Plotting Hitler's Death

4. FROM MUNICH TO ZOSSEN

While the opponents of the regime were in the throes of depression, wondering whether it was possible to take moral stands in such a fallen world or whether those who did so inevitably ended up looking like fools, Hitler forged resolutely ahead. Although still disappointed with the Munich agreement, he realized that an opportunity had arisen to resolve the smoldering conflict with the army once and for all.

Only two weeks after the Wehrmacht had marched into the Sudetenland through the cheering throngs in the second of its “flower wars,” Hitler presented the OKW with the outline of an executive order that was dressed up in the form of an “Appeal to Officers.” It denied military leaders the right to form political judgments, de­manding instead “obedience,” “rock-solid confidence,” and “faithful, aggressive determination.” The principle that the general staff should share in political decision making was eliminated, as was the traditional practice, extending back to the era of the kaisers, of registering dissenting views in writing. To the extent they could agree on anything, the generals had joined together from the very beginning in warning against virtually every political decision Hitler had made- and they had been proved wrong time and again. Now the Führer informed the commanders in chief, “I don’t want any more caution­ary memoranda.”¹

Under the pressure of this dispute, a split developed within the officer corps for the first time, or at least more visibly than before. On the whole, the officer corps had preserved a surprising degree of internal solidarity over the previous few years and possibly for this reason had managed to maintain a certain self-confidence despite all the setbacks. Hitler had long hoped to break this cohesion; he tested it with the sudden expansion of the Wehrmacht after 1935, which also enabled him to push a greater number of ideologically reliable of­ficers into leadership positions in the military. For much the same reason, the exact responsibilities of the army, navy, and air force were never clearly defined. In addition, Hitler purposely sowed conflict between the high command of the armed forces (OKW), which re­ported directly to him, and the high command of the army (Oberkommando des Heeres, or OKH), led by the obstinate old of­ficers’ caste. Despite all this, internal cohesion remained solid. The only exception had occurred early in the year when Admiral Erich Raeder, commander in chief of the navy, rejected an appeal to help with the rehabilitation of Fritsch: “That’s a mess that the boys in red pants got themselves into,” he said, “and they can get themselves out of it.”²

In the light of Hitler’s foreign policy successes, however, the ranks now began to waver. For the first time, senior officers endorsed his rebuke of the army high command. They lamented the lack of faith and loss of confidence the OKH showed in the Führer. The full extent of the split is evidenced in a letter written by OKW general Alfred Jodl in which he describes the OKH as the “enemy side.” The consequence was that no resistance was offered when Hitler took advantage of the situation to reshuffle personnel for a second time, dismissing a number of generals whose skeptical attitudes boded ill for the sort of unconditional obedience he now expected, including Wilhelm Adam, Hermann Geyer, and Wilhelm Ulex. Nevertheless, despite all the traps Hitler attempted to set within the officer corps and despite the tensions that did arise, the traditional esprit de corps remained quite strong. Those who opposed Hitler or even conspired against him over the ensuing years were generally safe from denunci­ation by their fellow officers. Among the rare exceptions to this rule were Erich von Manstein, who informed on Tresckow early in 1944; Wilhelm Keitel, who threatened to denounce any officer who criti­cized the Führer, “including on church or Jewish questions”; and Heinz Guderian, who only refrained from denouncing a fellow officer when he was similarly threatened in return.³

The success of Hitler’s initial attempt to repress army interference in political affairs soon became apparent. On the night of November 9-10, 1938, which has come to be known as Kristallnacht, “spontane­ous demonstrations,” as Joseph Goebbels phrased it in his directive, were organized all over Germany. Synagogues were burned, Jewish-owned stores demolished, and large numbers of Jews arrested; some were killed. It was plain to see that the government was as responsi­ble as the hordes of SA men were for the arson, plunder, and murder of that night. People were horrified and shamed but remained quiet. Their feelings, however, were soon given voice at a conference of army commanders, where a number of generals did not hesitate to express their outrage. General Fedor von Bock even asked his fellow officers excitedly whether someone couldn’t just “string up that swine Coebbels.”⁴

Walther von Brauchitsch, the army commander in chief, remained immovable. After all the disputes and unpleasantness of the previous weeks, he simply shrugged his shoulders at demands that he lodge a protest. Raeder, on the other hand, backed the formal protests of a number of senior naval officers, among them Admiral Conrad Patzig and Captains Günther Lütjens and Karl Dönitz, and sought an audi­ence with the Führer. The only response Raeder received, however, was that the SA district leaders had gotten out of control, a fabrication that satisfied him.⁵ Meanwhile, at a general meeting in the Reichsbank, Hjalmar Schacht sharply condemned the events. In addition, the senior SA commander and prefect of the Berlin police, Count Wolf-Heinrich Helldorf, who had been absent from the city that night, summoned high-ranking police officials to a meeting immedi­ately upon his return and bitterly reproached them for having obeyed the order to stand by and do nothing. If he had been in Berlin, he told them, he would have issued orders to fire on the SA mobs. In the gloomy silence of those November days, the sound of another voice rose for the first time, that of a young captain named Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, who criticized the officer corps as seeming dumbstruck, adding that not much more could be expected from people who had already had their backbones broken several times.⁶

Hitler rarely missed an opportunity to demonstrate to those he had defeated the full extent of their loss. On the morning of March 15, 1939, he finally fulfilled his dream of taking Prague, sending motor­ized units into the city through swirling spring snow. He kept the officer corps in the dark about his exact plans until the last possible minute, however, at times going so far as to mislead it with placating words. Even the devoted Keitel, chief of the OKW, later complained that he knew nothing of Hitler’s intentions and was left to guess.

The opposition to Hitler failed to realize the significance of the occupation of the western provinces of Czechoslovakia. Most thought of it as another Munich, confirmation of all they had learned about the weakness and perfidy of the Western powers. In reality, though, Prague was the turning point. Hitherto, Hitler had always justified ripping up treaties and breaking solemn promises by invoking the injustice of the Treaty of Versailles. He had defended German incur­sions by citing the right to self-determination of those territories un­der foreign occupation-a right that had been proclaimed by the Western powers themselves. Now, for the first time, he emerged clearly as an aggressor, going beyond anything he had done in the past. The occupation of Prague, therefore, provided an excellent op­portunity for a coup. The opposition groups remained scattered, how­ever, and instead of a revolt there was widespread rejoicing over the Führer’s latest stroke of genius. Diaries and memoirs of the period record that even some opposition figures felt patriotic pride as well as depression at Hitler’s latest success. Like Mussolini during the turbu­lent days of Munich, some even began to believe, though without his feeling of contempt, that the democracies were by their nature weak-willed and easily intimidated.

