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

3. THE SEPTEMBER PLOT

Scarcely had Hitler finished basking in the jubilation, the flowers, and pealing bells that greeted him on his triumphant journey through Austria to the Heldenplatz in Vienna, when he became impa­tient for new adventures. At that very moment, however, forces were beginning to stir that would work with great determination to change the course that Germany was taking. The Fritsch affair had demon­strated to Hans Oster just how difficult it would be to persuade the generals to mount the kind of resistance that he deemed necessary. Regardless of how alluring they may have found Hitler’s increasingly open plans for military expansion, they feared his gambler’s instincts and the recklessness with which he risked war, even with Great Brit­ain. Most remained paralyzed, however, inhibited from taking serious action, partly by the personal oaths of allegiance they had sworn to the Führer and partly by their ingrained belief in such ideals as loy­alty and obedience.

Oster and his friends realized that even though Hitler had already demolished any basis for such loyalty, it persisted and could only be uprooted through the threat of a major foe. Only if the British adopted a determined, unyielding stance that drove home the danger of another great war would the generals realize the seriousness of the threat Hitler posed to his own country. Finally they would be seized with their responsibility for the greater whole, regardless of their oaths of allegiance and traditional duty to obey.

This was the thought that prompted the curious pilgrimage to London and Paris beginning in the summer of 1938. Envoys of the opposition hoped to inform the Western powers of Hitler’s intentions toward Czechoslovakia and to elicit strongly worded declarations of Western determination to oppose such aggression. Driven by his own restiveness, Goerdeler had traveled to Paris in early March and then again in April, meeting with the most senior official in the Foreign Ministry, Alexis Léger, but failing to obtain much more than fine words. In fact, many comments made at the time suggest that the French did not know what to make of a German who would warn a foreign power about the designs of his own government. No one seemed quite certain that Goerdeler was not actually acting on behalf of the Nazi regime. He aroused the same irritation in London. The extent to which the nations of Europe were caught up in their own preoccupations in those years can be seen in the fact that Sir Robert Albert Vansittart, the chief diplomatic adviser to the British Foreign Office, felt called upon to point out during their first conversation that what his visitor was doing amounted to nothing less than high treason.¹

Oster’s chosen emissary was Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin, a worldly, courageous, and selfless conservative from Pomerania. In mid-January 1933 he had sought an interview with Hindenburg in a vain attempt to prevent Hitler’s nomination as chancellor and had subsequently withdrawn in disdainful rage to his country estate. On several occasions he had already approached English friends with warnings about Hitler’s expansionist designs. Now he traveled to Lon­don with an assignment from Ludwig Beck: “Bring me back certain proof that England will fight if Czechoslovakia is attacked, and I will put an end to this regime.”² Kleist began his meeting with Vansittart by informing the chief diplomatic adviser that he came “with a rope around his neck.” Everything else he had to say, however, made as little impression as did his later interviews with Lord Lloyd and Win­ston Churchill. Fully misunderstanding Kleist’s mission, Prime Minis­ter Chamberlain described Kleist and his reactionary friends as nothing more than modern Jacobites hoping to spark a revolution and restore the past with British help, much as the original Jacobites had sought to undo the revolution of 1688 and restore the deposed mon­archy with French assistance. Little did Chamberlain realize that the analogy, far from being grounds for objection, pointed to the last chance to save the peace.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Oster’s next emissary, the industrialist Hans Böhm-Tettelbach, also returned empty-handed. Far from allowing himself to become downhearted, Oster hoped to make his messengers seem more reliable by seeking assistance from co-conspirators in the Foreign Office. He asked Erich Kordt, the chief of the Ministers’ Bureau, to draft a message to the British gov­ernment requesting a “firm declaration” of opposition to Hitler’s war­mongering, a statement whose meaning would be “apparent even to ordinary people.” If such a document could be obtained, Oster added, there would “be no more Hitler.”³ It was too risky to carry a copy of the message, so one of Kordt’s cousins was asked to memorize it and repeat it for his brother Theo Kordt, who worked in the German embassy in London.

Although Theo Kordt aroused greater interest than his predeces­sors had and was even admitted to 10 Downing Street through a back entrance for an interview with Lord Halifax, the foreign minister, his mission, too, proved futile. Halifax listened attentively, to be sure, and seemed impressed when Kordt reminded him that Great Britain might have averted war in 1914 by issuing a similar declaration. He assured his guest as they parted that he would inform the prime minister and certain cabinet members about the gist of their conver­sation, so that Kordt departed with his hopes high. Once again, how­ever, Great Britain could not be persuaded to issue a public declaration. The only noticeable effect of the conversation came in a letter Chamberlain sent to Hitler just before the outbreak of war in late August 1939, in which he mentioned the parallel to 1914 and expressed his hope that this time “no such tragic misunderstanding” would arise. A few weeks later, when the die had already been cast, Halifax commented to Theo Kordt, with a note of regret, “We could not be as candid with you as you were with us,” for at the time of their conversation Whitehall had already decided to yield to Hitler’s demands.⁴

So it went, over and over again. By the time Erich Kordt was drafting his message, the secretary of state in the Foreign Office, Ernst von Weizsäcker, had already begged the high commissioner for Danzig, Carl Jacob Burckhardt, “with the frankness of a desperate man betting everything on one last card,” as Burckhardt later de­scribed it, to use his connections to persuade the British government to make some definitive gesture, perhaps by “sending out a general with a riding crop,” whose language Hitler would presumably under­stand.⁵ But all efforts were in vain. In the summer of 1939, just before the invasion of Poland, when war again seemed imminent, Hjalmar Schacht met several times with Montagu Norman, the governor of the Bank of England. Fabian von Schlabrendorff, Helmuth von Moltke, Erich Kordt, Adam von Trott, and Ulrich Schwerin von Schwanenfeld all joined the procession. But the British remained impassive, stoic, and distrustful, offering little more than empty words.

