Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

juncture, as the military disasters mounted and ultimate catastrophe beckoned, the fanatical backing for Hitler had by no means evaporated and continued, if as a minority taste, to show remarkable resilience and strength. Those still bound up with the dying regime, those who had invested in it, had committed themselves to it, had burnt their boats with it, were still true believers in the Fuhrer, were likely to stop at nothing, as adversity mounted, in their unbridled retribution for any sign of opposition. But beyond the fanatics, there were many others who — naively, or after deep reflection — thought it not merely wrong, but despicable and treacherous, to undermine one’s own country in war. Stauffenberg summed up the conspirators’ dilemma a few days before he laid the bomb in the Wolf’s Lair: ‘It is now time that something was done. But the man who has the courage to do something must do it in the knowledge that he will go down in German history as a traitor. If he does not do it, however, he will be a traitor to his own conscience.’⁶

As this implies, the need to avoid a stab-in-the-back legend such as that which had followed the end of the First World War and left such a baleful legacy for the ill-fated Weimar Republic was a constant burden and anxiety for those who had decided — sometimes with a heavy heart — that Germany’s future rested on their capacity to remove Hitler, violently or not, from the scene, constitute a new government, and seek peace terms. This was one important reason why, from 1938 onwards, the leading figures in the resistance fatefully awaited the ‘right moment’ — which never came. Fearful of cutting down a national hero who had just won scarcely imaginable triumphs (which, in some cases, they themselves had cheered, and were captivated by) they felt incapacitated as long as Hitler was chalking up one apparent success after another before the war, then in the wave of Blitzkrieg victories. But, also worried about the consequences of removing Hitler and seeming to stab the war effort in the back after a major disaster, the hesitancy continued when final victory had become no more than a chimera. Rather than controlling the moment for a strike, the conspirators let it rest on external contingencies that, in the nature of things, they could not orchestrate.

When the strike eventually came, with the invasion consolidated in the west and the Red Army pressing towards the borders of the Reich in the east, the conspirators themselves recognized that they had missed the chance to influence the possible outcome of the war through their action. As one of their key driving-forces, Major- General Henning von Tresckow, from late 1943 chief of staff of the 2nd Army in the southern section of the eastern front, put it: ‘It’s not a matter any more of the practical aim, but of showing the world and history that the German resistance movement at risk of life has dared the decisive stroke (Wurf). Everything else is a matter of indifference alongside that.’⁷

I

All prospects of opposition to Hitler had been dimmed following the astonishing chain of military successes between autumn 1939 and spring 1941. Then, following the promulgation of the notorious Commissar Law, ordering the liquidation of captured Red Army political commissars, it had been Colonel (as he was at the time) Henning von Tresckow, Field-Marshal von Bock’s first general staff officer at Army Group Centre, who had been instrumental in revitalizing thoughts of resistance among a number of front officers — some of them purposely selected on account of their anti-regime stance. Born in 1901, tall, balding, with a serious demeanour, a professional soldier, fervent upholder of Prussian values, cool and reserved but at the same time a striking and forceful personality, disarmingly modest, but with iron determination, Tresckow had been an early admirer of Hitler though had soon turned into an unbending critic of the lawless and inhumane policies of the regime.⁸ Those whom Tresckow was able to bring to Army Group Centre included close allies in the emerging conspiracy against Hitler, notably Fabian von Schlabrendorff — six years younger than Tresckow himself, trained in law, who would serve as a liaison between Army Group Centre and other focal points of the conspiracy — and Rudolph-Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, born in 1905, a professional soldier, already an arch-critic of Hitler, and now located in a key position in the intelligence section of Army Group Centre.⁹ But attempts to persuade Bock, together with the other two group commanders on the eastern front, Rundstedt and Leeb, to confront Hitler and refuse orders failed.¹⁰ Any realistic prospect of opposition from the front disappeared again until late 1942. By then, in the wake of the unfolding Stalingrad crisis and seeing Hitler as responsible for the certain ruin of Germany, Tresckow was ready to assassinate him.¹¹

