days after the assassination attempt were those of the dwindling masses of continued loyal believers in the Fuhrer. They had spoken loudly for the last time. What proportion of the population (or even of a Nazi Party with a nominal membership by this time of over 8 million Germans)89 they represented can only be guessed at; but they constituted by now almost certainly a minority — if still a controlling minority with massive repressive capacity.
Even some of the SD’s own provincial stations were providing, within weeks of the explosion in the Wolf’s Lair, blunt indicators of the collapse in Hitler’s popularity. A devastating report on 8 August from the SD office in Stuttgart, for instance, began by stating that for the overwhelming majority of the population in that area it was not a question of whether Germany would win the war, but only whether they would be ruled by the Anglo-Americans or Russians. Beyond a small number of Party activists and a tiny section of the population, no one thought there would be a miracle. People read into Hitler’s speech on the night after Stauffenberg’s bomb-attack the exact opposite of what was intended. It was now plain, they said, that Goring, Goebbels, and other leading men in the regime had lied to them in claiming that time was on Germany’s side, armaments production was rising, and the day of a return to the offensive backed by new, decisive weapons was close at hand. They had now heard in the Fuhrer’s own words that his work had been sabotaged for years. In other words, people were saying: ‘The Fuhrer is admitting that time has previously not been on our side, but running against us. If such a man as the Fuhrer has been so thoroughly deceived,’ the summary of prevailing opinion continued, ‘then he is either not the genius that he has been depicted as, or, knowing that saboteurs were at work, he intentionally lied to the German people, which would be just as bad, for, with such enemies within, war-production could never have been raised, and we could never gain victory.’ The consequence of such thoughts was made explicit: ‘The most worrying aspect of the whole thing is probably that most comrades of the people, even those who up to now have believed unshakeably, have lost all faith in the Fuhrer.’90
As the autumn wore on and Hitler, after his brief return for a final time to the centre of people’s attention, again faded from most people’s daily consciousness, attitudes against him in the same region hardened still further. On
Sometimes, irrational belief was all that was left. A teenage girl, writing in her diary at the end of August and in early September 1944, saw blow following blow in Germany’s war effort: the attack on the Fuhrer’s life, advances of the western Allies, constant German retreat on the eastern front, the incessant bombing, and the collapse of the Reich’s alliance-partners. ‘On one side there is victory, which is becoming ever more doubtful, and on the other Bolshevism,’ she wrote. ‘But then: rather sacrifice everything, absolutely everything, for victory, than for Bolshevism. If that should come, then you shouldn’t think further. What would I still go to school for if I’m going to end up in Siberia? What for? What for? A whole number of questions line up like this. But if we all wanted to think in this way, there would be no hope left. So, head high. Trust in our will and our leadership!!!’92
As this diary-entry suggests, the fear of Bolshevism was by now among the most central cohesive elements sustaining support for the German war effort and militating against any collapse of morale at home. Even so, as the news of defeats, destruction, and desertion of allies mounted without relief, and as losses of property and possessions, homes and loved ones piled misery on misery, the first signs of disintegration were visible. The German greeting, ‘Heil Hitler’, was increasingly replaced by ‘Good morning’, ‘Good day’, or, in south Germany, ‘Gru? Gott’. The evacuation of the Aachen area — the old seat of Charlemagne’s empire, where the Allies had broken through — in early September was accompanied by ‘a more or less panic-type of flight by the German civilian population’, according to a report to Himmler.93 Wehrmacht reports from the western front spoke later in the month of mounting lack of discipline and indications of disintegration among the troops, with increasing numbers of desertions, reflected in a sharp rise in draconian punishment meted out by military courts.94