British policy at this time has often been criticized as inadequate. The pitiful failure of the German opposition figures’ forays was due in large measure to Chamberlain’s appeasement policy, upon which all attempts ultimately floundered. Britain had emerged exhausted from the First World War, and the prime minister wished to spare his nation another passage at arms, which would overtax its remaining strength and, it seemed, inevitably bring about an end to the empire. Chamberlain was no sentimental pacifist; there was more cool realism and even hard-hearted calculation in him than was later generally realized. He believed that a policy of prudent step-by-step appease­ment would have a literally disarming effect, even on a man such as Hitler, and he pursued this course with conviction and tenacity. It was the only way, Chamberlain felt, to secure the peace-a goal for which he was prepared to pay virtually any price that did not compro­mise British honor and patience.

This is the background against which all the forays made by Hitler’s opponents must be seen. The tactics the opposition had adopted were the very opposite of the British cabinet’s, for they sought confrontation where Chamberlain hoped to avoid it. All they wanted from the British were words and gestures which they errone­ously believed that Whitehall could easily deliver, because they were convinced that the Western powers would never abandon Czechoslo­vakia. In fact, Chamberlain was secretly prepared to do just that. To satisfy the requests of the German conspirators, the British would therefore have had to reverse their entire policy of conciliation. Fur­thermore, the British feared that the statements requested of them might goad the irascible Hitler to make decisions that would inevita­bly lead to war. Eventually, in view of Berlin’s constant exacerbation of the tensions, Lord Halifax did send a message to the German government on September 9, 1938, reflecting at least somewhat the posture urged on Whitehall by the conspirators. The British ambassa­dor to Berlin, Sir Nevile Henderson, flatly refused, however, to de­liver a message so clearly out of step with the official conciliatory approach. Similarly, when Vansittart had written a memorandum a few months earlier advising a firmer posture toward Hitler, it was suppressed from within the bureaucracy. Vansittart’s arguments were based on information channeled to him from German opposition cir­cles detailing the Reich’s economic, psychological, and military un-preparedness for war.⁶

As carefully calculated as Chamberlain’s policies were, there was one element in the equation that he failed utterly to comprehend because it lay so far outside the orbit of his experience. For the sake of peace he was prepared to see Germany annex the Sudetenland, then Bohemia, and then even the Polish Corridor and parts of Upper Silesia; the new government in Berlin, he firmly believed, would eventually become as “sated, indolent and quiescent” as even the most rapacious of beasts.⁷

But Chamberlain did not understand Hitler at all, and his incomprehension would prove the undoing of his shrewdly devised policy. As a European statesman of the old school, the prime minister thought in terms of national interest. He had some grasp of such imponderables as injured pride and honor and the redress that Hitler constantly demanded. What he failed to realize, however, was that Hitler was not really serious about such things, indeed that amid his extravagant racist fantasies of saving the world there was little room for such categories as “nation,” “interests,” or even “pride.” Like the Germans themselves-and probably like everyone else-the prime minister failed to fathom the radical otherness that Hitler introduced into European politics. In the words of a deeply shocked German conservative during the early years of Hitler’s chancellorship, the Führer did not really seem to belong in this world. He “had some­thing alien about him, as if he sprang from an otherwise extinct pri­meval tribe.”⁸

One cannot judge the efforts of the German conspirators at this time without considering several other factors as well, especially the confusion they spread when abroad, despite their agreement about the ultimate purpose of their trips. It was, of course, very difficult under the circumstances to meet and adequately discuss strategy among themselves. Böhm-Tettelbach, for instance, did not even know when he traveled to London that Ewald von Kleist had been there just two weeks earlier on the same mission. Even more disturbing were the contradictions in what the various emissaries had to say. For instance, Goerdeler demanded-like Hitler himself-not only the cession of the Sudetenland but also, as if anticipating the Führer, the elimination of the Polish Corridor and the return of Germany’s former colonies. Meanwhile Kleist spent his time advocating the restoration of the monarchy. When Adam von Trott declared that a new German government would preserve Hitler’s territorial gains, he was unceremoniously evicted from the home of an English friend.

The German emissaries, many of whom considered themselves particularly knowledgeable about Great Britain, believed that making material demands such as these would heighten their credibility with the British. It is certainly true that the conspirators would never have gained the necessary public support to overthrow Hitler if their new regime had begun by renouncing all that the Führer had achieved-for instance, by revoking the Anschluss with Austria-whether voluntarily or under foreign pressure. Still, it is hard to believe their fool­ishness in playing down the basically moral nature of the opposition to Hitler and emphasizing German territorial claims instead, all in the belief that they would be better understood by the materialistic Brit­ish, who are moved not by theory but by practical considerations.