Scarcely had Hitler annexed western Czechoslovakia when he let it be known that he now intended to settle scores with Poland. This time-as if he had somehow sensed the previous fall’s conspiracy to overthrow him if he went to war-he seemed very much at pains not to provide the generals with opportunities for collusion. He concealed his decision to go to war, which had long been firm, and assured those around him that he would resort to force only if all attempts failed to reach an amicable settlement. “We have to be good now,” he told a visitor.⁸

And so the conspirators remained passive, clinging to the idea that a coup would only be justifiable if Hitler expressed a clear determina­tion to go to war and issued the corresponding orders. Under pres­sure from Oster, Goerdeler, Gisevius, Hassell, and others, Beck now attempted to involve Halder, his successor as chief of the army gen­eral staff, in new plans. At a meeting in Beck’s home in Lichterfelde, the two conspirators readily agreed on the basic nature of the regime, Hitler’s thinly veiled determination to provoke war, and the need to overthrow him. They disagreed sharply, however, on when to strike. Halder remained convinced, as he had been before Munich, that they could not act unless the Führer was clearly headed for war. As to Hitler’s present designs on the port city of Danzig, it was a German city, as even the British allowed, and it was still quite possible that the negotiations with the Poles would be concluded peacefully.

By now Beck had come to see things quite differently. He was no longer willing to stand by while Hitler scored piecemeal successes, for he saw that they hastened the inevitable catastrophe. War would come at some point, making a coup even more difficult to carry out. Once hostilities began, “other irrational, ‘patriotic’ laws” would be implemented. Time was therefore short. Halder and Beck were en­gaged in the same dispute that had divided Halder and Gisevius a year earlier, but this time it was inflamed by the tensions and strained personal relationship between the current chief of general staff and his proud but isolated predecessor, their mutual professional admira­tion notwithstanding. When the two parted, both felt deeply irritated, with Halder having detected accusations of indecisiveness in virtually everything Beck had said.

Although the core conspirators gradually came back together, they soon got bogged down in their passionate debates on a welter of issues that were better resolved by decisiveness than by argument. Meanwhile Erwin von Witzleben, the former commander of the Ber­lin military district, took matters into his own hands. A practical man with little patience for tortuous discussion, he had been posted to Frankfurt am Main, as commander in chief of an army group there. Far from the center of things, he felt condemned to inactivity, a trying condition for someone of his energetic nature. Although he, too, realized that a coup had little chance of success at the present time, he had no doubt that a man as manic and restive as Hitler would soon provide fresh opportunity and the conspirators had to be ready.

Together with Georg von Sodenstern, his chief of general staff, Witzleben developed a long-term plan to identify like-minded officers and systematically build up as solid a network as possible of com­manders who were prepared to support a military coup when the time was ripe. All previous plans had indeed relied far too heavily on two conditions: the elimination of Hitler in a quick strike and the smooth operation of the regular chain of command. Witzleben be­lieved that it was no longer possible to assume that orders for a coup would be followed automatically without objection or complaint, a conclusion based on the fact that Hitler had succeeded so thoroughly in widening the rift within the armed forces. It has been suggested that Witzleben’s idea of forming a secret officers’ cadre was an alien concept incompatible with German military tradition, but it was no more revolutionary than Hitler’s own policies and constituted an ap­posite response to them. There is considerable truth to the argument that the coup of July 20, 1944, failed at least in part because the conspirators depended too greatly on the chain of command and, for whatever reason, were blind to the conclusions that Witzleben now drew.

At this time, many of the resistance connections that had been severed in the wake of the Munich agreement were reestablished, though only hesitantly and as the opportunity arose. Schulenburg paid a visit to Witzleben in Frankfurt, as did Gisevius. Most impor­tant, Oster arranged for Carl Goerdeler to meet Witzleben. Goerdeler immediately began pressuring Witzleben to carry through his plan and promised lo establish contacts with Christian and social­ist trade unionists, thereby broadening support for the conspiracy beyond what had existed at the time of the September plot, especially in the political realm. Thus, through Witzleben’s efforts, new links between military and civilian opposition groups were forged and old ties were restored.

Witzleben’s initiative never amounted to much, however, because he did not plan to have his network of conspirators completed until the following year. The next day, when Gisevius returned to Berlin to see if Beck, Canaris, and Oster were interested in a meeting with Witzleben, all military commanders, including Witzleben, were sum­moned to a meeting to be held the following day, August 22, 1939, at Obersalzberg. In an unusually harsh address lasting several hours, Hitler informed them that he had decided to strike immediately be­cause all considerations argued in favor of rapid action. As if attempt­ing to screw up his courage, he hinted to the hushed audience of generals sitting “icily” before him that a pact would soon be signed with Stalin-a pact that Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop was in fact negotiating in Moscow at that very moment. “Poland is now right where I wanted to have it,” he said, predicting that Britain and France would once again shrink from war. “Our opponents,” he told the generals, “are little worms. I saw them in Munich.” His only concern was that “at the last minute, some bastard will produce a mediation plan.”⁹ Hitler even named the prospective time of attack: the morning of Saturday, August 26.

But once again, his schedule was disrupted. Britain reacted to the German war preparations with stoical equanimity and, after months of negotiations, transformed its provisional support for Poland into a formal pact. Amid the blizzard of entreaties, bulletins, and miscommunications, Halder told the British ambassador, Nevile Henderson, “You have to strike the man’s hand with an ax.” Great Britain now moved to dispel any lingering doubts about its determination to fight. On the afternoon of August 25 a message arrived from Mussolini reminding Hitler that their agreements stated that a war would not be launched until later and informing him that Italy was regrettably not prepared to open hostilities at this time. Again Hitler hesitated; after brooding nervously for a short spell, he came to a decision that left everyone agape: the order to attack was rescinded. “Führer rather shaken,” Halder noted in his diary.¹⁰

As the order to attack was being canceled, Schacht, Gisevius, and General Georg Thomas were on their way to the Military Intelligence building on Tirpitzufer to pick up Canaris, with whom they intended to drive to general staff headquarters in Zossen, east of Berlin. There, in a final, desperate act, they planned to force Brauchitsch and Halder to choose between arresting the three of them or arresting Hitler and the government. Determined to stop at nothing, they had agreed to exert extraordinary pressure on the commanders: if Brauchitsch and Halder chose to arrest them, they would deem themselves re­leased at that moment from their pledge of loyalty to their fellow officers and would reveal the army chiefs’ involvement in the resistance.

