances for personal advancement and promotion, and bring about real social change. Hopes for a renewal so sweeping that it could be deemed a revolution were common, especially among the younger officers who later joined the resistance. Henning von Tresckow, for instance, campaigned for the Nazis in the officers’ mess in Potsdam as early as the late 1920s, dismissing detractors as hopelessly reactionary. Soon after the Nazis seized power Al­brecht Mertz von Quirnheim had himself transferred to the SA. Helmuth Stieff and many others also threw in their lot with the new cause. There is apparently no truth, however, to the tale that an enthusiastic Stauffenberg placed himself at the head of a crowd surging through Bamberg in celebration of Hitler’s nomination as chancellor.¹

Senior officers took quite a different view, though the Weimar Republic had always seemed alien to them as well. They had high hope’s that an authoritarian regime would not only wash away the “shame of Versailles” but also help reconcile the state and the army, thereby returning to them the influence they had once wielded in the corridors of government. Hitler’s talk of party and army as the “twin pillars” on which the National Socialist state rested seemed to imply that they would regain the political leverage they had lost under the republic. Senior officers also imagined themselves powerful enough to determine the bounds of their own authority, within which Hitler would be prevented from interfering. But even so, they had serious reservations about the Nazis’ rowdy, anarchistic behavior, their undis­guised contempt for the law, the terrorism of the SA, and last but not least, the personage of the Führer himself, whose vulgar, hucksterish ways prompted one senior officer to say what they all more or less felt: Hitler was “not a gentleman but just an ordinary guy.”²

In his official quarters on Bendlerstrasse, General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, the army commander in chief, greeted Hitler with obvious skepticism. An officer who was present reported that Hammerstein introduced the chancellor “in a benevolently conde­scending fashion; the assembled phalanx of generals were coolly po­lite, and Hitler made modest, obsequious little bows in all directions. He remained ill at ease until after dinner, when he was allowed an opportunity to speak for a longer period at the table.”³ Drawing on all his skills of persuasion, Hitler did his best to win the officers over. He promised that conditions within Germany would be “completely re­versed,” military preparedness would be improved, and-according to the notes of another of the participants-there would be “no toler­ance of any views that run counter to the objectives [pacifism!]. Those who do not convert will have to be bent. Marxism will be eradicated, root and branch.” On the subject of foreign policy, Hitler referred primarily to abandoning the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and mentioned only in passing “the conquest of new Lebensraum in the East,” The latter comment did not arouse any particular surprise or doubts among the generals, who were skeptical about politicians to begin with and did not pay especially close attention to their exact words. More important to the assembled officers was Hitler’s assurance that, in contrast to developments in Italy, there would be “no amalgamation of the Reichswehr and the party-affiliated SA” and that the army would remain “apolitical and nonpartisan.”⁴ Many of the officers came away with the impression that Hitler would prove a more congenial chancellor than any of his predecessors over the previous few years, although opinion was divided. Applause was only polite, and Hitler himself remarked afterwards that he felt as if he was “talking to a wall the whole time.”⁵

The cracks that the Führer nevertheless found in this wall were the newly appointed minister of defense, Werner von Blomberg, and the head of the Bureau of Ministers, Colonel Walter von Reichenau. Confounding the expectations of the German Nationalist leaders who helped make Hitler chancellor, these two military men would soon become enthusiastic supporters of the Nazi cause, though for very different reasons. Blomberg was an impulsive, unsettled figure, who in the course of his life had embraced in quick succession democracy, thee anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner, and Prussian socialism, then had come close to accepting Communism after a trip to Russia, and eventually had endorsed the authoritarian state, before falling for Hitler with all the exuberance of his nature. Later he said that in 1933 he was suddenly filled with feelings that he had never expected to experience again: faith, reverence for a leader, and total devotion to an idea. Hitler, he once remarked, acted on him “like a great physi­cian.”⁶ According to Blomberg’s intimates, a friendly comment from the Führer was enough to bring tears to his eyes.

Reichenau, on the other hand, was the very embodiment of the modern officer, devoid of prejudice or sentiment. With the cool calculation of one lacking strong political sympathies of his own, he perceived the new men in government simply as the leaders of a mass movement whose strength he would tap to improve the position of the army and enhance Germany’s glory and prestige. A gifted man who combined elegance, toughness, and a taste for power, he was never personally tempted by National Socialism; he respected it as a political force without taking its ideology seriously. Reichenau be­lieved that the Reichswehr, with its “seven antiquated divisions scat­tered across the entire country,” was totally incapable of asserting itself. To expect it to do so was a “daydream” suitable only to the realm of “fiction.” Hoping to cement the army’s relationship with Hitler, marginalize the Nazi Party, and edge out its paramilitary wing, the SA, he proposed that the Reichswehr adopt the motto “Forward into the new state.”⁷

Reichenau was relatively undisturbed by the excesses that accompanied the Nazi seizure of power. It always required an element of terror, he said soon alter assuming his new position, to purge a state of all its rot and decay. What did cause him considerable dismay, however, was the mounting power of the SA. Its ranks had swollen to over a million since the mass conversions of the spring of 1933, and it was expressing its dissatisfaction ever more vehemently. Hitler’s brown-shirted legions took a dim view of his legal revolution, which seemed to be undermining their interests, and they looked on bitterly as conservative politicians, aristocrats, capitalists, and generals-the very men whose worlds they wanted to smash-began assuming places of honor at celebrations of the national revival, while they, the eternally mistreated foot soldiers of the revolution, were expected simply to parade by.

The brownshirts felt they were the vanguard of the revolution, not just extras. They had learned from their slogans and songs how revolutions had been carried out since time immemorial: the fortresses of the old order were stormed in a torrent of bloodshed and plunder and the new order raised on the wreckage of the old-with the greatest rewards going to the most loyal soldiers. They could not understand Hitler’s sly concept of revolution by infiltration and ruse, and their rugged leader, Ernst Röhm, was particularly lacking in the patience and cunning required. And so, while the SA continued, in the disor­derly style it had adopted in the spring of 1933, to sow terror in the streets, to open up its own “wildcat” concentration camps, and to disrupt trials and legal proceedings-occasionally going so far as to beat up fellow party members who showed too much restraint- Röhm reminded his followers with mounting anger of the sacrifices they had made and the dead they mourned. When his demands on the government went unheeded, he found himself increasingly driven lo take the stance of the betrayed revolutionary.