Further confusing the issue for the British was the fact that nearly all these self-declared opponents of the regime held posts within it, some of them quite senior. At the end of a trip abroad in 1938, Adam von Trott wrote to his friend David Astor that, after giving the question much thought, he had decided to return to Germany solely in order to combat the Nazi regime. Suspicion lingered and grew, nev­ertheless, often leading to the breakup of long-standing friendships. The British, so blessed by nature and history, could hardly begin to understand the pretenses and subterfuges to which opponents of a totalitarian system had to resort. In the end, many in Britain could hardly distinguish between Hitler and these self-described opponents of his who seemed to endorse so many of his demands. “There is really very little difference between them. The same sort of ambitions are sponsored by a different body of men, and that is about all,” wrote Vansittart, even though he was quite sympathetic toward the main purpose of the emissaries, namely a firm stance toward Hitler. Hugh Dalton, future chancellor of the exchequer, remarked sarcastically that these German conservatives were nothing more than “a race of carnivorous sheep.”⁹ Finally, there was the conviction in Britain, by no means confined to readers of the gutter press, that Germans were innately evil, or at any rate inclined to be so, as a result of their historical and cultural heritage. Cast in this light, Hitler’s conservative opponents did not seem much different from the Führer himself, and considering the sins of Germany’s elites extending back to the days of the kaisers, they were certainly no better.

One additional consideration actually weighed in favor of Hitler against his opponents. It was well known that the Junkers had always been more strongly oriented toward the East than toward the West and had long had many interests in common with Russia, in addition to their neighborly, cultural, and even emotional ties; no one could rule out the possibility that this group would not one day come to an understanding with the Soviet Union-as they had before with Rus­sia-ideological impediments notwithstanding. Hitler, on the other hand, clearly lay above all reproach in this regard. Whatever else might be said about him, he was genuinely opposed to Communism, which was spreading into Western Europe through the Front Populaire in France, the Spanish civil war, and countless activities, mostly underground. Hitler himself described Germany under his leadership as a bulwark against the tide of Communism. He told Arnold Toynbee that he had been placed “on earth to lead humanity in its inevitable struggle against Bolshevism.”¹⁰ To people who saw the world in such sweeping, categorical terms, Hitler’s illegal acts and despotic style must have shrunk to relative insignificance, or at least seemed minor problems that the Germans themselves could handle. Hitler’s alien, sinister aura only heightened his credibility as the commander of a last bastion of Western civilization against the Communist hordes.

The efforts of the German conspirators were stymied by these as well as many other misunderstandings and misconceptions, which replicated on an international level the same delusions about Hitler shared by his would-be partners in domestic politics. In the end, therefore, there were insurmountable obstacles to any meeting of minds with the British, and if anything, the distance between the conspirators and the British only grew. When von Trott tried to prod Chamberlain in the direction of the German opposition, his words were received “icily.” The ultimate reason for the countless misun­derstandings in which the talks finally bogged down was clearly the two sides’ mutual lack of understanding. The Germans, especially those who had British ancestors, had studied in Britain, or took a particular interest in the country, greatly admired the vast British Empire. They invoked it frequently and, to the discomfort of their hosts, often expressed their hope that Germany might one day achieve for itself some modicum of the hegemony that Britain had over the world. The British tended to interpret this as a manifestation of the old Teutonic ambitions and the insatiable German desire for a “place in the sun” that had challenged Britain’s own status in the world for generations. Neither side perceived that the era of the great empires was actually drawing to a close, that imperialism had already become a relic of the past.

In the end, all that remained was disappointment and bitterness, and there is certainly some truth in the description of all these futile efforts as an Anglo-German tragedy. However, it was not only clumsiness and short-sightedness that led to failure; there were also conflict­ing interests at issue. With the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact in August 1939, the increasingly half-hearted contacts seemed to die away. They flickered to life again here and there, before disappearing completely toward the end of the war. Fifty years later British histori­ans are beginning to speak of Whitehall’s “needless war” against Hitler’s domestic opponents.¹¹

Despite the setbacks suffered by the resistance during these weeks, Oster remained undaunted. The clearer it became that Hitler was leading Germany straight into another war, the more numerous and open his opponents became. The opposition circles that had formed in the Foreign Office and in Military Intelligence were now joined by Hans Bernd Gisevius, a former assistant secretary in the Ministry of the Interior with an extensive knowledge of all the cliques and cote­ries in the corridors of power; Count Peter Yorck von Wartenburg, an assistant secretary to the Reich price commissioner; and Helmuth Groscurth, chief of the army intelligence liaison group on the general staff. All of them had friends in whom they confided as well as superi­ors and subordinates whom they informed and drew into opposition circles. Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg, for instance, won over the prefect of police in Berlin, Count Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorf; even more importantly, Oster revived his old connections with Erwin von Witzleben, the commander of the Berlin military district. Witzleben was a simple, unpretentious man with clear judgment. During one of his conversations with Oster in the summer of 1938, he did not hesi­tate to declare himself ready for action: “I don’t know anything about politics, but I don’t need to in order to know what has to be done here.”¹²

Beck was continuing his efforts and for the first time he began to break out of the realm of mere counterproposals. At a meeting with Brauchitsch on July 16, he suggested that the generals join together to form a united opposition front. If this failed to sway Hitler and he continued on a course toward war, the generals should resign enmasse. “Final decisions” needed to be made, Beck wrote, arguing that if the officer corps felled to act its members would incur a “blood guilt… . Their soldiers’ duty to obey ends when their knowledge, their conscience, and their sense of responsibility forbid them to carry out an order. If their advice and warnings are ignored in such a situation, they have the right and the duty before history and the German people to resign.”¹³

Brauchitsch summoned the generals to a meeting on Bendlerstrasse on August 4. It soon became apparent that all the command­ing generals believed that a spreading war would prove catastrophic for Germany. Busch and Reichenau, however, did not think that an attack on Czechoslovakia would necessarily lead to war with the Western powers, and as a result the tormented Brauchitsch did not even mention Beck’s proposal that the generals attempt to pressure Hitler by threatening mass resignation. At the end of the meeting Brauchitsch did, however, reconfirm their unanimous opposition to a war and their conviction that a world war would mean the destruction of German culture.¹⁴ Shortly afterwards, Hitler was informed about the meeting by Reichenau and he immediately demanded Beck’s dis­missal as chief of general staff. To show his displeasure he invited neither Beck nor Brauchitsch to a conference at his compound on the Obersalzberg on August 10; there he informed the chiefs of general staff of the armies and the air force that he had decided to invade Czechoslovakia.

