explosion in East Prussia over six weeks later.
There was another level of opposition to Hitler, which did not believe in killing the dictator. This centred on Rommel himself, who wanted to force Hitler to make peace with the western Allies.[43] If he refused, then they would bring him to trial. But the tyrannicides grouped round Generalmajor Henning von Tresckow and Colonel Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg rejected that course as doomed to failure. The SS and the Nazi Party would resist all the way. It would risk a civil war. Only the sudden decapitation of the Nazi regime in a coup d’etat would allow them to form an administration which they hoped, with deeply misplaced optimism, that the western Allies might recognize.
Speidel had known Rommel since the First World War, when they had served together in the same regiment. On Speidel’s appointment as Rommel’s chief of staff, he had been summoned on 1 April to Fuhrer headquarters at the Berghof. Jodl had briefed him on the ‘inflexible mission of defending the coast’, and told him that Rommel was ‘inclined to pessimism’ as a result of the African campaign. His task was to give Rommel encouragement.
When Speidel reached La Roche-Guyon two weeks later, Rommel spoke with bitterness about his experiences in Africa ‘and above all about Hitler’s constant attempts at deceit’. He added that the war should be ‘finished as quickly as possible’. Speidel then told him about his contacts with Generaloberst Ludwig Beck, a former chief of the army general staff, and the resistance movement in Berlin who were ‘ready and determined to do away with the present regime’. In subsequent discussions, Rommel condemned ‘the excesses of Hitler and the utter lawlessness of the regime’, but he still opposed assassination.
On 15 May, Rommel attended a secret conference with his old friend General Karl-Heinrich von Stulpnagel, the military commander of Belgium and northern France. Although a member of the anti-Hitler conspiracy, Stulpnagel was ‘a hardline anti-semite’. If he had not shot himself later, he would probably have faced a war crimes tribunal after the war for his activities on the eastern front and the persecution of Jews in France. The two men discussed ‘measures to be taken immediately for the termination of the war and elimination of the Hitler-regime’. Stulpnagel knew that they could not count on Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt, even though the ‘old Prussian’ was well aware of ‘the catastrophic situation’ and loathed the ‘Bohemian corporal’. Stulpnagel believed that in an uprising, ‘Field Marshal Rommel would be the only person who possessed the undisputed respect of the German people and armed forces, and even the Allies’.
A series of sympathetic visitors came to La Roche-Guyon, which became an ‘oasis’ for the Resistance. Towards the end of the month, General Eduard Wagner of the OKH[44] briefed Rommel on the preparations of the resistance group within the army. The extreme nationalist writer Ernst Junger, who was serving on Stulpnagel’s staff in Paris, presented him with his thoughts on the peace which should be made with the Allies. Speidel returned to Germany at the end of May to meet the former foreign minister Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath and Dr Karl Strolin, the mayor of Stuttgart. Both believed that Rommel’s involvement was essential to gain the confidence of the German people as well as that of the Allies. Speidel felt able to brief General Blumentritt, Rundstedt’s chief of staff, on the discussions.
Rommel and Speidel had agreed on a list of possible parliamentaries to talk to Eisenhower and Montgomery. It was headed by Geyr von Schweppenburg, who spoke excellent English, but after his dismissal they had to consider others. They would propose a withdrawal to Germany from all occupied territories in the west, while the Wehrmacht held a reduced front in the east. Rommel insisted that Hitler should be tried by a German court. He did not want to be the leader of the new regime. That role he felt should be taken by Generaloberst Beck or Dr Carl Goerdler, the former mayor of Leipzig. Rommel was, however, prepared to take command of the armed forces.