Bitterly disappointed by the course of events and spurred by the agitated masses, who were eager for the spoils of victory, he whipped up his followers in the SA with speeches and harangues, insisting that “the national revolution must end now and become a National Socialist revolution.” Talk began to circulate in SA circles of the need for a “second revolution” to boost the Nazi movement fully into the saddle, to free it from its wretched mire of half measures, and to sweep Röhm and his organization to the top. When Minister of the Interior Wilhelm Frick warned in the summer of 1933 that he would take “severe measures”—at the very least putting disorderly SA members in “protective custody”—and followed through by clamping down on SA activities, Röhm threatened to march two brigades up to Frick’s headquarters in the Vossstrasse and give him a public whipping.⁸

But Röhm did not confine himself to making extravagant remarks before cheering supporters. His slogans promising a “second revolution” were aimed first and foremost at the Reichswehr, which had so far successfully resisted Gleichschaltung and, in Röhm’s view, epito­mized the “forces of reaction” and the official tolerance of them. Röhm felt that the planned expansion of the Reichswehr, and the countless openings it would create for officers in particular, should be directed at satisfying the career ambitions of SA leaders. The logic of the situation led naturally, in his view, to the conclusion that all the armed forces should operate within the framework of the SA and gradually be molded into a National Socialist people’s army. “The gray cliffs must inevitably be swallowed by the brown tide,” Röhm proclaimed as he forged ahead with plans to take the much smaller army, with its gray field uniforms, into the embrace of the brown-shirted SA, transforming it into a popular militia.⁹

The generals of the Reichswehr were understandably protective of its traditions and prerogatives; Röhm’s increasingly urgent and imperious designs alarmed them and confirmed their worst fears. As if to bring matters to a head, in the fall of 1933 Röhm incorpo­rated another right-wing paramilitary organization into the SA, the Stahlhelm (“steel helmet”), which had originally been founded as a First World War veterans’ group. At a single stroke he raised the strength of his domestic army to nearly three million men. At the same time he began building the SA into a state within the state, enhancing its military aura, creating a network of offices to oversee a little of everything-including paramilitary sports, gymnastics, and life in the universities-setting up an SA police force and judicial system, and establishing liaisons to industry, government, and the press. Despite his strident, relentless insistence on the unsatisfied demands of his followers, Röhm continued to have confidence in Hitler and considered him merely indecisive and susceptible to “stupid and dangerous” characters like Göring, Goebbels, Himmler, and Hess, who were blocking the way to the real revolution and the dawn of an SA state.¹⁰

Hitler probably basically agreed with Röhm’s ideas. The Führer certainly shared his distaste for the officer caste, with its monocles and starchy mannerisms. If Hitler had exhibited any support for Röhm’s demands at this juncture, however, he would have not only aroused the animosity of the Reichswehr and President Hindenburg but also jeopardized his alliance with the conservatives, undermined his basic tactic of “legal revolution,” endangered the incipient eco­nomic recovery, and possibly even invited intervention by foreign powers. In short, supporting Röhm would have sabotaged his entire strategy for seizing power. At least for the moment, Hitler remained reliant on the expertise of the senior Reichswehr officers as he set about the pressing military tasks he had designated for himself, above all the rebuilding of the army.

Nevertheless, Hitler did not want to dismiss Röhm’s demands out of hand. He even quietly encouraged the SA leader on the theory that all obstacles put in the path of the Reichswehr would ultimately make it more amenable to his will. At a conference of army commanders in December, Blomberg expressed great concern about “attempts within the SA to establish an army of its own.” Six weeks later he received a memorandum from Röhm in which the SA chief flatly declared “the entire realm of national defense falls within the pur­view of the SA.” The next day, as if not wishing to leave the slightest doubt about his plans, Röhm added comments that the generals took as an open declaration of war: “I now consider the Reichswehr to be only a military training school for the German people. The conduct of war and therefore also the mobilization [of troops] are henceforth the concerns of the SA.”¹¹

Blomberg and Reichenau responded by insisting on “a clear decision.” Just as Hitler had expected, they made numerous attempts at accommodation to curry favor with him. A preliminary concession had already been made. The commander in chief of the army, Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, was an aloof, sarcastic man, who punctuated his principles with cutting displays of disregard.¹² He made no secret of his aversion to the new rulers, even speaking of them in wider circles as “that gang of criminals” or “those filthy pigs,” the latter an allusion to the homosexual tendencies of the SA leaders. As a result, more and more of Hammerstein’s responsibilities were as­sumed by Blomberg, for whom the duties came more easily than for Hammerstein, who had neither talent nor desire for intrigue and insisted on straight dealings. By the spring of 1933 it was already being rumored that the commander in chief of the army would last, at most, until the summer. Though somewhat passive, Hammerstein ultimately held on until the fall before submitting his resignation. Within the officer corps, hardly an eyebrow was raised. Things finally seemed to be improving, and “everyone was happy to be rid of Ham­merstein.”¹³ Blomberg even went so far as to order his department head in the ministry to forbid any further contacts with the former army commander in chief.

This initial attempt to appease Hitler was soon followed by a second. Just a few days after the commanders’ conference in early February, Blomberg ordered that Nazi insignia henceforth be the official symbol of the armed forces. Somewhat later he mandated that the officer corps adopt the so-called Aryan paragraph of the Act to Re­store a Professional Public Service of April 7, 1933, requiring, among other things, that civil servants of non-Aryan descent be retired.¹⁴ Shortly thereafter Blomberg issued orders making “sympathy with the new state” the decisive criterion for promotions and, still at his own initiative, introduced a program of “political training” for soldiers. Hitler, who was well versed in reading omens, may have viewed these gestures as the first sign of impending capitulation, de­spite all the grumbling about them in the Reichswehr.

To entice the army further down this path Hitler himself offered a concession: at the army’s Bendlerstrasse headquarters on February 28, 1934, Röhm was forced to sign a paper in Hitler’s presence that confirmed all the prerogatives of the Reichswehr and delegated only supporting military-training duties to the SA. The dispute between the two military forces was then officially washed away in a “reconciliatory breakfast,” at which, according to Blomberg, the Führer deliv­ered a “stirring” appeal to keep the peace.