During the course of 1942, a number of focal points of practically dormant opposition within Germany itself — army and civilian — had begun to flicker back to life. The savagery of the warfare on the eastern front and, in the light of the winter crisis of 1941–2, the magnitude of the calamity towards which Hitler was steering Germany, had revitalized the notions, still less than concrete, that something must be done. Beck, Goerdeler, Popitz, and Hassell — all connected with the pre-war conspiracy — met up again in Berlin in March 1942, but decided there were as yet few prospects. Even so, it was agreed that former Chief of Staff Beck would serve as a central point for the embryonic opposition. Meetings were held soon after with Colonel Hans Oster — head of the central office dealing with foreign intelligence in the Abwehr, the driving-force behind the 1938 conspiracy, who had leaked Germany’s invasion plans to Holland in 1940 — and Hans von Dohnanyi, a jurist who had also played a significant part in the 1938 plot, and, like Oster, used his position in the foreign section of the Abwehr to develop good contacts to officers with oppositional tendencies¹² Around the same time, Oster engineered a close link to a new and important recruit to the oppositional groups, General Friedrich Olbricht, head of the General Army Office in Berlin and Fromm’s deputy as commander of the home army. Olbricht, born in 1888 and a career soldier, was not one to seek the limelight. He epitomized the desk-general, the organizer, the military administrator. But he was unusual in his pro-Weimar attitude before 1933, and, thereafter — driven largely by Christian and patriotic feelings — in his consistent anti-Hitler stance, even amid the jubilation of the foreign-policy triumphs of the 1930s and the victories of the first phase of the war. His role would emerge as the planner of the coup d’etat that was to follow upon the successful assassination of Hitler.¹³

Already as the Stalingrad crisis deepened towards the end of 1942, Tresckow — later described by the Gestapo as ‘without doubt one of the driving-forces and the “evil spirit” of the putschist circles’, and allegedly referred to by Stauffenberg as his ‘guiding master’ (Lehrmeister) — was pressing for the assassination of Hitler without delay.¹⁴ He had become convinced that nothing could be expected of the top military leadership in initiating a coup. ‘They would only follow an order,’ was his view.¹⁵ He took it upon himself to provide the ‘ignition (lnitialzundung)’, as the conspirators labelled the assassination of Hitler that would lead to their removal of the Nazi leadership and takeover of the state.¹⁶ Tresckow had already in the summer of 1942 commissioned Gersdorff with the task of obtaining suitable explosives. The latter acquired and tested various devices, including British explosives intended for sabotage and for the French Resistance that had been captured following an ill-fated commando expedition to St Nazaire and a catastrophic assault on Dieppe in 1942. Eventually, he and Tresckow settled on a small British magnetic device, a ‘clam’ (or type of adhesive mine) about the size of a book, ideal for sabotage and easy to conceal.¹⁷ Olbricht, meanwhile, coordinated the links with the other conspirators in Berlin and laid the groundwork for a coup to take place in March. The plans to occupy important civilian and military positions in Berlin and other major cities were, in essence, along the lines that were to be followed in July 1944.¹⁸

One obvious problem was how to get close enough to Hitler to carry out an assassination. Hitler’s movements were unpredictable. As we have had cause to note, he frequently — not just for security reasons — altered his plans at the last minute. Such an undependable schedule had in mid-February 1943 vitiated the intention of two officers, General Hubert Lanz and Major-General Hans Speidel, of arresting Hitler on an expected visit to Army Group ? headquarters at Poltava. The visit did not materialize. When Hitler suddenly decided to visit the front, on 17 February, it had been to Zaporozhye not Poltava (which Army Group ? had in any case by then left).¹⁹ Hitler’s personal security had, meanwhile, been tightened considerably.²⁰ He was invariably surrounded by SS bodyguards, pistols at the ready, and was always driven by his own chauffeur, Erich Kempka, in one of his own limousines which were stationed at different points in the Reich and in the occupied territories.²¹ And Schmundt, Hitler’s Wehrmacht adjutant, had told Tresckow and Gersdorff that Hitler wore a bullet-proof vest and hat. This helped persuade them that the possibilities of a selected assassin having time to pull out his pistol, aim accurately, and ensure that his shot would kill Hitler were not great. Nor was the chosen sharp-shooter, bearer of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves Lieutenant-Colonel Georg Freiherr von