Eight days later Beck submitted his resignation. This step and the way in which it was taken revealed once again the submissiveness and political ineptitude of the officer corps. After the Fritsch affair Beck had declared that he must remain at his post in order both to work for the rehabilitation of his humiliated superior and to prevent the reduc­tion of the army to a mere tool of the Führer. His ensuing dispute with Hitler, however, which took the form of a series of memoranda opposing the Führer’s plans for war and for the reorganization of the high command, proved to be the “final battle” of the officer corps in its struggle to maintain a say in decisions of war and peace.¹⁵ Now Beck cleared himself out of Hitler’s way, as it were, becoming merely an outraged, and later despairing, observer without position or influ­ence.

Only a few days earlier Erich von Manstein, his chief of operations, had written him a letter urging that he remain at his post because no one had the “skill and strength of character” to replace him. Beck’s authority was indeed widely acknowledged throughout the officer corps. He was a clear, imaginative, rigorous thinker of great integrity. Even Hitler could not shake the aura of easy superiority Beck pro­jected in every word and deed. During the Fritsch crisis the Führer had confided in a member of his cabinet that Beck was the only officer he feared: “That man could really do something.”¹⁶ Later Beck effortlessly assumed a leadership role in the opposition. No one doubted that if a successful putsch was launched he would become chief of state. “Beck was king,” a contemporary recalled.¹⁷ If there was a flaw in his cool, pure intelligence, it lay in his lack of toughness and drive. He was “very scholarly by nature,” one of his admirers commented. Other opposition figures also found that he provided more analytical acuity than leadership at crucial moments.¹⁸

Beck was also probably less of a political strategist than the situation required and was certainly not conversant with the kinds of maneuvers and ploys at which Hitler was so adept. That is why he readily acquiesced to Hitler’s request that his resignation not be made public lest it provoke an unfavorable reaction. As a result, the decision he had made after so much painful reflection had no public impact. Beck later admitted that he had made a mistake, adding a revealing justifi­cation that illustrates the helplessness of his position: it was not his way, he said, to be a “self-promoter.”¹⁹ Hitler did not even bother to grant him an audience when he took his leave.

Nonetheless, upon his departure Beck commended his successor, Franz Halder, to all those with whom he was on confidential terms. Indeed, only a few days after assuming his new post, Halder sum­moned Hans Oster to an interview. After a few exchanges of views about Hitler’s foreign designs, Halder asked his guest point-blank how the preparations for a coup were progressing. More clearly than Beck, Halder recognized that the ingloriously abandoned plan for a “generals’ strike” would only make sense as the first step in a coup; otherwise it was better left undone. Hitler could easily have found replacements for all the seditious generals and knew far too much about power and how to keep it simply to back down in the face of such opposition. The historian Peter Hoffmann quite rightly points in this regard to Manstein’s comment at the Nuremberg trials that dicta­tors do not allow themselves to be driven into things, because then they would no longer be dictators.²⁰

Halder was a typical general staff officer of the old school: correct, focused, and outspoken. Observers also noted a certain impulsive­ness, which, for the sake of his career, he had learned to control, if not overcome. Not long after his meeting with Oster he spoke with Gisevius for the first time, soon turning to concrete questions about plans for the coup and describing Hitler as “mentally ill” and “bloodthirsty.”²¹ Here and elsewhere, he proved that he was a man far more capable of action than Beck, who immersed himself in philosophical contemplation. Halder had resolved the conflict between the loyalty traditionally expected of a soldier and the need to topple Hitler and no longer felt inhibited from taking action by his oath to the Führer. As early as the fall maneuvers of 1937, he had encouraged Fritsch to use force against Hitler, and after Fritsch’s treacherous removal he had pressed for “practical opposition.” More clear-sighted than most of his fellow conservatives and less compromising in his values, he realized that Hitler was a radical revolutionary prepared to destroy virtually everything. Despite the adoring crowds at Hitler’s feel, Halder considered his rule highly illegitimate because it stood outside all tradition: truth, morality, patriotism, even human beings themselves were only instruments for the accrual of more power. Hitler, in Halder’s view, was “the very incarnation of evil.” By nature a practical, realistic man, meticulous to the point of pedantry, Halder was not, however, cut out for the role of conspirator and the very perversity of the times can be seen in the fact that such a man felt driven to such un undertaking. He later said he found “the need to resist a frightful, agonizing experience.”²² Halder refused to be a party to any sort of ill considered action and insisted that a coup would only be justifiable as a last resort.

Upon assuming his new post on September 1, Halder informed Brauchitsch that, like his predecessors, he opposed the Führer’s plans for war and was determined to “exploit every opportunity that this position affords to carry on the struggle against Hitler.” If this com­ment illustrates Halder’s own character, the reaction of the overly pliable commander in chief, who felt himself forced from one horror to the next, was perhaps even more revealing: as if in gratitude, Brauchitsch spontaneously seized both Halder’s hands and shook them.²³ A series of discussions soon ensued that included Witzleben; Hjalmar Schacht; Beck; the quartermaster general of the army, Colo­nel Eduard Wagner; and, most important, Hans Oster, the indefatigable driving force and go-between of the opposition. The necessary preconditions for a coup were spelled out and the aims more pre­cisely defined.