Hardly had the ceremony ended, the table been cleared, and the guests departed, however, before Röhm exploded in a tirade of rage and frustration. He called Hitler a “ridiculous corporal,” accused him of disloyalty and shouted, “If it can’t be done with Hitler, we’ll do it without him!” One of the witnesses, SA leader Viktor Lutze, scurried away from the champagne breakfast in the Huldschinsky Palace, Röhm’s headquarters in Berlin, to Hitler’s camp at Berchtesgaden to report what had happened. The Führer curtly informed him, “We’ll just let this ripen.”¹⁵

In the meantime Röhm carried on as if the agreements, assurances, and solemn handshakes of February 28 had never occurred. He pur­chased arms abroad, displayed SA muscle in gigantic military parades, held public flag-consecration ceremonies and reviews of his troops, and rode, mounted high on his steed, before the brown-shirted hordes. Still, Hitler waited, for the balance that had been achieved seemed to hold the SA and the Reichswehr in check, each in its own way. Finally, it was the many enemies Röhm had accumulated in the course of his career who decided to pounce, beginning with such people as Rudolf Hess and Martin Bormann in party headquarters and extending all the way to the SA division heads. Most important was Hermann Göring, who felt driven into an alliance that he would have preferred to avoid. He joined forces with Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS, turning control of the Gestapo over to him. In aligning himself with Himmler he was also taking on Himmler’s assis­tant, Reinhard Heydrich, who had always struck him as eerie and sinister. By early May Heydrich had assumed responsibility for the operation against Röhm.

The change in the atmosphere was immediately palpable, as a veritable campaign was launched, complete with intrigue, rumors, and hit lists. Amid all the planning and plotting, the gray shadow of an of­ficer’s uniform appeared time and again. A vague aura of unease began to spread, as if Germany was once again coming to its senses and beginning soberly to assess the changes that had taken place, whose true nature had been veiled by the inebriating spectacle of parades and by the Führer’s speeches. Many of the intolerable condi­tions of the Weimar Republic had indeed disappeared, but only to be replaced by new horrors: the persecution of helpless minorities, a muzzled press, conflict with the churches, mounting suspicion of Ger­many from abroad, and much more. A showdown with the SA loomed nearer, heightening apprehensions, and the Young Conservatives, another group interested in sharpening antagonisms, begun to make its presence felt. Egged on by certain of its members in his entourage, Vice-Chancellor Papen now sensed an opportunity to emerge from the background into which he had been forced and to steer Germany back to being an orderly nation. A revolt of the SA was rumored to be imminent and could perhaps be used, he calculated, to induce President Hindenburg to declare a state of emergency. Papen felt encour­aged by the president himself, who commented as he set off in early June for a vacation on his Neudeck estate in East Prussia, “Things are going badly, Papen. Try to restore order.”¹⁶

With this piece of encouragement ringing in his ears, Papen delivered a dramatic speech (written for him by the conservative writer Edgar Jung) at the University of Marburg on June 17, 1934. As if he had not been partially responsible for government decisions all along, Papen spoke out against the spread of violence, the extremism of the Nazis, the scramble for sinecures and easy money, the suppression of free speech, the mania for Gleichschaltung, and the “unnatural, totalitarian demands” of the state. Hitler was dismayed and bewildered for a fleeting moment, apparently assuming that the rather careless Papen had blurted out the details of a secret agreement that was being forged by the president, the Reichswehr, and the still influen­tial conservative forces. There is much evidence to suggest that this was the moment Hitler finally decided to deal with the SA.

Feverishly but with great calculation, the stage was set for Röhm’s demise. Public warnings were issued almost daily to those who advo­cated a “second revolution.” The Reichswehr was tipped off that the SA seemed to be planning an operation. Secret but widely circulated reports advised that the brownshirts were on the verge of staging a revolt. Leading politicians from the Weimar Republic, such as Heinrich Brüning and Kurt von Schleicher, who had preceded Hitler as chancellor, were quietly advised to disappear for a few days or, better yet, to leave Germany entirely. The command posts of certain military districts were informed that, whatever happened, the SS would be on the side of the legal authorities and should be furnished with weapons, if necessary. Once again, a “hit list” of the SA made the rounds, landing on the desks both of Reichswehr officers and of some of those whose names it featured prominently. In the middle of the cleverly orchestrated agitation stood the unsuspecting Ernst Röhm, who had just completed arrangements to send his units on their regular leave. On June 29, 1934, the evening before the summer holidays were to begin, SA units in some cities were put on routine alert. Their commanders checked their readiness for action and sent them out to protest on the streets.

In the early morning hours of June 30 death squads began to fan out. Trucks of SS men and police roved the streets of Berlin, cordon­ing off the Tiergarten district, which housed the SA leaders’ quarters as well as Papen’s office on Vossstrasse. Hitler himself went to Bad Wiessee, where Röhm was holding a congress of SA leaders, and arrested him in his bed. Together with other SA commanders, Röhm was taken to the prison in Stadelheim. The executions began that morning, both there and in the SS barracks in Berlin-Lichterfelde. To lake advantage of the “unique opportunity,” as one participant phrased it, the hit list was expanded to include not only alleged “SA plotters” but also erstwhile opponents of the regime, including the circle around Papen and a number of leading conservatives. Exem­plary terror would teach all such people to refrain from any hint of revolt.

General Schleicher, who had turned a deaf ear to various warnings, was shot in his apartment in Neu-Babelsberg, together with his wife. One of his closest associates, General Ferdinand von Bredow, the former chief of the Bureau of Ministers in the Ministry of Defense, was also slain, as were Edgar Jung, Erich Klausener (the head of Catholic Action), and many others. At around 9:00 a.m., three Ge­stapo officials accompanied by thirty SS men stormed into Papen’s offices. They searched the rooms, finally discovering Herbert von Bose, the head of the press office and a close associate of Papen. They asked him his name and then, without another word, shot him. All this was done without judicial proceedings, judgments, or the slight­est semblance of legality. Hitler seemed intent, in fact, on delivering these blows completely in the open so as to leave a deep and abiding impression, as if proclaiming from the rooftops his immutable will and the earnestness of his statement on the evening of January 30, 1933, as he entered the Reich Chancellery, that no power on earth would ever dislodge him alive.¹⁷

The public was horrified by the butchery, which continued into the evening of July 1. People seemed to realize instinctively that a line had been crossed. Leaders who permitted-or indeed engineered-such abominations were clearly capable of even more disturbing and frightful deeds. These fears were mitigated, however, by a sense of relief that the depredations of the SA, and the threat of chaos and mob rule that it embodied, had come to an end. For a brief moment a tear had appeared in the veil of the “legal revolution,” revealing a Hitler stripped of middle-class airs, a man whose thirst for power knew absolutely no bounds. But a public relations campaign was im­mediately launched to calm the waters, and soon the public was pre­pared to dismiss the two days of massacres as representing “the [Nazi] movement’s sowing the last of its wild oats” and the triumph of Hitler’s forces of order over the savage energies unleashed by any revolution.