When the three arrived at Tirpitzufer, they encountered Oster. “Shaking his head” and “laughing heartily,” he told them that the order to attack had been rescinded. Gisevius, the eternal man of action, argued yet again that this provided a unique opportunity to eliminate Hitler. The others, however, could scarcely believe that he wanted to carry on. The normally implacable Oster maintained that a “war lord who can rescind within a few hours as far-reaching an order as that for war or peace is done for.” In any case, Oster felt, the generals would no longer back Hitler. Only days earlier he had instructed the members of Friedrich Heinz’s special task force to prepare themselves once again for the storming of the Chancellery. Now any such action would be superfluous, he thought, in view of the dramatically changed circumstances. Canaris, too, was in an exuber­ant mood and declared that peace was assured “for twenty years.” Everything would unfold as desired if just allowed to develop, and there was no need in the meantime to raise the generals’ hackles by making rash demands.¹¹

Despite all that can be and has been said about Oster’s surprise about-face, there is no minimizing the enormous sense of relief that must have been felt by all after so many months of continuous pres­sure. Not only Oster but Canaris, Hassell, and many others were so jubilant that peace had been preserved that their judgment was dulled. Even in the Chancellery it was “clear to everyone,” as an officer on duty there noted, “that Hitler had suffered a major diplo­matic defeat.”¹²

But anyone who understood the Führer’s obsession with prestige over the years should have realized that he would quickly go to what­ever lengths necessary to repair the damage. “Führer still hopes to sock it to Poland,” wrote Colonel Eduard Wagner, a general staff departmental head, in his diary.¹³ The belief that war had been avoided was totally misguided, and Gisevius was clearly right. Indeed, the ensuing days brought the very situation the conspirators had al­ways dreamed of. In their exhaustive debates, they had always come to the depressing conclusion that Hitler’s victories were psychologi­cally as disarming as his defeats. What they had therefore always hoped for (in various scenarios) but what never seemed to occur was a serious setback that could be blamed on Hitler alone and that ex­posed to all the world his unwavering determination to go to war.

During their debates, they also concluded that the time that elapsed between Hitler’s order for an invasion and the actual onset of hostilities was of decisive importance. They worried that the interval might not be long enough for them to decide on a coup and carry it out. In the days before the Munich agreement, Halder had already sought to allay such fears, assuring his fellow conspirators that Hitler could never deceive him on this score: the order would have to be given at least three days before an attack. Now the conspirators had the luxury of an even longer time span. But nothing had been pre­pared, and nothing was done. Of course, the abortive September plot of the previous year had had a devastating effect on the conspirators’ resolve. The written plans for a coup had gone up Witzleben’s chim­ney in smoke, and another draft was at best in the early planning stages. Nevertheless the impression remains that for most of the con­spirators waiting had itself become a kind of strategy. Commingled with their immense relief that the peace had been saved was a sense of deliverance from actually having to do anything.

After such misguided elation, the descent to reality was all the more devastating when, on August 31, Hitler reissued the invasion order for the following morning. That afternoon Gisevius ran into Canaris on a back staircase at army headquarters on Bendlerstrasse. “So what do you think now?” asked the admiral. When Gisevius failed to find the appropriate words, Canaris added in a flat voice: “This means the end of Germany.”¹⁴

The outbreak of hostilities in the early hours of September 1, 1939, was an enormous setback for the military and civilian opposition, whose desperate efforts had all been directed at preventing war. Britain and France declared war on Germany two days later, confirming the predictions of the countless analyses, memoranda, and warnings that had been drafted by the regime’s opponents. But all their activity had been in vain. Hitler had scarcely noticed the reports, and to the extent that the documents were intended for the opposition, little had been achieved, because the coup they were supposed to justify never got off the ground. Nothing so damaged the credibility and reputation of the regime’s opponents in the eyes of their foreign contacts as their failure to take action on September 1.

All will to resist seemed to disappear for an extended period after the war began, in part because of the deep, irrational feelings of loyalty that the outbreak of war always arouses, regardless of right and wrong or whether the conflict is willfully unleashed in contravention of existing treaties. Considerations such as these may leave some lin­gering doubts, but once war breaks out, all efforts and activities focus on responding to the challenge and bringing the conflict to a success­ful conclusion. Customs and traditions play a role, of course, as do the powerful emotions surrounding such notions as patriotism, loyalty, duty, obedience, and their counterpart, treason. Although the world that generated such sentiments had become distant under the Nazis, people still felt them strongly even in the face of reason. Typical was the behavior of General Georg von Sodenstern, who ten days before the outbreak of war had conferred with Witzleben over far-reaching plans to topple Hitler. But in September, when war had been declared, he turned “to the military duties incumbent upon him and away from any thought of a violent uprising.”¹⁵ Because such re­sponses were by no means unusual, the resistance lost much of its strength after war broke out.

The professional pride that many officers took in their work also tended to dampen their hostility toward the government. Even so steadfast an opponent of the Nazis as Lieutenant Colonel Helmuth Groscurth, writing in his diary at the beginning of the Polish cam­paign, expressed virtually daily his pride at the way countless individ­ual orders fit together perfectly to produce a grand, victorious campaign. Oster, Henning von Tresckow, Rudolph-Christoph von Gersdorff, and others were caught up in the same dilemma. Many memoirs from the time illustrate how much easier it was to solve this conundrum in one’s thoughts than in real life. For some, there was no way out of it.

Amid all the jubilant announcements of further German victory appeared a name from the past that had virtually been forgotten: General Werner von Fritsch, the former commander of the army, who had quietly been rehabilitated but never reinstated. In a final, quixotic appearance, he was killed during the last days of the Polish campaign while observing the attack on Warsaw from the suburb of Praga.

After little more than three weeks Poland had been taken. The opponents of the regime, whose disappointment with the Western powers had always been colored with contempt, felt confirmed in that feeling when Britain and France failed to intervene, giving Hitler a lightning victory. France, which was bound by treaty to launch be­tween thirty-five and thirty-eight divisions against Germany within sixteen days of the outbreak of hostilities, delayed mobilizing its forces. Throughout the half-hearted drôle de guerre, the French sought to cling as long as they could to the glorious illusions of the age and to the mirage of a peace that had long since been lost.

On the day the war began, Brauchitsch released a declaration stating that the hostilities were not directed against the Polish people and that the conquered territories would be administered in accordance with international law. But only one week later, Hitler issued guide­lines for governance indicating that he had no intention of leaving the administration of the Polish territories to the army. In keeping with his principle of divided authority, he created a civilian administration in addition to the military one and, as if to complete the confusion, sent in so-called Einsatzgruppen (or “task forces,” the SS’s notorious execution squads) behind the front-line troops. These Einsatzgruppen were technically subject to the military justice system but actually look their orders from Reich Security Headquarters and therefore from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. They soon instituted a reign of terror. Even before the Polish campaign was concluded at the end of September, the first complaints had been lodged about summary executions of Poles and Jews, arbitrary harassment, and indiscriminate arrests.” And as early as September 9, Quartermaster (General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel went to see Halder at Canaris’s request to inform him of Reinhard Heydrich’s comment that every­thing was going “too slowly.” Heydrich had declared, “These people have to be shot or hanged immediately without any sort of trial… aristocrats, clergy, and Jews.”¹⁶

Three days later, on a visit to the Führer’s train, Canaris himself informed General Keitel that he had learned that “widespread shoot­ings were planned” in Poland and that “the aristocracy and clergy in particular” were to be “wiped out.” Canaris pointed out that “in the end, the world will hold the Wehrmacht responsible as well.” Typi­cally, Keitel failed to address the substance of what Canaris said, confining himself solely to questions of jurisdiction and noting that “these things had already been decided by the Führer, who made it clear to the army high command [Brauchitsch] that if the Wehrmacht did not want to become involved in all this it would have to accept the presence of the SS and Gestapo,” which would, together with civilian authorities, undertake “the ‘ethnic exterminations.’”¹⁷

And so the situation remained. Brauchitsch was very consistent in complaining only when the SS or civilian authorities overstepped their authority, although he involved himself in many petty quarrels on this account. He never raised the far more telling question of the extent to which the brutal systematic slaughter besmirched the honor and reputation not only of the Wehrmacht but of Germany itself. Even though he had given his word to the Polish people in his decla­ration of September 1, he remained impassive. And while he did work tirelessly to keep the Wehrmacht from involvement in any atrocities, by so doing he only cleared the way for acts of breathtaking barbarity by the other branches. Attempts were soon made within the Wehr­macht to enforce discipline and proper conduct more rigidly and to punish transgressions severely, but these efforts were inevitably frus­trated and could not later shield the organization from accusations of thinly veiled complicity in the slaughter.

