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
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 Reichsfuhrer-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 Stulpnagel 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 Fuhrer’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.” Typi cally, 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 Fuhrer, 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 Kuchler demanded an end to the indiscriminate massacres, as did others. Kuchler 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