Nevertheless, Hitler’s power hung in the balance for a time. Everything depended on how the Reichswehr would react. Certainly it had participated in the intrigue against Röhm; it had been more complicit and had provided far more assistance than its good name would allow. The ensuing bloodbath, however, far exceeded anything it had imag­ined and clearly violated the most basic legal norms. If the social order had truly been under the threat of an imminent uprising by the SA, as Blomberg claimed in an attempt to justify Hitler’s action, then the Reichswehr would have been duty-bound to intervene; but every­one knew that this was not the case. If the social order was not threatened, then the army should have acted to put down the lawless outburst. Instead the Reichswehr had fanned the conflict and helped bring it to a head, making weapons available and finally giving the SS free rein, all to ensure its own victory.

Uncertainty about the reaction of the Reichswehr was not the least of Hitler’s reasons for leaving Berlin immediately after the massacre and lying low for a while. Not until ten days later did he surface and return to the capital. After all, two generals-former chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and Ferdinand von Bredow-had been murdered in the wave of violence. No self-respecting army, let alone an officer corps that believed it had a right to participate in the affairs of state, could let such acts pass without account. In a tense and often contra­dictory speech before the Reichstag on July 13, 1934, Hitler offered the official explanation that Schleicher had been in contact with the ambassador of a foreign power, an assertion that failed to convince or satisfy anyone.

A few senior officers, including Erich von Manstein, Gerd von Rundstedt, and even Erwin von Witzleben (who had greeted the news of the murder of the SA leaders with a curt “Splendid!”¹⁸) insisted that a court-martial be convened to investigate the charge. Blomberg mollified them with the promise that proof would soon be provided. But the results of the investigation were suppressed, and there the situation remained. Eventually, in response to the concerns voiced by a few other officers, General Werner von Fritsch (who had, in the meantime, relieved Hammerstein as commander in chief of the army) demanded an explanation of Blomberg. But the minister evaded the issue, and in the end Fritsch allowed it to die.

These evasions and prevarications on the part of the minister of defense were rooted, of course, in his own complicity. Blomberg had even approved the orders for General Schleicher’s “arrest,” while Reichenau formulated the official announcement that Schleicher was shot while resisting arrest (an assertion disproved by the criminal investigation).¹⁹ As chief of army command, Fritsch may well have felt that he could not afford to expose his political superiors; as the sources unanimously show, however, like most other senior officers he was horrified by the bloodbath despite feeling satisfaction at the taming of the SA.

Nevertheless, Fritsch rebuffed all demands for a protest by point­ing to his low position in the hierarchy. He could not take action “without explicit orders,” he later said. “Blomberg was vehemently opposed, and Hindenburg could not be reached and was apparently misinformed.”²⁰ Be that as it may, the fact that the chief of army command did not insist on a military investigation plainly indicates that other factors were also at work. When the aged field marshal August von Mackensen took steps to restore the honor of the murdered generals, Fritsch distanced himself from the attempts. To crown it all, he meekly informed the troops of Blomberg’s “muzzle edict,” which forbade them to make any personal statements about the purge. Furthermore, neither Fritsch nor the officer corps at large raised any objections when Blomberg ordered that they not attend Selileicher’s funeral. Those seeking the first signs of the army’s retreat to a narrow, formalistic emphasis on a soldier’s duty to obey-an emphasis on which all will to resist ultimately foundered in the fol­lowing years-will find it here.

Fritsch’s evasiveness cannot, however, be explained solely by his sense of loyalty and his belief in military obedience, though he did feel very much bound by these concepts. Nor can it be fully ac­counted for by his career-long adherence to the ideal of an apolitical army, which had been introduced by General Hans von Seeckt under the Weimar Republic. At least as important as these factors was the feeling that the army had many interests in common with the new regime; as a result, its commanders were inclined to restraint even in the face of obvious crimes. Defeat in the First World War and the harsh burdens imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles had instilled in the officer corps an obsession with redress-not only for their military defeat but, more importantly, for the moral stain that had marked Germany ever since. In Hitler the officer corps perceived a man who could succeed on both these counts. Some officers even deluded themselves into believing that now, after the bloody break with Röhm, they could lure Hitler away from National Socialism and the narrow convictions of his youth; by offering ever-greater blandish­ments and concessions, they hoped to win him over to their views and perhaps even make him their lackey.

Such dreams were as vain as Papen’s long-defunct hope of “taming” Hitler, though the ghost of that hope seemed to be reemerging in some army circles. With his highly developed sense for almost imperceptible shifts in the balance of power, Hitler immediately grasped that an army that had closed its eyes to the murder of two of its generals would not block his breakthrough to unfettered domina­tion. Just three weeks later he moved to exploit the obvious weakness of the army leadership. On July 20 he recognized the “great accom­plishments” of the SS, “particularly in connection with the events of June 30,” by conferring on it the status of an independent organiza­tion directly responsible to him. Blomberg was required to provide “weapons for one entire division.” Instead of a state built on the SA, as the impatient, ham-handed Röhm had insisted on, there now be­gan to emerge, bit by bit, a state built on the SS.

At the same time the tightly closed ranks of the army began to crack. A number of officers who later joined the military resistance pointed to the events of June 30 and July 1, 1934, as the beginning of their break with the Nazis, among them Henning von Tresckow, Franz Halder, and Hans Oster, who even in the interrogations follow­ing July 20, 1944, denounced the “methods of a gang of bandits.” Erwin Rommel also became disenchanted with the Nazis, saying that the Röhm affair had been a failed opportunity “to get rid of the entire bunch.”²¹ These officers remained isolated individuals, however, and none of them was in a position of real power. The army commanders, by contrast, were overjoyed that they had achieved their great objec­tive, dealing the SA a death blow without attracting much attention to themselves. They failed to understand that the cleverness of Hitler’s ploy had been to involve them in the massacre just enough to taint them but not so much that he owed them his success. Although once more his fate had lain in the hands of the Reichswehr, that would never be true again, as Hitler already knew during those critical days of June and July. The army’s moment of opportunity had come and gone.