For a time, Brauchitsch attempted to keep commanders in the conquered and occupied territories from realizing that the so-called land cleansing operations in the east stemmed from decisions made by Hitler himself to which Brauchitsch had acquiesced without com­plaint. As a result, it was widely believed that the atrocities were due to “excesses by lower-level authorities.” General Walter Petzel and, even more emphatically, General Georg von Küchler demanded an end to the indiscriminate massacres, as did others. Küchler described one SS unit as a “disgrace to the army.” When the senior band leader of SS-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler ordered fifty Jews shot, General Jo­achim Lemelsen had him arrested and turned over to the army group for sentencing. General Wilhelm Ulex, who had been rehabilitated and returned to command, also demanded an end to the so-called ethnic policy, which he called a “blot on the honor of the entire German people.”¹⁸

There; was no doubt in Brauchitsch’s mind that any intervention along the lines demanded by these generals would lead to a fierce confrontation since the policies involved were in fulfillment of some of Hitler’s most basic aims in the East.¹⁹ The commander in chief was simply not prepared for such a showdown. In vain did General Wil­helm von Leeb remind the army leadership that the “army, if reso­lutely led, is still the most powerful factor around.”²⁰

Far from heeding this call to action, Brauchitsch sought salvation instead in evasion and did all he could to shed responsibility for the administration of the occupied territories. On October 5, in response to a complaint from Albert Forster, a gauleiter, or district leader, that the Wehrmacht was demonstrating a “lack of understanding” of the regime’s ethnic policies, Hitler fulfilled Brauchtisch’s request by re­moving Danzig and West Prussia from the jurisdiction of the military. Twelve days later, army responsibility for all other areas was with­drawn. At a meeting in the new Chancellery with Himmler, Keitel, Martin Bormann, Rudolf Hess, and Hans Frank, who had been designated the future governor general of occupied Poland, Hitler re­marked that the Wehrmacht should be happy to be rid of these tasks. Keitel made notes in pencil on the Führer’s further comments: Po­land was not to be turned into some kind of “model province”; the emergence of a new “class of leaders” must be prevented; his policy required “a tough ethnic struggle, which could tolerate no constraints”; and “any tendency toward a normalization of conditions must be stopped.” Hitler concluded with his infamous remark about the “devil’s work” to be done in the East.²¹

The abrupt end of the army’s responsibility for administration resulted in a surge of arbitrary actions on the part of party, civilian, and police authorities, kangaroo courts, district commissars, auxiliary po­lice, and others, who could now claim to be carrying out special as­signments not subject to external oversight. The change in administrative responsibilities also heightened the conflict with the army units remaining in these areas. General Karl von Rundstedt left his post as commander in chief of the eastern districts in horror after a short period; his successor, General Johannes Blaskowitz, sent Hitler a memorandum in early November describing the abuses, crimes, and atrocities, expressing his “utmost concern,” and pointing out the danger that these actions posed to the morale and discipline of the troops. Hitler rejected the “childishness” of the army com­mand, saying, “You can’t wage war with Salvation Army methods.”²²

Still the matter would not die. A little later Blaskowitz wrote to Brauchitsch of the “bloodthirstiness” of the Einsatzkommandos, claiming that it posed an “intolerable burden” for the troops and reiterating his demand that a “new order” be instituted soon. More important, officers who opposed the Nazi regime, Lieutenant Colonel Groscurth in particular, then distributed Blaskowitz’s memorandum to the commanders in chief of the western districts and their staffs, among whom it aroused “stupefaction” and “great agitation.” General Bock and others demanded to know whether “the hair-raising de­scriptions” were accurate and whether those responsible had been called to account. Some even demanded that a state of emergency be declared in the occupied territories.²³

Although Brauchitsch shared the generals’ horror at what was happening, he once again stonewalled all requests to take; action. Finding himself increasingly besieged, he continued his hopeless attempts to allay the widespread outrage by downplaying events and refusing to discuss them. When this failed, he delegated responsibility for resolv­ing discord to the lower ranks, where, as it happened, the opponents of the Nazi activities were winning converts to their cause. When, in January 1940, Blaskowitz arrived in Zossen with another, still more sharply worded memorandum stating that “The attitude of the army to the SS and the police alternates between abhorrence and hatred” and that “Every soldier feels sickened and repelled by the crimes committed in Poland by agents of the Reich and government representatives,” Brauchitsch flatly refused to forward it to Keitel or Hitler. General Ulex had no more success when he complained that SS and SD (Sicherheitsdienst, or Security Service) units demonstrated “an utterly incomprehensible lack of human and moral sensibilities” and had sunk “to the level of beasts.”²⁴

Brauchitsch apparently never even passed along the concern, expressed by nearly all the critics, about the threat to discipline and the danger posed to supply lines by the prevailing state of pandemonium. He certainly never contemplated organizing a common protest or rallying the army commanders to resign en masse, though it seems likely they would all have agreed to this step, given that even an admirer of the regime like General Reichenau had on occasion expressed his revulsion at what was happening. By May, Hans Frank had been appointed governor general of the conquered territories, and he succeeded in having Blaskowitz replaced. Shortly beforehand Himmler had also succeeded, despite bitter opposition from both the OKW and the OKH, in obtaining permission to further expand the armed SS units and to form new ones. Despite its efforts, the Wehrmacht was never able to discover the troop strength of these units. It no longer played much of a role in the political calculations of the Nazi leadership.