In the course of these discussions a perhaps unavoidable rift emerged between the methodical, deliberate chief of general staff and Oster’s immediate associates. Halder was primarily concerned with finding ways to justify a coup morally and politically, not only for himself but also for the army and the general public. A coup would only be warranted, in his view, if Hitler ignored all warnings and issued final instructions to launch a war. At that point, but not before, Halder said, he would be prepared to give the signal for a putsch. Oster and the impetuous Gisevius, on the other hand, were far more radical in their thinking and no longer had any patience for tactical considerations. In their view the regime had to be struck down by any means possible. Hitler’s warmongering may have provided an induce­ment and opportunity, but it was not the primary reason for taking action. Although this basic difference of opinion surfaced now and then, it was never really resolved, leading one of the more resolute opponents of the Nazi regime to speak, with some justification, of a “conspiracy within the conspiracy.”²⁴

This basic difference of opinion came to the fore only once, when Gisevius tried to persuade Halder to strike immediately rather than wait for an opportune moment. Halder was as convinced as Gisevius that Hitler meant war but insisted nevertheless on proof; he was incensed by Gisevius’s suggestion that evidence of these plans and countless further indications of the regime’s hideous nature could easily be obtained by seizing Gestapo and SS files. Gisevius believed that it was preferable to attack the regime on criminal grounds rather than on political ones and to produce “a few dozen airtight arrest warrants” rather than all sorts of tortuous political rationales. No army officer worth his salt, in Gisevius’s view, could resist a command to restore order in the face of murder, illegal confinement, extortion, and corruption. To advance moral and political rationales would sim­ply invite a lengthy debate over the legality of the coup.

This proposal, and indeed Gisevius’s entire attitude, struck Halder as far too adventurist, smacking more of mutiny and unsoldierly willfulness than of responsible action. Under no circumstances would he lend the army to such an operation. Only when Hitler issued orders to attack, thereby revealing himself to the public as the “criminal” that Halder had long considered him to be, could the signal for a military putsch be issued. A few days later an impatient Gisevius accompanied Hjalmar Schacht uninvited to a meeting Schacht had arranged at Halder’s apartment. He hoped to urge his plan on the chief of the general staff once again, but Halder lost all patience and thereafter refused to receive Gisevius.²⁵

Soon afterwards Halder asked Oster to work out a detailed plan for a coup, and with Oster’s participation the rather aimless and rancor­ous activities of the conspirators gained a focal point and took on a more concrete shape. The web of conspirators grew rapidly and many loose ends were tied up, creating a much more solid organization. Halder made contact with Ernst von Weizsäcker-although direct communications between the Foreign Office and the general staff were explicitly forbidden-and with Wilhelm Canaris, the chief of Military Intelligence. In August Halder met in Frankfurt with Wil­helm Adam, the commander in chief of Army Group 2. Both men were concerned that Hitler was headed for war. When Halder “abruptly” stated that if Witzleben, the commander of the Berlin military district, were to “strike, the commanders in chief of the Reich would have to go along with him,” Adam replied, “Go ahead, I’m ready.”²⁶ Then, on September 4, Halder met with Schacht, who agreed to become provisional head of the new government in case of a successful coup. At the same time, Halder was in contact with Oster, Oster with Gisevius, Gisevius with Schulenburg, and virtually everyone with everyone else in a continuous round of discussions, to plan movements during the coup and to coordinate and review possi­ble scenarios. Witzleben visited Schacht at his country estate near Berlin, parting with the comment that this time they would go all the way.²⁷

In the meantime Witzleben had won over to the cause a subordinate of his, Count Walter Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt, commander of the Potsdam Division. This unit was regarded not only as a “model divi­sion” but it was also the strongest military force in the Berlin area and therefore crucial to the success of the coup. Halder arranged to have the First Light Division, commanded by Erich Hoepner, which was on maneuvers in the border region between Thuringia and Saxony, put on alert to block the path to Berlin of SS-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, the SS troop that acted as Hitler’s bodyguard. Just before midnight on September 14, after all operations had been spelled out yet again-especially the plans to seize police stations, radio transmit­ters, telephone installations, repeater stations, the Reich Chancellery, and key ministries as rapidly as possible-and after Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt had personally inspected all pivotal positions, including even the transmitters in Königs-Wusterhausen near Berlin, Witzleben declared all military preparation completed for a coup.²⁸

One major question was what to do with Hitler himself. Gisevius and a small group of predominantly younger conspirators felt that he should he killed without further ado. Witzleben, Beck, and most of the other conspirators, including Canaris, who was on the fringes of this attempt, believed that Hitler should be arrested and put on trial. By using the legal system to expose the crimes of the regime, they hoped to avoid either making a martyr of Hitler or igniting a civil war. Halder pointed out that it was not the moral judgments of the elite that counted but the support of the general population, most of which was still very much in thrall to the Hitlerian myth. Hans von Dohnanyi and Oster argued that after Hitler was arrested he should be brought before a panel of physicians chaired by Dohnanyi’s father-in-law, the celebrated psychiatrist Karl Bonhoeffer, and declared mentally ill. Halder, for his part, hesitated. He was not opposed to eliminating Hitler, he informed his fellow conspirators, but under the circumstances he did not approve of murdering him in the open- perhaps an accident could be arranged, or they could pin the assassi­nation on a third party. The radicals among the conspirators, who had always considered Halder indecisive, felt their doubts about him con­firmed, and they began to fear for the operation, especially since the chief of general staff had explicitly reserved to himself the right to issue the order for the coup. Witzleben stated that if necessary he would take action without orders from above, cordoning off the for­mer quarters of the Ministry of War and army headquarters and put­ting Halder and Brauchitsch “under lock and key during the crucial hours.”²⁹