Hitler made his next move much more quickly than expected, when fortune handed him the opportunity to complete his seizure of power by taking over the last independent position in the government. In mid-July President Hindenburg’s health went into steep decline, and his entourage expected his death at any moment. Until shortly before this time disappointed conservatives had still imagined the president as a possible rival to Hitler. Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau, Hindenburg’s clear-sighted friend from the neighboring estate, had, however, been speaking for quite some time, in the bluff manner he liked to affect, of the president “whom we actually no longer have.” In any ease, the office still existed and was the last institution of government that had not fallen into Hitler’s hands. Furthermore, the president, as commander in chief of the armed forces, was the only remaining authority to whom the army could appeal over the head of the gov­ernment-the presidency was thus the last bastion of army indepen­dence.

This office and the powers attached to it were all that separated Hitler from outright dictatorship. On August 1, 1934, though the news from Hindenburg’s estate in Neudeck seemed more hopeful, Hitler moved with unseemly haste, presenting to the cabinet for im­mediate signature legislation that would merge the offices of presi­dent and chancellor, to take effect when the old marshal died. The proposed law was based, to be sure, on the Act for the Reconstruction of the Reich of January 1934, which gave the government authority to pass new constitutional laws, but it deliberately ignored article 2 of the Enabling Act, which enjoined the government from making any changes to the office of Reich president. Hitler thus concluded his putative “legal revolution” with an open violation of constitutional law, a move emblematic of his duplicitous intentions all along.

When Hindenburg died early the next morning, on August 2, 1934, Hitler’s goals were all achieved. In the rush of events, the Reichswehr seemed most concerned about not being left out of the action. Blomberg attempted a coup de main of his own. Solely on the basis of his power to issue ministerial decrees, he ordered all officers and enlisted men to swear an oath of allegiance to their new supreme commander, the “Führer Adolf Hitler,” that very day. The wording of this oath violated both the Oath Act of December 1, 1933, and the constitution by requiring soldiers to swear unconditional obedience to Hitler personally, not just to the office he held. The consequences of this fateful step would continue to make history long after the illu­sions of those days had been dashed.

A premonition seemed to sweep the ranks the day that the oath was administered. Numerous memoirs speak of the “depressed mood” in the barracks after Blomberg’s surprise maneuver. The radical break with military tradition made apparent by the oath led General Ludwig Beck, head of the troop office and still one of Hitler’s declared supporters, to call it the “blackest day of his life,”²² while Baron Rudolph-Christoph von Gersdorff, then regimental adjutant in a cavalry unit, spoke of the oath as something “coerced.” For the first time doubts had been sowed in the minds of younger officers, who had hitherto been unstinting in their trust and confidence.²³ Once roused, these doubts would eventually lead some of them to distance themselves from the regime and a few to resist it, despite the numer­ous obstacles in their way-not the least of which was the oath of personal loyalty they had sworn to the Führer.

Blomberg himself was not at all troubled by such doubts, but the Reichswehr would never recover from the blow he delivered, with no outside prompting, by the introduction of the oath. Henceforth the army would be in Hitler’s pocket. Blomberg and the military com­manders, feeling quite pleased with what they thought they had accomplished, namely boosting the army to a position of unquestion­able power, happily set about trying to extend their newfound influ­ence to the political realm as well. They urged an initially hesitant Hitler to forge ahead with rearmament and to accelerate his plans for the army. When concerns were voiced in the Foreign Office that such a policy would heighten diplomatic tensions, the officers managed to dispel them. Their success in doing so may have encouraged them in their erroneous belief that the army would indeed play a major role on the political stage. Shortly thereafter, brushing aside economic objections raised by the president of the Reichsbank, Hjalmar Schacht, the army succeeded, this time with Hitler’s help, in estab­lishing the fundamental primacy of military objectives.

Anticipating Germany’s return to military might, though it was far from being realized, Hitler decided in early March 1936 to reoccupy the demilitarized zone in the Rhineland-another in the series of bold moves with which he continued to surprise the world. After the introduction of universal conscription one year earlier, the occupation of the Rhineland represented the final step in eliminating the shackles imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. This step, like all the preceding ones, was accompanied by much reassuring talk. However, when the Council of the League of Nations passed a resolution for­bidding Germany to construct military fortresses in this zone, Hitler tartly replied that he had not restored German sovereignty in order to countenance immediate limitations on it. For the first time since the defeat of 1918, Germans began to feel a swelling sense of national self-respect; the moment had come to put an end to the era when the whole world could address Germany in the tone of the conqueror. The seizure of the Rhineland was accomplished with only a handful of semitrained units facing vastly superior French forces, and Hitler concluded from this startling victory that, in the words of André François-Poncet, the French ambassador to Berlin, he “could do anything he wanted and lay down the law in Europe.”²⁴

It was, above all, the senior officers who found the hopes they had placed in Hitler vindicated. They forged determinedly ahead with rearmament despite mounting concerns about the domestic reserva­tions. The wisdom of rearmament from a foreign policy viewpoint was also questioned: people wondered, with increasing unease, how much longer the great powers of Europe would tolerate Hitler’s breaches of treaty obligations, responding, as they had in the past year, with mere protests and empty threats. That the army overlooked these concerns and single-mindedly devoted its skills and energy to a task that would benefit only Hitler suggests not only the officer corps’s lack of politi­cal acumen but also the extent to which its leaders had been trauma­tized by their helplessness after the war.

The top military leaders saw the consequences of their brilliantly successful rearmament campaign when Hitler delivered his famous address of November 5, 1937, in the Chancellery in Berlin, which was recorded by his aide Friedrich Hossbach. In a four-hour harangue, delivered without pause, Hitler informed them that the time pres­sures generated by the rearmament campaign had led him to the “immutable decision to take military action against Czechoslovakia and Austria in the near future.” Foreign governments on all sides had begun to suspect the Reich and to quicken the pace of their own rearmament, and Hitler rightly feared that the balance of power would soon shift back to Germany’s disadvantage. The previous two years had shown Hitler the astounding results that could be achieved by appealing to the pride of the officer corps. He let it be known, therefore, in what was clearly a psychological ploy, that he was still dissatisfied with the pace of rearmament. Under the right circumstances, he informed them, he might even be ready to launch the invasions the following year. The Führer also made it clear that he considered Czechoslovakia as a mere stepping stone toward his far more ambitious plans for dealing with the German need for territory.