It is not difficult in retrospect to identify when this decline began: during the Röhm affair years earlier. In a little-noticed directive from that period, the Ministry of Defense had ordered that people persecuted for political reasons should not be protected. It is arguable that this restriction so compromised the morale and self-confidence of the officer corps that decline was inevitable. In mid-January 1940 Halder noted in his diary a terse comment Canaris had made while visiting him. “Officers too faint-hearted,” Canaris had said, aptly summarizing the old-and now terrifyingly obvious-dilemma. “No humanitarian intervention on behalf of the unjustly persecuted.”²⁵

The events in Poland belong to the history of the resistance because they illustrate the importance of basic moral standards and reveal the manner in which such standards were subordinated to the traditional virtues of the soldier. By this time, if not before, any ability to claim ignorance of the essential nature of the Nazi regime had evaporated for good. In fact, the activities in Poland of the state-sanctioned “mur­der squads,” as Henning von Tresckow called them, were a turning point for many, even if these people did not necessarily proceed to active resistance. There were of course many others, indeed a major­ity, especially among younger officers, who succumbed to “Hitler’s magic” in the wake of the overwhelming German victory and who viewed the failure of the Western powers to intervene, despite their declaration of war, as further evidence of the genius of the Führer.²⁶ Nevertheless, the hemorrhaging that the resistance had suffered be­tween Munich and the outbreak of war was stanched, and the move­ment slowly began to recover. More important, opposition to the Nazis within the army was no longer based solely on Hitler’s fool­hardy foreign policy and the military risks he ran but also on funda­mental moral questions.

The precise role played by each of these various issues is difficult to determine, but they all came to the fore again in the protracted dispute between Hitler and the Wehrmacht after the Polish cam­paign, leading to a quick revival of the previous autumn’s plans to overthrow the regime. On September 12, when victory over Poland, though imminent, was still not complete, Hitler in his haste informed his chief Wehrmacht adjutant, Colonel Rudolf Schmundt, that he had decided lo launch an offensive in the West as soon as possible and certainly by late autumn. Eight days later the Führer took Keitel into his confidence. On September 27, the very day that Warsaw capitulated, he finally summoned the commanders in chief of the three branches of the armed forces, informed them of his decision, and ordered them to begin working on plans for a western offensive. Once again he based his decision on the argument that because time was working against Germany, both politically and militarily, the offensive could not begin soon enough.

The army high command, in particular, was convinced that any attempt to “draw the French and English onto the battlefield and defeat them” within a few weeks, as Hitler had said, would be as hasty as it was hopeless. The entire corps of generals was incensed, and they deluged Brauchitsch with protests. On the basis of Hitler’s intimations that a settlement would be reached with the Western powers at the conclusion of the Polish campaign, the OKH had already begun to plan for redeployment in mid-September. It hoped that by simply mounting a solid defense against this enemy who had demonstrated so little stomach for war, it could gradually put the conflict “to sleep,” thereby clearing the way for a diplomatic agreement. Hitler reacted “bitterly” to these plans over the following weeks, partly because the commanders did not seem to share his elation over the victory in Poland but most importantly because their complaints during the campaign sug­gested that they still felt they had some right of consultation in po­litical decisions, while he believed that this issue had been settled once and for all.²⁷

Stung by Hitler’s response to them, the commanders retreated once again to purely military arguments. They pointed out that the troops were too tired to turn around and fight in the West, that stores of munitions and raw materials were depleted, that winter campaigns were always perilous, that the enemy was strong. But Hitler overrode all objections, regardless of source or context. When one general de­scribed the rigors of a late-autumn campaign, Hitler replied that the weather was the same for both sides. Even Brauchitsch objected openly to Hitler’s plans and asked Generals Reichenau and Rundstedt to speak to him. When this, too, failed, these political and military concerns, now sharpened by moral considerations, led to a revival of plots to stage a coup.

By the end of September Canaris had already visited the various western headquarters to explore the officers’ attitudes about the planned offensive and, in some cases, to gauge support for the over­throw of the regime. At the same time, Brauchitsch and Halder held an “in-depth conversation” about the choices they faced: either to stage the offensive that Hitler wanted or else to do everything possi­ble to delay operations. A third eventuality was also raised in this conversation and duly noted in the official diary, namely to work for “fundamental change,” by which they meant nothing less than a coup.²⁸

As might be expected, Brauchitsch shrank from such a radical solution and preferred instead to create delays attributable to technical problems. Hitler, however, was in no mood for such ploys. He informed his commander in chief two days later that no hope remained of reaching a settlement with the Western powers and that he had made an “immutable decision” to wage war. The new campaign would be launched sometime between November 15 and 20. Five days later, on October 21, in a speech to the gauleiters, Hitler sug­gested an even earlier date, assuring them that the “major offensive in the West” would begin “in about two weeks.”²⁹

Brauchitsch was in despair. Canaris, who visited him late in the evening, was “deeply shaken” by both the nervous exhaustion of the commander in chief and by his report, in which the words “frenzy of bloodletting” appeared for the second time in recent days, now ap­plied to Hitler and his furious desire to attack.³⁰ In the continued hope of forcing a postponement, Brauchitsch decided to work out only a sketchy campaign plan. But Hitler allowed him no leeway and only a few days later demanded the necessary amplifications, setting November 12 as the new date for the invasion. He ordered Generals Kluge, Bock, and Reichenau to Berlin to help speed up planning in the high command. All objections raised by the commanders, of whom Reichenau was characteristically the most outspoken, were dis­missed by Hitler as unfounded. Once again he urged Brauchitsch and Halder to hurry and concluded by producing some new operational plans of his own.

The increasing pressure exerted by the Führer, coupled with his evident disdain for the military, prompted a group of younger general Staff officers to renew their old connections with opponents of the regime in the Foreign Office and, most important, in Military Intelli­gence, where Hans Oster had continued to work away with the en­couragement of Canaris, who was now impatient to proceed. Oster had recruited Hans von Dohnanyi into Military Intelligence, and Dohnanyi in turn had brought in a number of close friends who opposed the Nazis, including his boyhood companion Justus Delbrück, baron of Guttenberg, and the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dohnanyi’s brother-in-law, who provided a bridge to Christian oppo­sition circles. At the same time, Helmuth Groscurth resumed close contacts with Beck, who rekindled the connection to Goerdeler. Gradually, through many more intermediaries as well, various old and new contacts were established.

The resumption of ties to an active opposition group seemed to save Goerdeler from a psychological crisis. In his isolation he had fallen in with a group of staid old national-conservatives who did nothing but meet, talk, draft reports, hope, and wait. He had become increasingly distraught and had lost himself in far-fetched revolution­ary schemes. Over Beck’s vehement opposition, he worked on the idea of asking Hitler to send him on a mission to Britain and France to discuss peace conditions that, he calculated, “Hitler would not swallow and that would then lead to his downfall.”³¹ Goerdeler origi­nally envisaged a “transitional cabinet led by Göring” for the first weeks following Hitler’s fall. Other opponents of the Nazis advanced similarly misguided schemes, such as working with “open-minded cir­cles” within the SS and tossing Ribbentrop “like a bone” to the en­emy.³² They argued for hours over the restoration of the monarchy and who would be the best pretender to the throne. These ludicrous fantasies stemmed, for the most part, from an enervating lack of real activity. If it is true that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and with respect to Hitler’s regime that is irrefutable, then absolute impotence has a similar effect, at least insofar as any sense of reality is con­cerned.

