Plotting Hitler's Death

crushed, “regardless of who he is.” He said he had been deeply offended by what he saw as a lack of faith: “I cannot endure anyone’s telling me the troops are not all right.” After reviewing once again the necessity for the impending offensive, he declared himself “indis­pensable,” for he alone could make the difficult but crucial decisions. Hanging in the balance was not just a National-Socialist Germany but the entire question of “who will dominate Europe and therefore the world.” The speech bristled with threats directed at “doubters,” “de­serters,” and those who would foment “revolution.” The struggle, he warned, would be waged without quarter against anyone who failed to embrace the will to victory. He himself was prepared “to die, if neces­sary, but only as the last one”: “I will not survive the defeat of my people.” These remarks were enthusiastically received in the ranks of the navy and air force, who had often been praised by Hitler. Within the army, even many of the generals who had recently expressed strong opposition to an invasion conceded that they were “greatly impressed” by Hitler, despite his unmistakable criticism of the high command. Oster commented incisively that accusations of cowardice had once again made cowards of the brave.⁴⁴

* * *

For the second time in a year, a coup plot had sputtered and failed. The conspiracy of November 1939 was more tragedy than farce, yet there is indeed something farcical about a coup that was foiled simply by the angry outburst of a tyrant. It would be easy, in judging these events, to confine oneself to moral categories and point to the con­spirators’ indecision, spinelessness, and lack of resolve. Count Helldorf was certainly justified in calling Halder a “heroic philistine,” as was Groscurth in expressing his “loathing for the generals,” and Hassell in pointing bitterly to the contradiction between the “marvel­ous discussions” that the generals—or “Josephs” as he scornfully (if obscurely) dubbed them-conducted in lieu of action. For those seeking the cause of the army’s failure, such verdicts may reveal something about the strained relationships between Helldorf and Halder, Groscurth and Brauchitsch, or Hassell and the generals, but they illuminate virtually nothing about the real reasons for the re­ peated failures of the coup.

Somewhat more enlightening is the remarkable lack of realistic imagination on the part of the conspirators. In the fall of 1939, as in September 1938, they made the initiation of the coup totally depen­dent on events they could neither accurately predict nor control. The officers on the general staff were professional strategists who had demonstrated their skill on numerous occasions, but all the evidence indicates that on this occasion their planning was inadequate and probably even stunningly inept. Much remains unknown, for most of the relevant documents were destroyed and their authors perished in the war or on the gallows. One fact, however, looms so large that it cannot be overlooked: the conspirators plotted all this time to “do away” with Hitler without even the most resolute core of the resis­tance ever deciding exactly how this would be done, who would do it, and even if it could be done.

In contrast to the September conspiracy, it is impossible to determine which units were to have delivered the blow in November. Groscurth and Stulpnagel developed orders for the operations, but Halder spoke quite vaguely after the war about two “panzer divisions that had been held back” for this purpose but whose names and positions no one seems to remember. The orders launching the coup could only be signed by the commander in chief of the army, yet, as everyone knew, Brauchitsch was not prepared to do this. Among the more farcical aspects of the conspiracy was Stulpnagel’s idea of pre­senting the orders to Brauchitsch in a sealed envelope so that he would not ask any more questions. Brauchitsch may have said on November 5 that he would do nothing to prevent someone else from “acting,” but this hardly demonstrated a willingness to sign papers authorizing the coup. The conspiracy was riddled with such inconsis­tencies, which would reappear on July 20, 1944.