Some of the officers present were openly aghast, and the ensuing discussion was marked at times by “very sharp exchanges.”²⁵ Blomberg and Fritsch actively opposed Hitler as, to a lesser extent, did the foreign minister, Konstantin von Neurath, who had been sum­moned to the gathering. They warned emphatically against taking such an overt course toward war, which would inevitably jolt the Western powers to action and result in a global conflict. For the first lime, on November 5, 1937, the scales seemed to fall from the eyes of the military commanders: they realized that Hitler was deadly serious about the objectives he had been proclaiming for years. He had not the slightest intention, furthermore, of seeking the army’s counsel on decisions of war and peace, as Beck was still urging him to do in a memorandum written shortly thereafter. In short, the generals finally recognized that Hitler was no mere nationalist and revisionist like them but exactly what he had claimed to be.

As far as Hitler was concerned, November 5 only confirmed his suspicion that he could not rely on these anxious, overly scrupulous members of the old elite to carry out his plans for conquest; they were not the steely adventurers he needed. Although Hitler used to remark on occasion that he had always imagined the military chiefs as “mastiffs who had to be held fast by the collar lest they hurl them­selves on everyone,” he now recognized how mistaken he had been: “I’m the one who always has to urge these dogs on.”²⁶ Although there was disappointment on both sides, it was felt most keenly by the generals, who now saw their hopes of being treated as partners in government go up in smoke. Hitler, on the other hand, only found his disdain for the military commanders confirmed. He was so vexed that his plans had been challenged in any way that all subsequent meet­ings with the military top brass took the form of audiences at which the officers simply received their orders. The Führer left Berlin for Berchtesgaden, where he nursed his anger, repeatedly refusing to receive his foreign minister and awaiting an opportunity to reap the benefits of the day’s events.

Once again circumstances played into Hitler’s hand, and he swiftly exploited them for political gain. Minister of War Blomberg, long a widower, decided to marry a woman whom he himself confessed was of “modest background.” Hitler and Göring acted as witnesses at the ceremony in mid-January 1938. Just a few days later, however, ru­mors began to circulate that Blomberg’s young wife was well-known in vice-squad circles, indeed that she had worked as a prostitute and even been arrested once. The officer corps was scandalized by such a misalliance at the highest levels of the German military. Beck went to see Wilhelm Keitel, who had taken over from Reichenau at the minis­try, and informed him that it was unacceptable for “the leading sol­dier” in the land to have “a whore” for a wife. Hitler, too, reacted with rage when Göring presented him with the evidence. A farewell appointment was set up for Blomberg only two days later. “I can no longer put up with this,” the Führer informed him. “We must part.” When, at the end of their discussion, the subject of Blomberg’s suc­cessor arose, Hitler flatly rejected the idea of promoting Fritsch to the post, referring to him as a mere “hindrance.”²⁷ Göring, too, was excluded from consideration despite all he had done to fuel the in­trigue that made the minister’s fall inevitable and, in his insatiable thirst for power, position himself as successor. Blomberg finally took the opportunity to deal the army a fateful blow by suggesting that Hitler himself assume command.

There is much to indicate that Hitler was already leaning in this direction. And at this point, another explosive police record turned up thanks to the assiduous efforts of Himmler and Heydrich, who produced it, and Göring, who turned it over to the Führer. This one enabled Hitler to rid himself of the entire high command of the Wehrmacht, as the Reichswehr was now called, reducing the army to the purely instrumental role he required for his war policy. The record in question accused the commander in chief of the army of ho­mosexuality. An unsuspecting Fritsch was summoned to the Chancellery, where, as if playing a part in a farce, he was confronted by a hired “witness” before a large audience presided over by Hitler. The accusations against Fritsch would soon be proved groundless, but in the meantime they had had the desired effect: instead of merely hurling the “evidence” at Hitler’s feet, as the Führer himself had expected, Fritsch seemed bewildered and confused by the charges. Failing to see through the ploy, he devoted all his efforts over the next few days to erasing the stain on his honor and convincing the Führer that a terrible mistake had been made. Obsessed with his personal disgrace, he rejected all attempts to persuade him to assume a broader perspective and expose the underlying plot, especially by summoning Himmler and Heydrich as witnesses in a court of law. Only after his cause was irretrievably lost did Fritsch realize that the entire affair was aimed not at him personally but at the army as a whole. Thus Hitler spared himself the public confrontation with the armed forces that he had been so eager to avoid.

Fritsch was not the only officer who failed to see that this maneuver was Hitler’s attempt to eliminate all opposition within the army. Lieutenant Colonel Hans Oster of Military Intelligence, who did real­ize what was going on, attempted to persuade several commanding generals who could mobilize their troops, to demonstrate the mili­tary’s might and force Hitler to back down. Ulex in Hannover, Kluge in Münster, and List in Dresden listened in outrage when informed by Oster or his emissaries of the true background to the Fritsch affair; Kluge, it is said, even turned “ash-white.” But no one would take action. The jeering and snickering of those who had plotted the in­trigue were almost audible in the background, and it is no wonder that Hitler said he knew for sure now that all generals were cow­ards.²⁸

Even more revealing, perhaps, was the reaction of Ludwig Beck, who served briefly as the interim head of army command after Fritsch’s departure. Not only did he provide his former chief with scarcely any support, he forbade the officers in army headquarters to talk about what had happened. When Quartermaster General Franz Halder visited him on January 31 to inquire about the affair, which continued to be a closely guarded secret, Beck stonewalled him, claiming he was duty-bound to remain silent. When Halder de­manded that Beck lead his generals in a raid on the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse headquarters of the Gestapo, which Halder presumed was behind all the intrigues, Beck replied with considerable agitation that this would be nothing less than “mutiny, revolution.” “Such words,” he added, “do not exist in the dictionary of a German officer.”²⁹ The following day Fritsch’s resignation was announced.

Thus Werner von Fritsch, the commander in chief of the army, was disgraced and quietly driven from his post, though he still felt quite loyal to the Führer. It probably only dawned on Hitler gradually that all the fortuitous events, plotting, and farcical twists of the previous few days had left him with the great opportunity he had always craved: to take a stiff broom to the army. With the first sentence of a decree issued on February 4, 1938, he assumed “direct and personal” command “of the entire Wehrmacht.” Blomberg’s Ministry of War was dissolved and replaced by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), or high command of the armed forces. Henceforth the Führer would not have to contend with anyone who spoke for the com­bined armed forces, just with the commanders of the various branches. At the same time, Hitler took the opportunity to retire or transfer more than sixty generals, in most cases apparently not for any lack of loyalty to the regime but simply in order to bring younger officers to the top. A number of ambassadors received the same treat­ment. Hitler was certainly at least partially motivated by a desire to shroud the dismissals of Blomberg and Fritsch in a fog of change and reorganization. The extent to which he used this reshuffling to take retribution against those who had opposed him on November 5 of the previous year is indicated by the fact that Neurath, too, was dis­missed, to be replaced by Joachim von Ribbentrop. Hitler also put an end to his tempestuous relationship with Hjalmar Schacht, his minister of economics, by appointing Walter Funk to that post. Finally there was the question of what to do with Hermann Göring, whom Hitler named field marshal in an attempt to appease him for having been passed over in this orgy of new appointments.