To the great disappointment of all the plotters, Halder continued to insist in the last days of October that the time was not ripe. Even the far more decisive General Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel now ac­cused Oster and Canaris of rushing things. Neither Halder nor Stülpnagel apparently knew anything about the resistance cell within the high command called Action Group Zossen, which had been formed in midmonth primarily by younger staff officers in Colonel Wagner’s circle. This ignorance throws a telling light on the isolation of the opposition groups and the lack of coordination among them. More radical and concrete in its approach than other conspiratorial circles, Action Group Zossen had formulated plans for eradicating Hitler, eliminating the SS and Gestapo, cordoning off the main cen­ters of power, and even forming a provisional government.

Appeals for action now rained down from all sides. In order to prompt the indecisive Halder and, even more important, Brauchitsch to make their move, the conspirators in Military Intelligence wrote a paper, with the help of Secretary of State Ernst von Weizsäcker in the Foreign Office, Erich Kordt, and Hasso von Etzdorf, in which they once again marshaled the arguments against the planned western offensive. In their view, Hitler’s plans would bring about “the end of Germany,” a belief confirmed by his announcement that he intended to invade through Belgium and Holland, thereby in all likelihood drawing the United States and numerous other neutral countries into the fray. Experience, they continued, showed that protests and threats to resign would not change Hitler’s mind and would only confirm his conviction that all “ships must be destroyed and bridges burned.”³³

Finally, after long hesitation, worn out by his exertions and by Hitler’s scornful impatience, Halder decided on the last day of Octo­ber 1939 that action could no longer be delayed. The mounting con­cern among the generals, as well as the pressure from Etzdorf, the Foreign Office, and Action Group Zossen, may have helped convince him there was once again hope that a coup would succeed. In any case, he summoned Groscurth on the evening of October 31 and informed the surprised Military Intelligence officer that he, too, had finally concluded that violence was the only solution. Halder men­tioned his earlier plan of eliminating at least some of the leading Nazis in a staged accident. He outlined a few details concerning the operation itself and the new regime to take power afterwards and then added, with tears welling up in his eyes, that “for weeks on end he had been going to see Emil [Hitler] with a pistol in his pocket in order to gun him down,” as Groscurth recorded in his coded diary.³⁴

As often happened when a decision was finally made, support arrived from unexpected quarters. Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, the commander of Army Group C, sent Brauchitsch a letter that ended with the comment that he was prepared “personally to stand fully behind you and to support whatever conclusions you reach or actions you deem necessary.” Oster and Erich Kordt had spent the evening of October 31 visiting Ludwig Beck on Goethestrasse in Lichterfelde. After much debate over the attitude of the generals, they arrived at the same desperate conclusion on which all their discussions had foundered for months: the most important condition for a successful coup was to kill Hitler. The next morning, when Kordt arrived al Military Intelligence, Oster half-resignedly summarized their discus­sion with the comment that no one could be found “who will throw the bomb and liberate our generals from their scruples.” Kordt told Oster simply and calmly that he had come to request permission to do just that. All he lacked was the explosives. After a few more questions, Oster promised to have the necessary materials ready on No­vember 11.³⁵

Everything was now rushing toward a final resolution. The very next day, when Brauchitsch and Halder visited the commanders in the West to canvass their views once again on the impending offen­sive, Stülpnagel invited Groscurth to come along and assigned him the task of “starting the preparations.” He offered encouragement and concrete information, especially about the position of reliable units and the commanders who could be counted on, and asked that Beck and Goerdeler be informed. Beck himself was discussing with Wilhelm Leuschner, a former trade union leader, the possibility of a general strike. A day later Oster was summoned to Zossen and asked to get out the previous year’s plans and update them if necessary. In his diary Gisevius captured the feeling of hectic excitement that filled him and the other conspirators, who had known nothing until then: “It’s going ahead… . Great activity. One discussion after another. Suddenly it’s just as it was right before Munich, 1938. I rush back and forth between OKW, police headquarters, the Interior Ministry, Beck, Goerdeler, Schacht, Helldorf, Nebe, and many others.”³⁶ Meanwhile, in Zossen, arrangements were made “to secure head­quarters.”

Once again everything was ready. Much as the coup a year earlier was to be sparked by the order to attack Czechoslovakia, this time everything would be set in motion by Hitler’s command to attack in the West. Since Hitler had set November 12 as the date of the offen­sive, the orders would have to be issued by November 5 at the latest. On that date Brauchitsch had an appointment to see Hitler in the Chancellery; he intended to make one final attempt to dissuade the Führer from this “mad attack” by underscoring the unanimous oppo­sition of the generals. Halder’s plans were based on the expectation that when the commander in chief returned from his meeting at the Chancellery, rebuffed and quite possibly humiliated as well, he would not hesitate, as he had in 1938, to issue the marching orders, which only he could sign.

At noon on the appointed day, while Halder waited in the ante­chamber, Brauchitsch began his presentation to Hitler in the con­ference room of the Chancellery. Although the commander in chief formulated his concerns more pointedly than originally planned, Hitler listened quietly at first. However, when Brauchitsch began arguing that an offensive was impossible at that time, not only for technical reasons but also because of the failings and lack of disci­pline that the troops had demonstrated in Poland-particularly while on the attack-Hitler flew into a rage. He hurled accusations at Brauchitsch, demanded to see proof of his allegations, wanted to know what had been done about them and whether death sentences had been imposed on soldiers guilty of cowardice. Hitler loudly sum­moned Keitel into the room, and as Brauchitsch fumbled for words and became entangled in contradictions, he raged against “the spirit of Zossen,” which he knew all about and would soon destroy. Then he abruptly left the room, “slamming the door” and leaving the com­mander in chief standing there.³⁷

Brauchitsch, who had turned “chalky-white… his face twisted,” according to one observer, found his way back to Halder.³⁸ Together they set out for Zossen, Brauchitsch exhausted and in a state of col­lapse, Halder apparently composed. When Brauchitsch casually men­tioned Hitler’s threat about the “spirit of Zossen,” however-he had not really made much of it-Halder’s ears pricked up and he, too, was seized by panic. Just a few days earlier, he had been warned by the chief signal officer, General Erich Fellgiebel, that Hitler suspected something, or at any rate was making increasingly suspicious-sounding comments about the army high command. This, coupled with Brauchitsch’s revelation, made Halder fear that the plans for a coup had been betrayed or been uncovered by Hitler in some way. As soon as he was back at headquarters, therefore, Halder ordered all coup-related documents destroyed immediately. Not long afterwards, the order to launch an offensive in the West arrived.

By late afternoon Brauchitsch had regained his composure. Hitler, he said, had simply caught him completely by surprise. Although the order to launch an offensive had once again created precisely the situation that was supposed to spark the coup, Brauchitsch now declared that the attack in the West could no longer be stopped. He added, “I myself won’t do anything, but I won’t stop anyone else from acting.”

