Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

the Abwehr who were now actively contemplating measures to remove Hitler.²¹⁹

In the last weeks of October various notions of deposing Hitler — often unrealistic or scarcely thought through — were furtively pondered by the tiny, disparate, only loosely connected oppositional groups. Goerdeler and his main contacts — Hassell, Beck, and Popitz — were one such cluster, weighing up for a time whether a transitional government headed by Goring (whose reluctance to engage in war with Britain was known to them) might be an option.²²⁰ This cluster, through Beck, forged loose links with the group based in the Abwehr — Oster, Dohnanyi, Gisevius, and Groscurth. The latter worked out a plan of action for a coup, involving the arrest of Hitler (perhaps declaring him mentally ill), along with Himmler, Heydrich, Ribbentrop, Goring, Goebbels, and other leading Nazis.²²¹ Encouraged by their chief, Admiral Canaris, and driven on by Oster, the Abwehr group attempted, though with little success, to gain backing for their ideas from selected officers at General Staff headquarters in Zossen. Their ambivalence about Haider meant that they did not approach him directly. Moreover, they knew nothing of the thoughts he had aired to Brauchitsch on 14 October.²²² A third set of individuals sharing the view that Hitler had to be removed and war with the West prevented centred on Weizsacker in the Foreign Ministry, and was chiefly represented by Erich Kordt, who was able to utilize his position as head of Ribbentrop’s Ministerial Bureau to foster contacts at home and abroad.²²³ As we have noted, this grouping had contact to the Abwehr group and to known sympathizers in the General Staff — mainly staff officers, though at this point not Haider himself — through Weizsacker’s army liaison, Legation Secretary Hasso von Etzdorf.²²⁴

Haider himself (and his most immediate friend and subordinate General Otto von Stulpnagel) came round to the idea of a putsch by the end of the month, after Hitler had confirmed his intention of a strike on 12 November.²²⁵ Haider sent Stulpnagel to take surreptitious soundings among selected generals about their likely response to a coup. The findings were not encouraging. While army-group commanders such as Bock and Rundstedt were opposed to an offensive against the West, they rejected the idea of a putsch, partly on the grounds that they were themselves unsure whether they would retain the backing of their subordinate officers. In addition, Haider established to his own satisfaction, based on a ‘sample’ of public opinion drawn from the father of his chauffeur and a few others, that the German people supported Hitler and were not ready for a putsch.²²⁶ Haider’s hesitancy reflected his own deep uncertainty about the moral as well as security aspect of a strike against the head of state and supreme commander of the armed forces. Others took a bolder stance. But, though loosely bonded through parallel thoughts of getting rid of Hitler, the different oppositional clusters had no coherent, unified, and agreed plan for action. Nor, while now accepting Haider’s readiness to act, was there full confidence in the determination of the Chief of Staff, on whom practically everything depended, to see it through.²²⁷

This was the position around noon on 5 November when Brauchitsch nervously made his way through the corridors of the Reich Chancellery to confront Hitler directly about the decision to attack the West. If the attack were to go ahead on schedule on 12 November, the order to make operational preparations had to be confirmed to the Supreme Commander of the Army by 1p.m. on the fifth. Among the oppositional groups, the hope was that Brauchitsch could finally be persuaded to go along with a putsch if Hitler, as was to be expected, held firm to his decision for an attack. Haider waited in the ante-room while Brauchitsch and Hitler conferred together. Keitel joined them some while later. The meeting was a fiasco. It lasted no longer than twenty minutes. Brauchitsch hesitantly began to tell Hitler that preparations were not sufficiently advanced for an offensive against the West which, therefore, had every chance of proving catastrophic. He went on to back up his argument by pointing out that the infantry had shown morale and technical weaknesses in the attack on Poland, and that the discipline of officers and men had often been lacking. The Front showed similar symptoms to those of 1917–18, he claimed. This was a bad mistake by Brauchitsch. It diverted from the main issue, and, as Brauchitsch could have anticipated, it provoked Hitler into a furious outburst. He wanted concrete evidence, he fumed, and demanded to know how many death- sentences had been carried out. He did not believe Brauchitsch, and would fly the next night to the Front to see for himself. Then he dismissed Brauchitsch’s main point. The army was unprepared, he asserted, because it did not want to fight. The weather would still be bad in the spring — and furthermore bad for the enemy too. He knew the ‘spirit of Zossen’, he raged, and would destroy it. Almost shaking with anger, Hitler marched out of the room, slamming the door, leaving the head of the army speechless, trembling, face as white as chalk, and broken.²²⁸