Some of the deserters in the west made their way to Cologne. This great city on the Rhine had by now been largely bombed into dereliction — though, amazingly, its magnificent Gothic cathedral was still standing — with much of its population evacuated. Amid the rubble and the ruins, in the cellars of burnt-out buildings, forms of opposition to the Nazi regime approaching partisan activity emerged. Here, heterogeneous groups of deserted soldiers, foreign workers — now forming around 20 per cent of the Reich’s work-force and presenting the Nazi authorities with increasing worries about insurrection — members of dissident bands of disaffected youth (known picturesquely as ‘Edelwei? Pirates’), and the Communist underground organization (infiltrated and smashed many times but always managing to replenish itself) blended together in the autumn of 1944 into short-lived but, for the regime, troublesome resistance. The Gestapo recorded some two dozen small resistance groups of up to twenty individuals, and one large body of around 120 persons. They stole food, broke into Wehrmacht camps and depots to get weapons, and organized minor forms of sabotage. It came on occasion to shoot-outs with camp guards and police. Their actions were politically directed: they killed, among others, several Gestapo men, including the head of the Cologne Gestapo, an SA man, and a Nazi Party functionary. In all, twenty-nine killings were attributed to them by the Gestapo. Attacks on the Hitler Youth and other Nazi formations by the ‘Edelwei? Pirates’ were commonplace. With the explosives they acquired, their intention was to blow up the Gestapo headquarters and the city’s law- courts, and to shoot a leading attorney and several members of the Party organization.95 Possibly, had the Allied advance in the west not slowed, the quasi-partisan activity in Cologne might have spread to other cities in the Rhine and Ruhr region. The problems of combating it would then have magnified. As it was, the Gestapo, aided by Wehrmacht units, was able to strike back with devastating effect in the autumn. The resistance groups did not give up without a fight. One group waged an armed battle for twelve hours before the ruined cellar which served as its ‘fortress’ was blown up. Another group defended itself with hand grenades and a machine-gun, finally breaking through a police cordon and escaping.96 By the time the Gestapo were finished, however, some 200 members of the resistance groups had been arrested, the groups themselves totally destroyed, their leaders executed, and many other members imprisoned.97
Had the Stauffenberg bomb-plot succeeded, it is possible that the types of grass-roots political activism experienced in Cologne could have swelled into a revolutionary ferment from a base in western Germany. But many — and quite conflicting — scenarios could be imagined had Hitler been assassinated on 20 July. The actual outcome was that resistance from below — from Communists, Socialists, youth-rebels, foreign workers, deserted soldiers and others — was, whatever the continued courage of those involved, robbed of any prospect of success. The regime had been challenged internally. But the blow to its heart had not proved lethal. It now reacted with all the ferocity at its disposal. At least for the time being, it was able to regroup and reconsolidate, delaying the end for several more months, prolonging the agony of millions caught up in the intensifying maelstrom of death and destruction. Hitler and the Nazi leadership had survived. But there was no way leading from the self-destructive path on which they were embarked.
For the ordinary German, too, there was no way out. It was taken for granted that the regime was finished. The only hope was that the British and Americans would hold off the Bolsheviks. The most common reactions, as yet another war winter loomed, were apathy, resignation, fatalism. ‘It’s all the same to me. I can’t judge the situation any longer. I’ll just work further in my job, wait, and accept what comes’ — this approach, reported by the regional agencies of the Propaganda Ministry in autumn 1944, was said to be prevalent not just with ‘the man on the street’, but also among Party members and even functionaries, some of whom were no longer wanting to wear their Party insignia.98 It was a clear sign that the end was on the way.
III
The institutional pillars of the regime — the Wehrmacht, the Party, ministries of state, and the SS-controlled security apparatus — remained intact in the second half of 1944. And Hitler, the keystone bonding the regime’s structure together, was still, paradoxically, indispensable to its survival while — by now even in the eyes of some close to the leadership — at the same time driving Germany inexorably towards perdition. The predictable rallying round Hitler following the July assassination attempt could not, therefore, for long conceal the fact that the regime’s edifice was beginning to crumble as the Nazi empire throughout Europe shrivelled and the increasing certainty of a