Few of the plotters appear to have imagined for a moment that the western Allies would reject their offer, even if they had been in a position to make it. Their proposals included an Allied recognition of the German annexation of the Sudetenland and the
Speidel and Rommel began to sound out army, corps and divisional commanders. The two most obvious supporters in command of fighting troops were Generalleutnant Graf von Schwerin, the commander of 116th Panzer-Division, and Generalleutnant Freiherr von Luttwitz of the 2nd Panzer-Division. It was Luttwitz’s division which had received the German nurses from Cherbourg handed over by the Americans. When Hitler later heard of this contact with the enemy, he was outraged. He had already begun to fear that his generals might make peace overtures to the Americans behind his back.
After Rommel’s humiliating visit with Rundstedt on 29 June to Berchtesgaden, he came to the conclusion that they would have to act. Even Keitel, the worst Hitler lackey of them all, admitted to him in private, ‘I also know that nothing can be done any more.’ And two senior Waffen-SS commanders, Hausser and Eberbach, seem to have come to the conclusion that some form of unilateral action was unavoidable. At the beginning of July, just before the fall of Caen, Hitler’s favourite, Obergruppenfuhrer Sepp Dietrich, the commander of I SS Panzer Corps, came to La Roche-Guyon to ask what the commander-in-chief was intending to do in view of the ‘imminent catastrophe’. According to Speidel, Dietrich assured them that the SS units were ‘firmly in his hands’. It is not clear how much Dietrich was told of the plans afoot. At the same time the new commander-in-chief of the Seventh Army, Obergruppenfuhrer Hausser, also predicted collapse.
On 9 July, the day the British and Canadians moved into Caen, Oberstleutnant Casar von Hofacker, a cousin of Stauffenberg, was sent by General von Stulpnagel in Paris to see Generalfeldmarschall von Kluge. Kluge had been in contact with the German Army resistance group when on the eastern front, but now prevaricated. Hofacker was Stulpnagel’s chief contact with the plotters in Berlin. He tried to persuade Kluge on behalf of the resistance to end the war in the west by ‘independent action’ as soon as possible. The Allies would never negotiate with Hitler or one of his ‘paladins’, such as Goring, Himmler or Ribbentrop, so a change of government and the removal of the Nazi leaders were essential. He asked Kluge how long the Normandy front could hold out, because the decisions taken by the resistance in Berlin depended on his answer. ‘No longer than two to three weeks at best,’ he replied, ‘then a breakthrough must be expected which we will be unable to cope with.’
Rommel and Kluge met on 12 July to discuss the military situation and the political consequences. Rommel would also sound out his corps commanders one last time, then prepare an ultimatum to be presented to Hitler. While Rommel consulted corps commanders, Speidel went to see Stulpnagel, who was already preparing to eliminate the Gestapo and SS in France. Two days later, Hitler moved from Berchtesgaden to the
The next day, Rommel wrote an assessment of the western front for Hitler. This warned that the Allies would soon break through rapidly all the way to the German border. The paper ended with the words, ‘I must request you,
On 17 July, during their meeting at the headquarters of Panzer Group West, Rommel asked Eberbach for his views on the situation when they were alone. ‘We are experiencing the overwhelming disaster of a war on two fronts,’ Eberbach replied. ‘We have lost the war. But we must inflict on the western Allies the highest possible casualties to bring them to a ceasefire and then prevent the Red Army from breaking through to our Germany.’
‘I agree,’ Rommel replied, ‘but can you imagine the enemy engaging in any negotiations with us so long as Hitler is our leader?’ Eberbach had to accept the point. ‘So things cannot continue as they are,’ Rommel continued. ‘Hitler must go.’ The panzer divisions were desperately needed on the eastern front. In the west they would withdraw to the Siegfried Line while trying to negotiate.
‘Would it not then lead to a civil war,’ Eberbach asked, ‘which is worse than anything else?’ This was the great fear of most officers. It brought back memories of November 1918 and revolutionary uprisings in Berlin, Munich and the mutiny of the fleet in Wilhelmshaven. An hour later, Rommel suffered a fractured skull during the attack by Spitfires near Sainte-Foy-de-Montgommery. He had no idea that an assassination was planned for three days later.
Attempts on Hitler’s life had been made before, but they had failed through bad luck.