Around September 20, the innermost circle of conspirators met in Oster’s apartment for a final conclave: Witzleben, Gisevius, Dohnanyi, and probably Goerdeler, as well as Captain Friedrich Wil­helm Heinz and Lieutenant Commander Franz Maria Liedig. Heinz and Liedig had recently been asked to assemble a special task force, whose precise mission the assembled group now determined. When Halder issued the signal for the coup, the task force, under Witzleben’s command, was to overpower the sentries at the main en­trance to the Reich Chancellery at 78 Wilhelmstrasse, enter the building, neutralize any resistance, especially from Hitler’s body­guards, and enter Hitler’s quarters. The Führer would then be arrested, the conspirators agreed, and immediately transported by automobile to a secure location.

Oster had arranged for Heinz to come to the meeting with Witzleben. Molded by his experiences in the Great War, Heinz, like many of his counterparts, had never felt at ease in civilian life and had continued to live by military habits. Initially a member of the Ehrhardt Freikorps, a private army formed after the First World War, he was swept up by the mood of romantic-revolutionary nationalism and joined the Stahlhelm, the paramilitary association that provided a home for restless members of the political right during the days of the much-hated republic but that, like all other political organizations, was dissolved in the great Gleichschaltung of the fall of 1933. Through his many connections with comrades from those days, and with Oster’s help, Heinz managed to assemble a commando of about thirty rough, brash young officers, students, and workers trained in the use of firearms.

Witzleben had scarcely left Oster’s apartment when the remaining conspirators expanded the plot in one key way. Heinz argued that it would not suffice simply to arrest Hitler and put him on trial. Even from a prisoner’s dock, Hitler would prove more powerful than all of them, including Witzleben and his army corps. Heinz’s arguments seemed to strike home. In the wake of the nationalistic euphoria over Austria’s “return” to the Reich, Hitler’s position was stronger than ever; the regime’s propaganda machine had succeeded in portraying the Führer as the stalwart champion of the national interest. It was only the malevolent or corrupt forces in his entourage, according to some critical voices, who occasionally led him astray. Heinz therefore argued that it was essential to engineer a scuffle during the arrest and simply shoot Hitler on the spot.

If the records are not misleading, Oster finally agreed, although he knew that both Witzleben and Halder were opposed on principle to murdering Hitler. And thus a third conspiracy arose within the al­ready existing “conspiracy within a conspiracy.” It comprised the most determined core of conspirators-those who would stop at nothing. In hindsight, they were perhaps the only ones who might have been a match for the Nazis. All the others, including Halder, Beck, and even Witzleben, were impeded by their notions of tradi­tion, morality, and good upper-class manners, though there were con­siderable individual differences among them. The resistance was therefore never really able to match the ruthlessness of the regime. Indeed, a few days after this evening conference, Beck warned Oster that the conspirators should not defile their good names by commit­ting murder. The debate surrounding this issue would continue un­abated until July 20, 1944.

Nevertheless, all now stood ready for the coup. What remained was the signal from Halder, to be given as soon as Hitler issued the orders to invade. But on the evening of September 13 stunning news arrived. The British prime minister had declared his willingness to hold personal discussions with the Führer, immediately, at any location and without concern for protocol. Hitler is said to have com­mented later that he was “thunderstruck” by Chamberlain’s action. For the conspirators, it was as if the world had come crashing down around them. As one of their number later wrote, they each struggled to maintain their composure; those who had advocated a more cautious approach heaped scorn on the irresponsibility of the activists who once again had underestimated the genius of the Führer. Witzleben expressed doubts about the judgment of the conspirators who claimed to be political experts. Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt voiced his con­cern that the conspirators would now no longer be able to count on the army troops that were crucial to a successful coup. In a mood of glum uncertainty, most of the conspirators began to fear that the ground had been torn out from under them once and for all.

Ultimately, the overture to Hitler only proved something that Chamberlain had never been willing to acknowledge but that cer­tainly must have begun to dawn on him within a few bitter days: Hitler wanted not to resolve the crisis in Europe but to heighten it. The Führer felt confirmed in his belief that the Western democracies would yield in the end when Chamberlain accepted the transfer of the Sudetenland to Germany, a decision endorsed by the British and French governments after nervous negotiations, and even accepted by Prague, though it consented only under great pressure.