The conspirators were not hampered by any lack of seriousness or moral insight. If anything, the opposite was true. All the protests against atrocities in Poland, of which there were many more than have been mentioned here, show that the outrage at Nazi barbarism extended far beyond the circles of active conspirators. Their really decisive failing, it seems, was their lack of political will to commit an act that ran against the grain of all their traditions and patterns of thought. There is truth to the remark of the Italian ambassador to Berlin, Bernardo Attolico, that the German character, as he had come lo know it in those officers, was deficient in the qualities needed for good conspirators: patience, a keen understanding of human nature, hypocrisy, psychology, and tact. “Where can you find that between Rosenheim and Eydtkuhnen?” he asked.⁴⁵

The conspirators were acutely aware of this deficiency, and attempted to hide it by continually finding new reasons for their inaction: they were waiting for a swing in the public mood or for Hitler to suffer a setback; the younger officers, as Witzleben complained, were still “intoxicated” by Hitler; a civil war would break out or another “slab-in-the-back” myth-reminiscent of the army’s putative betrayal al the end of the First World War-would arise if they acted now; it would be best first to explore the attitude foreign powers would adopt toward a new government; and finally, time and again, no one was prepared actually to throw the bomb. When Dino Grandi went to the meeting of the Fascist Grand Council at which Mussolini was to be overthrown on July 25, 1943, he took two hand grenades with him. At the entrance to the chamber in the Palazzo Venezia, the first member of the Grand Council he encountered was Cesare de Vecchi. Fearing that Mussolini would defend himself and open fire, Grandi asked de Vecchi on the spur of the moment if he would take one of the gre­nades and throw it at II Duce if necessary. De Vecchi agreed immediately without any doubt or hesitation. A major weakness of the German resistance at this point was that it did not have a Grandi or even a de Vecchi.⁴⁶

The Italian conspirators focused all their attention on carrying out the assassination and ensuring its success, allowing the next day to take care of itself. The Germans, on the other hand, struggled so long and hard with the preconditions and consequences of their plans that their will to act dissipated. A typical picture of the conspirators would show them huddled together rehashing arguments and counterargu­ments and drafting extensive plans for the world of tomorrow. Even Erwin von Witzleben, the conspirator least prone to lose himself in ruminations, eventually succumbed to this tendency. In September 1938 he had declared that if necessary he would simply put Brauchitsch and Halder “under lock and key” for a few hours; by the next year, however, he was claiming his own subordinate position, his responsibility for his troops, and Oster’s recklessness as reasons for postponing any decision.

In the bitter cold of mid-January 1940, Beck and Halder wandered together for hours through the deserted streets of the Berlin suburb of Dahlem, deep in a conversation that dramatically illustrated some of the antagonisms that plagued the opposition as a whole. When Beck, perhaps echoing the didactic tone of his predecessor in office, implied that the army command was wanting in courage, Halder retorted tartly that he had opposed Hitler from the very outset-unlike Beck and was in no need of lessons. He refused to allow the army to become the “handmaid” of civilian opposition groups and said he was still prepared to lead the way in a “spearhead” role, but only if backed by a broad-based political movement, of which there was still no sign at all. The task of the civilian opposition groups was to create this movement and not issue “instructions” to the army, for which they ho re no responsibility. Both men were clearly right, and it was indeed for this very reason that their conversation ended in a falling-out. They never saw each other again.⁴⁷

Apart from this and a few other isolated cases, what was missing in the resistance on the whole was not passion, strength, or personal courage. There was no lack of conviction that “the wagon is headed for the abyss and has to be stopped,” in the words of a common metaphor of the time. What the resistance did feel the want of, though, was a widely acknowledged central figure whose authority and confidence could draw together all these brooding individuals, estranged by contradictory goals and approaches and united only by their disgust for the regime. Beck was certainly not this person. He was too pensive, philosophical, and inclined to defer action. Hitler’s opponents sensed this shortcoming, as can be seen from the diaries of Ulrich von Hassell, who often speaks of the officer or the man for whom everything lay waiting. Such a man would need a spark of “Catilinarian energy” to be able to depose Hitler and would need also to shed all the scruples and misgivings that repeatedly hobbled the conspirators during the first phase of the resistance. That meant, as one of the conspirators pointed out, a readiness to “do things that others might never understand or undertake themselves.”⁴⁸

5. THE NEW GENERATION

Among the consequences of the failed November conspiracy was a shift in the center of