‘Any sober discussion of these things is impossible with him,’ Haider commented, in something of an understatement.²²⁹ But for Haider the impact of the meeting went further. Talk of destroying the ‘spirit of Zossen’ suggested to the Chief of Staff that Hitler knew of the plot to unseat him. The Gestapo could turn up in Zossen any time. Haider returned in panic to his headquarters and ordered the destruction of all papers relating to the conspiracy.²³⁰ Next day he told Groscurth that the attack in the West would be carried out. There was nothing to be done. ‘Very depressing impression,’ recorded Groscurth.²³¹

Hitler had given the order for the offensive at 1.30p.m. on 5 November, soon after his interview with Brauchitsch.²³² Two days later the attack was postponed because of poor weather.²³³ But the chance to strike against Hitler had been lost. The circumstances would not be as favourable for several years. The order for the attack, meant to be the moment to undertake the proposed coup, had come and gone. Brauchitsch, badly shaken by his audience with Hitler, had indicated that he would do nothing, though would not try to hinder a putsch. Canaris, approached by Haider, was disgusted at the suggestion that he should instigate Hitler’s assassination. Other than this suggestion that someone else might take over responsibility for the dirty work, Haider now did little. The moment had passed. He gradually pulled back from the opposition’s plans. In the end, he lacked the will, determination, and courage to act. The Abwehr group did not give up. But they acknowledged diminishing prospects of success. Oster’s soundings with Witzleben, then with Leeb, Bock, and Rundstedt, produced mixed results.²³⁴ The truth was that the army was divided. Some generals opposed Hitler. But there were more who backed him. And below the high command, there were junior officers, let alone the rank-and-file, whose reactions to any attempt to stop Hitler dead in his tracks were uncertain. Throughout the conflict with the army leadership, Hitler continued to hold the whip-hand. And he had not yielded in the slightest. Despite repeated postponements because of bad weather — twenty-nine in all — he had not cancelled his offensive against the West.²³⁵ Divisions, distrust, fragmentation, but above all a lack of resolve had prevented the oppositional groups — especially the key figures in the military — from acting.

The plotters in the Abwehr, Foreign Ministry, and General Staff head-quarters were as astonished as all other Germans when they heard of an attack on Hitler’s life that had taken place in the Burgerbraukeller on the evening of 8 November 1939. They thought it might have come from someone within their own ranks, or been carried out by dissident Nazis, or some other set of opponents — Communists, clerics, or ‘reactionaries’ — and that Hitler had been tipped off in time.²³⁶ In fact, Hitler, sitting in the compartment of his special train and discussing with Goebbels how the showdown with the clergy would have to await the end of the war, was wholly unaware of what had happened until his journey to Berlin was interrupted at Nuremberg with the news. His first reaction was that the report must be wrong.²³⁷ According to Goebbels, he thought it was a ‘hoax’ (‘Mystifikatiorn’).²³⁸ The official version was soon put out that the British Secret Service was behind the assassination attempt, and that the perpetrator was ‘a creature’ of Otto Strasser.²³⁹ The capture next day of the British agents Major R.H. Stevens and Captain S. Payne Best on the Dutch border was used by propaganda to underpin this far-fetched interpretation.²⁴⁰

The truth was less elaborate — but all the more stunning. The attempt had been carried out by a single person, an ordinary German, a man from the working class, acting without the help or knowledge of anyone else.²⁴¹ Where generals had hesitated, he had tried to blow up Hitler to save Germany and Europe from even greater disaster.

His name was George Elser. He was a joiner from Konigsbronn in Wurttemberg.²⁴² At the time that he attempted to kill Hitler he was thirty-six years old, small in stature, with dark, wavy hair brushed back. Those who knew him — they were not many — thought well of him. He was a loner with few friends — quiet, reserved, industrious, and a perfectionist in his work. He had little education to speak of, did not read books, and scarcely bothered with newspapers. Even in the days immediately preceding his assassination attempt, he took so little interest in the news that he did not realize that because of the pressing business of the war — these were, as we have seen, precisely the days when the decision for the western offensive was taken, then rescinded — Hitler