Halder, alternating between resignation and apprehension, expressed similar sentiments. He told Groscurth that now that their undertaking had been abandoned, “the forces that were counting on us are no longer bound to us.” Halder felt that there was no one who could succeed Hitler and that the younger officers were not yet ready for a putsch. Groscurth insisted that they act, arguing that the factors cited by Halder had been just as true before the scene in the Chancel­lery and reminding him that Beck, Goerdeler, and Schacht were still on board, not to mention the determined Canaris. Halder responded angrily, “If they’re so sure at Military Intelligence that they want an assassination, then let the admiral take care of it himself!”³⁹

Groscurth immediately carried this challenge back to Military Intelligence on Tirpitzufer, infuriating Canaris. At this point the opposition forces began falling apart at a pace so rapid it was almost visible. Canaris took Halder’s message, which was possibly exaggerated in the retelling, to mean that the OKH was foisting the assassination attempt off on him because it could no longer do it. One of the questions that remains unanswered to this day is why Oster, who witnessed Canaris’s outburst, failed to point out that an assassin was now available in the person of Erich Kordt, who had relatively easy access to the Chancel­lery and Hitler, was prepared to put his life on the line, and awaited only the necessary explosives, which a section head named Erwin von Lahousen had promised to procure. Most likely Oster was all too aware of Canaris’s long-standing antipathy toward political assassinations of any kind. But Oster’s silence also highlights how contradic­tory and uncoordinated the plans of even the innermost core of conspirators remained until the very last moment.

Soon Oster and Gisevius received further evidence that the resistance was unraveling. For encouragement, they went to see Witzleben, who had heretofore been steadfast in his determination, at his headquarters in Bad Kreuznach. But even he expressed strong doubts that Hitler could still be stopped from launching the offensive. Witzleben believed that the only remaining possibility would be for the three army group commanders in the West-Leeb, Rundstedt, and Bock-to refuse to transmit the order to attack when the time came. On the way back from Bad Kreuznach, Oster stopped in Frankfurt am Main to see Leeb and explore the potential for such a step. How­ever, when Oster not only mentioned the names of many of the con­spirators but also drew from his pocket two proclamations, both written by Beck, to be read during the military takeover, Leeb’s first general staff officer, Colonel Vincenz Müller, responded with outrage. Muller castigated Oster for his recklessness and eventually per­suaded him to “burn the two documents in my big ashtray.” Witzleben, too, was indignant when he heard about Oster’s indiscre­tion and announced that he would not see Oster anymore.⁴⁰

Shortly before their departure on the evening of November 8, Oster and Gisevius heard news that Hitler had narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich by unexpect­edly cutting short a speech that was scheduled to last several hours. Gisevius immediately conceived the idea of blaming the assassination attempt on Himmler and using it to justify a coup, in much the same way as the fictitious attempt on the Führer’s life discussed by several of the plotters in September, 1938. But the main consequence of the assassination attempt was the immediate tightening of security mea­sures, which heightened the already considerable difficulties that Lahousen was experiencing in procuring explosives for Erich Kordt. Nevertheless, Kordt was assured once more on November 10 that everything would be ready the next day. There was a catch, however. Under the new restrictions, Lahousen was only able to acquire an extremely complicated detonator that required special training to op­erate. Kordt declared that he was still prepared to proceed, but now Oster got cold feet and backed out. Thus was Hitler spared thanks to the first of many “providential” events that would henceforth occur regularly, preserving him for the “Herculean tasks” that he believed himself destined to carry out.

In the meantime, Hitler postponed the launching of the offensive from November 12 until the fifteenth, then the nineteenth, and fi­nally the twenty-second. The sense of relief produced by these post­ponements further weakened the conspiracy. Returning from a visit to the western border, Stülpnagel remarked to Halder, “You’re right. It won’t work. The commanders and troops would not obey your call.” Halder himself commented spontaneously to General Thomas that a coup d’ état would fly in the face of all tradition and that “it is quite intolerable that the Germans should come to be the slaves of the English.” The helplessness of the opposition at this point is re­vealed by Halder’s suggestion to Secretary of State Weizsäcker that a soothsayer be bribed to influence Hitler and by his offer to provide a million marks for this purpose. Meanwhile, the commanders in chief of the army groups held a meeting at which they agreed unanimously about the perils of a western offensive but rejected Leeb’s suggestion that they resign en masse. At that, Leeb resolved to banish all thoughts of resistance from his mind.⁴¹

In Berlin, Schacht continued for a time to search out new conspirators who had not yet become cynical and weary, but he, too, eventu­ally grew resigned. Beck continued to write “papers for his daughter,” as one observer scoffed. Gisevius was sent as vice-consul and military intelligence officer to the German consulate in Zurich, Goerdeler returned to his bizarre schemes, and Canaris finally succumbed to his revulsion for the world.⁴² He forbade Oster to engage in any further conspiratorial activities and demanded that he recall “Herr X,” Mu­nich lawyer Josef Müller, whom Oster had dispatched to Rome in an attempt to discover through the British ambassador to the Holy See how London would react to a coup and what peace conditions it might offer should Germany rid itself of Hitler. An embittered Groscurth wrote to his wife on November 16, “We carry on, but nothing ever happens… except fiascos.” The same day he met with his immediate superior, General Kurt von Tippelskirch, who had at­tended a briefing in Brauchitsch’s office concerning fresh atrocities in Poland. Tippelskirch commented with a sigh, “We’ll just have to get through the valley of the shadow of death.”⁴³

Hitler’s apparent sixth sense, which he often followed, now induced him to summon the officers once again and rally support for his plans. He knew enough about psychology to employ not only his own oratorical powers but also a measure of spectacle; on November 23, the extended leadership of all three services, the commanders and general staff officers, were invited to a glittering gathering in the Marble Hall of the Chancellery. For the first time since the victory over Poland, the army leadership came together, and the whirl of uniforms, gold braid, epaulets, and red trouser stripes seemed to cast an enchanting spell over the assemblage, so that much of their fear and concern had already evaporated when Göring and Goebbels made rousing appeals to the group. Then Hitler himself appeared, looking rather somber, and spoke at length with portentous solemnity about the thinking that underlay his convictions.