Hitler was nevertheless surprised when, one week later, on September 22, 1938, the prime minister flew to Bad Godesberg, near Bonn, to deliver a copy of the agreement personally and to discuss the modalities of the transfer. Paradoxically, such eagerness to appease actually complicated Hitler’s plans for further annexations by ruining the triumphant march into Prague that he was already savoring. After an embarrassed pause, Hitler quietly informed Chamberlain that the agreement they had reached in Berchtesgaden just a week before was null and void. He now insisted not only on marching immediately into the Sudetenland but also on satisfaction of longstanding Polish and Hungarian claims on various border regions of Czechoslovakia. After an exchange of letters from the respective staffs failed to resolve these issues, the negotiations were broken off that evening. An enraged Chamberlain demanded a memorandum setting forth the new Germany requirements. According to Ernst von Weizsäcker of the Foreign Office, Hitler “clapped his hands together as if in great amusement” when he described the course of the conversations. Three days later he issued an ultimatum: he would only hold his divisions back if his new Godesberg demands were accepted by 2:00 p.m. on September 28. “If England and France want to attack,” he told the British emis­sary Sir Horace Wilson, who had come to Berlin on September 26 in a final attempt to reach an agreement, “then let them do so. I don’t care. I am prepared for all eventualities. Today is Tuesday. Next Mon­day we’ll be at war.”³⁰

Just as news of Chamberlain’s trip to Berchtesgaden had virtually paralyzed the conspirators, Hitler’s additional demands in Godesberg infused them with new life. When Oster heard the details from Erich Kordt, he said, “Finally [we have] clear proof that Hitler wants war, no matter what. Now there can be no going back.”³¹

Everywhere in Europe war preparations began, accompanied by the darkest forebodings. By the time the first news arrived from Bad Godesberg, Czechoslovakia had already ordered its forces to mobi­lize, not without some sense of relief. Britain followed suit, ordering the navy to make ready for war. In London, slit trenches were dug, gas masks distributed, and hospitals evacuated. France called up the reserves. In Germany, Goebbels’s propaganda campaign about the suffering of the Sudeten Germans, which had been launched just weeks before, grew shriller and shriller. Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht attack units to advance from their assembly areas in the inte­rior to the launch points on the Czech border. In an attempt to stir up war fever in Germany, Hitler ordered the Second Motorized Division to pass through Berlin on its way to the border. It rumbled down the Ost-West-Achse boulevard, before turning into Wilhelmstrasse, where he reviewed it from the Chancellery balcony. Contrary to all expectations, however, no cheering throngs lined the streets. Hitler noted with annoyance the solemnity of the passersby and the glacial silence with which they observed the troops before turning away. Visibly upset, he withdrew into the middle of the room. The Ameri­can correspondent William Shirer observed that this was the most striking antiwar demonstration that he had ever seen.³²

What disappointed Hitler only encouraged the conspirators, who now moved to their starting positions. They carried out the final military and police preparations and checked over their proclamations to the German people. Equipped with firearms, ammunition, hand gre­nades, and explosives, Heinz’s task force waited at the ready in a number of private dwellings in Berlin, such as 118 Eisenacherstrasse. Helmuth Groscurth, who was spending the evening with his brother, suddenly broke off their conversation and asked him if he could keep a secret. After repeated assurances, Groscurth finally told him the news: “Tonight Hitler is going to be arrested!”³³

In fact, the ultimatum did not expire until 2:00 p.m. the next day. That morning Oster forwarded to Witzleben a copy of the note that Hitler had sent to Chamberlain in Bad Godesberg abruptly rejecting the British offers. Witzleben immediately took it to Halder. As Halder read it, “tears of indignation” welled up in his eyes, and together the two decided not to wait any longer. Halder offered to inform Brauchitsch and rally him to the cause, if possible, especially since he himself did not have direct command over any troops in his position as chief of general staff.

Commander in Chief Brauchitsch was also outraged by Hitler’s note. He, too, began to see through the Führer’s duplicity. “So he lied to me again!” he roared. But Brauchitsch was not yet prepared to commit himself to a coup at this point. He would “probably” partici­pate, Halder reported to the waiting Witzleben upon his return. Wit­zleben thereupon telephoned the commander in chief right from Halder’s office and appealed to him—“virtually begging him,” ac­cording to Gisevius, “to issue the order to go ahead.” The indecisive Brauchitsch said, however, that he wanted first to stop in at the Chan­cellery to assess the situation personally. Upon returning to military district headquarters on Hohenzollerndamm, Witzleben called out to Gisevius, “Any time now, Doctor!”³⁴

At eleven o’clock, Erich Kordt was informed by his brother in London that Great Britain would declare war if Czechoslovakia was invaded. Paris, too, seemed resolute. But German war preparations continued nevertheless. The previous evening Hitler had ordered the divisions on Germany’s western borders to mobilize as well. Kordt met Schulenburg, and they agreed to clear the way for Heinz’s task force by opening from the inside the guarded double doors at the entrance to the Chancellery. Everyone waited: Witzleben, Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt, Oster, Kordt, Gisevius, Heinz, and the others. Most important of all, Halder waited for Brauchitsch to return from the Chancellery. And then the clock stopped ticking.

At literally the last minute, Hitler decided to yield to pressure from Mussolini and agree to a conference in Munich to settle the Sudeten issue. The conspirators were aghast. After all their planning, this was clearly the end of their plots. The issue had been clear-either a coup or war-and now the Munich conference threw everything into question. Only Gisevius, arguing desperately, tried to persuade Witzleben to stage the coup anyway. But the general asked him sharply, as Gisevius later recalled, “What can the troops possibly do against a leader this victorious?”³⁵

In an instant the situation was turned upside down. The dread of war that had haunted the morning hours gave way to jubilation and relief that afternoon. When the news was announced in the British House of Commons, there was a moment of stunned silence and then un outburst of joy. Everywhere the reaction was the same, and the few unhappy or chagrined voices were soon drowned out by cheers. When Winston Churchill denounced the Munich agreement as the “first foretaste of a bitter cup,” he was shouted down by indignant members of Parliament.³⁶