Thus the last people who could challenge Hitler were eliminated, having been systematically weakened and stripped of their authority. The new men recommended themselves to the Führer through their pliancy and submissiveness, and he expected them to be nothing more than executors of his will. Wilhelm Keitel was made chief of the OKW because Blomberg, during his final interview, had disparaged him as a mere “office manager.” “That’s just the kind of man I need,” Hitler promptly replied.¹⁰ Walther von Brauchitsch, who took over as commander in chief after Fritsch, accepted the appointment reluc­tantly and after long hesitation, more out of a sense of duty than out of ambition. He was apolitical, like many of his fellow generals, tended to avoid conflict, and in any case was much too weak-kneed to have any hope of defending the army’s interests against Hitler, the Nazi Party, and the rising SS.

Hitler’s impatience and the hectic pace of events are almost palpable in the extant documents from this period. Within days of issuing his February 4 decree, he ordered that the matériel needed for army mobilization be “fully” stockpiled by April 1, 1939. Furthermore, he ordered plans to be drafted for a far-reaching naval program that would enable Germany to compete with Great Britain on the high seas and for a fivefold expansion of the Luftwaffe. At the same time, great strides were made on the operational side. Hitler’s heady rest­lessness of that spring suggests that he was deeply gratified to be free at last of the incessant obstructionism of the old-line generals, with their frowning brows and shaking heads. Now he could pursue his dreams of grandeur and glory unimpeded and “save” the world ac­cording to his own vision. On the evening of April 20, 1938, he asked Keitel to head up general staff preparations for the occupation of Czechoslovakia. At about the same time, the chief of general staff, Ludwig Beck, drafted the first of a series of memoranda composed with mounting alarm over the next few months in an attempt to dissuade Hitler from going to war and also to restore the military’s political influence through internal reorganization. That was the be­ginning of a long, drawn-out duel between unequal opponents. In mid-June Hitler announced that he would take any opportunity that arose after October 1 “to solve the Czech question.”

Although the period between the Röhm and Fritsch affairs was marked by error and blundering, what stands out above all was a lack of will and assertiveness. In its pedantic, exacting way, history almost always requites such failings with shame and humiliation. In the case of Fritsch, not a single general insisted with appropriate vigor on clarifying the circumstances surrounding his denunciation or even on knowing the reasons, which Hitler only vaguely hinted at, that Fritsch could not be fully and publicly exonerated. Still, Brauchitsch inter­ceded persistently and quietly on Fritsch’s behalf and, by pointing to the mounting disquiet in the army, eventually did persuade the Führer to explain himself to the officer corps.

The meeting was held on June 13 at the air base in Barth, where, according to all reports, Hitler delivered one of the most compelling speeches of his career. With an eye toward his ripening plans for military conquest, he was determined to forestall the looming crisis of confidence in the army. He spoke of his “regrets” and the “tragedy” of the Fritsch case and promised that a similar situation would never arise again. His every word implied that the army remained the un­challenged and unchallengeable bearer of arms in the Reich, and he concluded by announcing that General Fritsch would be appointed “honorary commander” of the Twelfth Artillery Regiment.

But the army’s irretrievable loss of influence in the wake of the Fritsch affair became apparent as early as the next March, when the German incursion into Austria was planned without the consultation of the general staff. As if freed of his bonds, Hitler dared for the first time to send German forces across international frontiers, in an oper­ation planned largely by party circles and carried out with the support of Himmler and the SS, whose star was plainly in the ascendant.

Werner von Fritsch, though now cleared of all charges, was put through one final humiliation. Hitler delayed communicating with him until March 30, when a chilly letter was finally sent out, followed two days later by a curt announcement in the press that the Führer had conveyed to General Fritsch his “best wishes for the recovery of his health.” Fritsch responded one week later in a letter to Hitler: “The criminal charges against me have totally collapsed. However the deeply hurtful circumstances surrounding my dismissal from the army linger on-all the more painfully since the true reasons for my dismissal have not remained unknown to many in the Wehrmacht and the general public.” Fritsch pleaded that “those people be called to account who were officially responsible for my case and for keeping you fully and promptly informed” and entrusted the restoration of his honor “to your wise judgment as commander in chief.” He never received a reply.³¹

The Fritsch affair marked one of the lowest points in the long history of the German military. It also marked a new departure in the history of the Nazi regime, for the events of the spring of 1938 prompted the first stirrings of underground resistance. Groups materialized in a variety of locations, largely the creation of individuals who recognized not only the threat Hitler posed to Germany but the extent to which his behavior fell short of civilized standards. They formed ties, at­tracted like-minded people, and even overcame deeply entrenched European chauvinisms by reaching out across national borders to seek support abroad. They still differed immensely in their hopes and intentions and their readiness to shed the prejudices of the past; uniting them was little more than the conviction that things could not simply be allowed to take their course.

The most prominent figure in these opposition groups was indisputably Hans Oster, who became chief of the central division of the OKW Military Intelligence Office in the autumn of 1938. He had been skeptical of the Nazis prior to 1933 but, like most of his fellow officers, initially approved of Hitler’s foreign policy and therefore hesitated for a time once the new regime came to power. The Röhm affair served to clear his mind. Though not particularly politically minded at first, he nevertheless possessed sufficiently strong values and clarity of vision to understand the devastating defeat that the Reichswehr had inflicted on itself. The despotism in the land, daily growing more palpable in countless ways, the curtailment of the rule of law, and the emerging struggle against the churches prompted this parson’s son from Dresden to progress from mere reservations about the regime to fundamental hostility toward it. This inspired him to use the resources of Military Intelligence to build a far-flung network of conspirators. The disgraceful farce leading to Fritsch’s dismissal fired Oster with a determination to resist, though he recognized that it was Fritsch’s own weakness that had made his downfall inevitable. Nevertheless, Fritsch had been Oster’s regimental commander for a number of years and Oster continued to hold him in the highest regard, almost revering him. Decisive, quick-witted, and diplomati­cally imaginative, Oster was an unusual blend of moral rectitude, cunning, and recklessness. During many long discussions with Beck, he pointed out all the inconsistencies in the chief of the general staffs position and sowed doubt about the formalistic concept of loyalty to which Beck always hewed when Hitler repeatedly forced tests of conscience on him. Constantly on the move, Oster cultivated contacts on all sides and forged connections between the civilian and military opponents of the regime that would later become very important.