He opened with a historical and strategic overview, assuring the assembled throng that the Great War had never ended-the second act was only just beginning-and that he had not rebuilt the Wehrmacht in order not to use it. “The determination to strike has always lain within me,” he said. Anyone who opposed him would therefore be crushed, “regardless of who he is.” He said he had been deeply offended by what he saw as a lack of faith: “I cannot endure anyone’s telling me the troops are not all right.” After reviewing once again the necessity for the impending offensive, he declared himself “indis­pensable,” for he alone could make the difficult but crucial decisions. Hanging in the balance was not just a National-Socialist Germany but the entire question of “who will dominate Europe and therefore the world.” The speech bristled with threats directed at “doubters,” “de­serters,” and those who would foment “revolution.” The struggle, he warned, would be waged without quarter against anyone who failed to embrace the will to victory. He himself was prepared “to die, if neces­sary, but only as the last one”: “I will not survive the defeat of my people.” These remarks were enthusiastically received in the ranks of the navy and air force, who had often been praised by Hitler. Within the army, even many of the generals who had recently expressed strong opposition to an invasion conceded that they were “greatly impressed” by Hitler, despite his unmistakable criticism of the high command. Oster commented incisively that accusations of cowardice had once again made cowards of the brave.⁴⁴

For the second time in a year, a coup plot had sputtered and failed. The conspiracy of November 1939 was more tragedy than farce, yet there is indeed something farcical about a coup that was foiled simply by the angry outburst of a tyrant. It would be easy, in judging these events, to confine oneself to moral categories and point to the con­spirators’ indecision, spinelessness, and lack of resolve. Count Helldorf was certainly justified in calling Halder a “heroic philistine,” as was Groscurth in expressing his “loathing for the generals,” and Hassell in pointing bitterly to the contradiction between the “marvel­ous discussions” that the generals—or “Josephs” as he scornfully (if obscurely) dubbed them-conducted in lieu of action. For those seeking the cause of the army’s failure, such verdicts may reveal something about the strained relationships between Helldorf and Halder, Groscurth and Brauchitsch, or Hassell and the generals, but they illuminate virtually nothing about the real reasons for the re­peated failures of the coup.

Somewhat more enlightening is the remarkable lack of realistic imagination on the part of the conspirators. In the fall of 1939, as in September 1938, they made the initiation of the coup totally depen­dent on events they could neither accurately predict nor control. The officers on the general staff were professional strategists who had demonstrated their skill on numerous occasions, but all the evidence indicates that on this occasion their planning was inadequate and probably even stunningly inept. Much remains unknown, for most of the relevant documents were destroyed and their authors perished in the war or on the gallows. One fact, however, looms so large that it cannot be overlooked: the conspirators plotted all this time to “do away” with Hitler without even the most resolute core of the resis­tance ever deciding exactly how this would be done, who would do it, and even if it could be done.

In contrast to the September conspiracy, it is impossible to determine which units were to have delivered the blow in November. Groscurth and Stülpnagel developed orders for the operations, but Halder spoke quite vaguely after the war about two “panzer divisions that had been held back” for this purpose but whose names and positions no one seems to remember. The orders launching the coup could only be signed by the commander in chief of the army, yet, as everyone knew, Brauchitsch was not prepared to do this. Among the more farcical aspects of the conspiracy was Stülpnagel’s idea of pre­senting the orders to Brauchitsch in a sealed envelope so that he would not ask any more questions. Brauchitsch may have said on November 5 that he would do nothing to prevent someone else from “acting,” but this hardly demonstrated a willingness to sign papers authorizing the coup. The conspiracy was riddled with such inconsis­tencies, which would reappear on July 20, 1944.

The conspirators were not hampered by any lack of seriousness or moral insight. If anything, the opposite was true. All the protests against atrocities in Poland, of which there were many more than have been mentioned here, show that the outrage at Nazi barbarism extended far beyond the circles of active conspirators. Their really decisive failing, it seems, was their lack of political will to commit an act that ran against the grain of all their traditions and patterns of thought. There is truth to the remark of the Italian ambassador to Berlin, Bernardo Attolico, that the German character, as he had come lo know it in those officers, was deficient in the qualities needed for good conspirators: patience, a keen understanding of human nature, hypocrisy, psychology, and tact. “Where can you find that between Rosenheim and Eydtkuhnen?” he asked.⁴⁵

The conspirators were acutely aware of this deficiency, and attempted to hide it by continually finding new reasons for their inaction: they were waiting for a swing in the public mood or for Hitler to suffer a setback; the younger officers, as Witzleben complained, were still “intoxicated” by Hitler; a civil war would break out or another “slab-in-the-back” myth-reminiscent of the army’s putative betrayal al the end of the First World War-would arise if they acted now; it would be best first to explore the attitude foreign powers would adopt toward a new government; and finally, time and again, no one was prepared actually to throw the bomb. When Dino Grandi went to the meeting of the Fascist Grand Council at which Mussolini was to be overthrown on July 25, 1943, he took two hand grenades with him. At the entrance to the chamber in the Palazzo Venezia, the first member of the Grand Council he encountered was Cesare de Vecchi. Fearing that Mussolini would defend himself and open fire, Grandi asked de Vecchi on the spur of the moment if he would take one of the gre­nades and throw it at II Duce if necessary. De Vecchi agreed immediately without any doubt or hesitation. A major weakness of the German resistance at this point was that it did not have a Grandi or even a de Vecchi.⁴⁶

The Italian conspirators focused all their attention on carrying out the assassination and ensuring its success, allowing the next day to take care of itself. The Germans, on the other hand, struggled so long and hard with the preconditions and consequences of their plans that their will to act dissipated. A typical picture of the conspirators would show them huddled together rehashing arguments and counterargu­ments and drafting extensive plans for the world of tomorrow. Even Erwin von Witzleben, the conspirator least prone to lose himself in ruminations, eventually succumbed to this tendency. In September 1938 he had declared that if necessary he would simply put Brauchitsch and Halder “under lock and key” for a few hours; by the next year, however, he was claiming his own subordinate position, his responsibility for his troops, and Oster’s recklessness as reasons for postponing any decision.

In the bitter cold of mid-January 1940, Beck and Halder wandered together for hours through the deserted streets of the Berlin suburb of Dahlem, deep in a conversation that dramatically illustrated some of the antagonisms that plagued the opposition as a whole. When Beck, perhaps echoing the didactic tone of his predecessor in office, implied that the army command was wanting in courage, Halder retorted tartly that he had opposed Hitler from the very outset-unlike Beck and was in no need of lessons. He refused to allow the army to become the “handmaid” of civilian opposition groups and said he was still prepared to lead the way in a “spearhead” role, but only if backed by a broad-based political movement, of which there was still no sign at all. The task of the civilian opposition groups was to create this movement and not issue “instructions” to the army, for which they ho re no responsibility. Both men were clearly right, and it was indeed for this very reason that their conversation ended in a falling-out. They never saw each other again.⁴⁷

Apart from this and a few other isolated cases, what was missing in the resistance on the whole was not passion, strength, or personal courage. There was no lack of conviction that “the wagon is headed for the abyss and has to be stopped,” in the words of a common metaphor of the time. What the resistance did feel the want of, though, was a widely acknowledged central figure whose authority and confidence could draw together all these brooding individuals, estranged by contradictory goals and approaches and united only by their disgust for the regime. Beck was certainly not this person. He was too pensive, philosophical, and inclined to defer action. Hitler’s opponents sensed this shortcoming, as can be seen from the diaries of Ulrich von Hassell, who often speaks of the officer or the man for whom everything lay waiting. Such a man would need a spark of “Catilinarian energy” to be able to depose Hitler and would need also to shed all the scruples and misgivings that repeatedly hobbled the conspirators during the first phase of the resistance. That meant, as one of the conspirators pointed out, a readiness to “do things that others might never understand or undertake themselves.”⁴⁸