Among the few who took little joy from the news of this day was Hitler himself. He had seemed pale and agitated during the Munich conference, often standing with his arms crossed, staring darkly ahead. “This fellow Chamberlain has spoiled my entry into Prague,” Schacht heard him say. Although historians now have little doubt that Germany would only have been able to hold out for a few days against an invasion by the Western powers in the fall of 1938, Hitler still felt that he had been cheated of his grand timetable. The depth of the rancor and disappointment he felt over the Munich conference is reflected in the thoughts he expressed while holed up in his bunker in February 1945: “We should have gone to war in 1938,” he said. “That was our last chance to keep it localized. But they gave in everywhere. Like cowards they yielded to all our demands. So it was very difficult to initiate hostilities.”³⁷ The general public, unaware of Hitler’s deter­mination to go to war-and even of Britain’s successful efforts to get Mussolini to intervene-concluded that the Führer could master any situation. He seemed magically in league with chance, luck, with the very fates themselves.

Among the losers at Munich were Hitler’s domestic opponents. In a single day, as one of them noted, they had been reduced from powerful foes of the regime to a “bunch of malcontents” whose ideas had been disproved by events time after time and who had now become nothing more than a police problem.³⁸ But worse yet, the Munich accord was a devastating indictment of their political judgment and could not help but tarnish their reputations. The conspira­tors fell into a mood of bitter helplessness, and the ties among them-already weak in many cases-slackened further or were sev­ered completely. Feelings of mutual distrust began to arise, and many resistance leaders, such as the diplomat Ulrich von Hassell, began to doubt if it was still possible to save the situation “before it reached the abyss.” Munich had “decimated” the opposition, Halder aptly commented.³⁹

Perhaps even more important than the failure of the coup to get off the ground was the fact that the events of the last days of Septem­ber destroyed the very premise on which the German opposition had based its strategy, and it is one of the curious aspects of the move­ment that this truth remained largely unnoticed. Despite all the un­certainties, no other attempt to strike Hitler down in these years would come close to having as good a chance of success. Thereafter the conspirators never ceased complaining about the “betrayal” of the Western powers, their feebleness and blindness. These oft-repeated reproaches surfaced just a few days after the Munich conference in a letter Goerdeler wrote to an American friend describing the accord as “outright capitulation” and predicting that war was now inevitable.⁴⁰ Yet these statements actually illustrated the conspirators’ crucial stra­tegic mistake, an error that was brought into stark relief by the deba­cle of September 28, 1938: they had made their actions dependent on events they could neither accurately foresee nor control-first, Hitler’s actually ordering an invasion; second, the Western powers’ then declaring war.

The conspirators would not overcome this basic flaw until shortly before July 20, 1944. Whereas in the fall of 1938 they made their coup contingent on Hitler’s going to war and on a firm response from Britain and France, they later made their activities dependent on Hitler’s victories and defeats: victories, they felt, made him popular with the people and therefore unassailable, while defeats laid them, his internal enemies, open to accusations of aiding and abetting the downfall of their own country. Most of the conspirators never escaped this dilemma, and the infirmity of purpose that is often imputed to the German resistance stemmed to a large extent from this self-im­posed dependence on external circumstances. The alternative to this approach was embodied by Gisevius, the “eternal plotter,” as the other conspirators derisively called him. His radicalism, which so an­noyed Halder, stemmed largely from his firm focus on the criminal nature of the Nazi regime. This enabled him to liberate action from all considerations of tactics, ultimate aims, and outside influences. Similar approaches were taken by Oster, Henning von Tresckow, Friedrich Olbricht, Cäsar von Hofacker, and Carl Goerdeler, who had warned repeatedly against waiting for the “right psychological moment” and now considered emigrating to the United States.⁴¹

One evening soon after the debacle of September 28, Oster and Gisevius somberly burned the plans and notes for the coup-all that remained of their daring dream-in Witzleben’s fireplace. Many months would pass before the resistance began to recover from the blow it had suffered. Only a small, highly committed core of conspira­tors remained, and even they felt completely spent; their nerves were too frayed and their energy too depleted for them to organize another coup attempt, especially since to do so went against the grain of all they had been taught, their way of thinking and their traditions, which, though honorable, had been overtaken by the times. The in­dustrialist Nikolaus von Halem, who maintained ties with a variety of opposition groups, had already dismissed the officers’ ideas as “ro­mantic” in the summer of 1938 and observed that Hitler, the “mes­senger of chaos,” could only be removed from this world by a professional hit man, or at least some figure from the renegade old soldiers’ organizations. For a long time he considered attempting to persuade the former leader of the Oberland Freikorps, Beppo Romer, to undertake such an attempt.⁴²

But Halem’s approach was ultimately just another brand of romanticism. Much closer to reality was Franz Halder, who steadfastly held to his highly negative view of the regime, refusing to allow himself to be seduced by any of Hitler’s triumphs and finding in the mounting horrors new confirmation of his belief that Hitler was evil incarnate. His willingness to take action flared up once again, but weakly and only for a passing moment For the rest of the time, he doggedly performed his duty, served his country, kept himself isolated, nursed his hatreds, and, despite the darkness and horror on all sides, would not be persuaded to act. At noon on September 28, when news of the Munich conference broke, he lost his composure after so many days of feverish preparation. According to one observer, he “utterly col­lapsed” on his desk, “weeping and saying that all was lost.”⁴³

It had been a trying time for Hitler, too, who also thought that all was lost, his life’s work in ruins. But he set about searching relent­lessly for ways to recoup the situation. That was the crucial differ­ence.