The driving force of the civilian opposition was Carl Goerdeler, whom the military resistance also came over the years to recognize as a leading figure. The scion of a conservative family, he originally joined the German National People’s Party but left because of its narrow, reactionary views. Goerdeler then earned a reputation for being a broad-minded, socially progressive politician as mayor of Leipzig. In the Weimar period, under Chancellor Brüning, he had served as Reich commissioner for price control. Now, after the Röhm affair, he agreed to assume this position once again but soon found himself in conflict with both Hitler’s economic policy and the party authorities. He was a “classic exemplar” of that opposition from within which seeks to civilize the regime by cooperating with it.³² Whereas many people later claimed that they had cooperated with the Nazis in order to prevent even worse from happening, when they had actually demonstrated little courage and achieved virtually noth­ing, Goerdeler proved to be an indefatigable and public adversary of Nazi criminality in his attempt to bolster “the forces of good in the party.”³³ In 1933 he refused to raise the swastika flag at the Leipzig city hall. After some vacillation he finally resigned in 1937, when, in his absence and contrary to his explicit instruction, a monument to Felix Mendelssohn, a Jew, was removed from its position in front of the Gewandhaus concert hall.

From this point on, Goerdeler devoted himself tirelessly to the resistance. He mobilized acquaintances from far and wide. Just be­tween June 1937 and late 1938 he traveled to twenty-two countries, always seeking to persuade the major powers to adopt an unyielding posture toward Hitler. Within Germany he established contacts on all sides and in this way contributed immensely to rallying the conserva­tive, nationalistic, bourgeois opposition to the regime. He was moti­vated in all this by an indomitable, almost pathological optimism and unshakable faith in the power of logical argument. Even as a con­demned prisoner on the eve of execution, he remained true to this belief despite his experiences and his fits of resignation.

Oster and Goerdeler were just the pivotal figures among a rapidly expanding corps of people who were prepared to oppose the regime. Some were lone wolves unattached to any group. In addition to the major circle within the army was another, at the Foreign Office, led by Adam von Trott zu Solz, Otto Kiep, Eduard Brücklmeier, Hans-Hernd von Haeften, and the Kordt brothers. In the wake of the Fritsch affair, these conspirators were joined by Georg Thomas, the OKW armaments chief; generals Wilhelm Adam, Erich Hoepner, Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, and Erwin von Witzleben; Chief of Military Intelligence Wilhelm Canaris; and numerous other figures. The Fritsch affair had proved a turning point for Hans von Dohnanyi and Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg, too, and Henning von Tresckow even pondered quitting the army and its all-too-acquiescent generals.³⁴

Ludwig Beck’s behavior reveals how difficult many officers found it to cast military tradition and principle aside and enter an entirely new world. In his memoranda and the comments he made to those around him, Beck repeatedly and vigorously denounced Hitler’s impatient warmongering. At the same time he struggled stubbornly, albeit in increasing isolation, to save the battered “two pillar” theory of the state and assert what was left of army influence over political life, now that Brauchitsch had clearly given up and was completely occupied with slaving off further demands rather than with making ones of his own. When Oster approached Beck at this point and asked him to take action, the chief of general staff agreed to persuade Brauchitsch to support a mass resignation of generals. At the same time, however, Beck was concerned that his name not become associated with the things that were still unacceptable to him as a soldier, such as mutiny and government by South American-style juntas.

Mass action on the part of German generals was certainly not without incalculable risk. It would be taken as signaling an uprising, for which there was not the necessary broad support, in either the army, the middle class, or the working class. It might also play into Hitler’s hands, providing him with an opportunity to flood the army with officers loyal to the regime, possibly even plucked from the senior ranks of the SS. Their resignations might enable the Führer to suc­ceed even more swiftly in creating an army that conformed ideologi­cally to his worldview, which was more obviously becoming his aim with every passing day.

For these reasons, Beck’s plan was to present the idea of the mass resignation of the army as an attempt to save Hitler from the clutches of the party and the SS-a fiction, to be sure. The rallying cry he intended to issue was, “For the Führer, against war, against rule by the bosses, for peace with the church, freedom of speech, and an end to Cheka methods!”³⁵ This approach was based on the widespread impression that Hitler’s entourage was split into “good” and “bad” factions struggling for the heart and soul of the Führer. Everyone must help, therefore, reduce the influence of the “bad” elements around Ribbentrop, Himmler, and Goebbels. This was certainly the thinking behind Beck’s comment to Brauchitsch at the time that he was prepared to shoot at the SS but not at Hitler.

Beck’s doubts about the generals’ strike were, in fact, well-founded, supported as they were by his realistic assessment of the situation. Any plan would have had to come to grips with the fact that this was a popular regime, headed by a man who had proved success­ful, was widely admired, and had just seen his support driven to new heights by the triumphant annexation of Austria. The regime, in its populism, was not unlike many people: egotistical, ruthless, and unconstrained by traditional values. Against it stood an Old World, elitist and confined by outmoded conventions that even it was struggling to shake off. A case in point: when Fritsch learned more about the background of the charges levied against him, he complained bitterly about his treatment and finally even conceded that Hitler had been as involved as Himmler; nevertheless, he refused to protest because that would have been rude and inappropriate for a person of his social standing. Fritsch’s inability to come to terms with the coarse new world in which he suddenly found himself is evidenced in his almost comic yet poignant plan, devised with Beck’s approval, to challenge Himmler-whom Fritsch believed had engineered the scandal-to a duel.

Until that day in January when Fritsch was suddenly confronted with a bribed witness before a host of onlookers, he and his army had thought that their position in the Reich was unassailable, that they had emerged victorious from the power struggle or at least were coasting toward inevitable victory. Now all such illusions were shat­tered. Despite his assurances that the Wehrmacht was and would remain the sole bearer of arms in the land, Hitler moved in August to elevate the SS to a kind of fourth service alongside the army, air force, and navy, thus laying the foundation for the emergence of the Waffen-SS. Venerable institutions are much more commonly laid low by their victories than by their defeats, especially when the true na­ture of those triumphs is disguised-as it so often is-or when it transpires that they are not in fact victories at all.