Plotting Hitler's Death

that the German officer who was feeding him information must be “a pitiful fellow.”⁶

On the evening of May 9, 1940, Oster gave Sas the code word for the imminent German attack in the West: “Danzig.” Sas hastened to the embassy to forward this information. The Ministry of War in The Hague hesitated, however, calling the embassy back to express its doubts, and ultimately seemed unwilling, out of fear of the Germans, to give orders for the mobilization of troops. The reaction in Belgium was no different. Consequently, when the invasion finally began in the early hours of May 10, the German units took their opponents so much by surprise that “Fortress Holland” fell within five days and Belgium soon thereafter. German units poured into France, using what Churchill called a “scythe cut”—a strategy developed by Erich von Manstein in the face of opposition from the OKH and substituted by Hitler at the last minute for the traditional strategic plan, which the Fuhrer disparaged as “that old Schlieffen thing” (a reference to the attack on France in World War I). Within just a few weeks, the Germans overwhelmed the still slightly superior Allied forces, and on June 14 they marched through the Porte Maillot into the heart of Paris. On the same day, Guderian’s panzer units reached the Swiss border and broke into the Maginot Line from the rear. This line had not only dominated French strategic thinking but also had misled France into the deceptive, self-absorbed sense of contentment that now proved so fatal.

On June 17 the French government made its “melancholy deci­sion” to capitulate. Four days later Hitler reached the apex of his career: In the forest of Compiegne, where the terms of the armistice had been dictated to the Germans on November 11, 1918, a French delegation now signed the surrender. With his sense for high drama, the Fuhrer invested the occasion with all the signs of symbolic reparation. The railroad car in which the historic ceremony had been held Twenty-two years earlier was retrieved from the museum in which it had been displayed. In the little clearing, a German flag was draped over the granite monument, whose inscription stated that at this place “the criminal pride of the German empire” had finally been broken. Hitler had sworn in countless speeches never to rest until the humiliation of November 11, 1918, had been erased. Finally his goal had been achieved. The “deepest disgrace of all times,” according to the text of the truce, was expunged.

The outburst of joy that this triumph prompted in Germany far surpassed that surrounding any of Hitler’s other successes, despite the fact that the decision to launch the western war had seemed senseless and obstinate to many when it started. Many lingering res­ervations, as well as new doubts about the Nazis, were allayed that day-or even transmuted into respect and admiration. The victorious generals, having gorged on titles, Knight’s Crosses, and grants for distinguished service to the state,” as Gisevius remarked bitterly, had little desire to recall their dire predictions about the offensive and felt forced to acknowledge that Hitler had perceived the weaknesses of the Western powers much better than they.⁷ In the years that fol­lowed, it was these brilliant successes, much more than opportunism or personal weakness (although they also existed), that generated the mysterious confidence in Hitler’s genius that always seemed to resurface despite setbacks.

For the German opponents of Nazism, the victory in France brought profound discouragement. Their only, albeit paradoxical, consolation lay in the fact that Hitler did not crown his triumph with serious peace initiatives; he savored it greedily but only for a short time before turning to new ventures. At some point, they thought, even Hitler’s luck must turn and Germany’s strength be exhausted. As if taking his leave from the cause that had so consumed him over the years, Canaris said that the resistance had “shrunk to fewer than the five fingers on one hand.”⁸

The Security Service (SD) reports on the mood of the general population in the second half of June 1940 speak of unprecedented social consensus. According to them, church groups were still making “defeatist” statements, but even the Communists had ceased their oppositional activities, thanks in large part to the Hitler- Stalin pact. The surviving remnants of the Social Democratic Party had dis­integrated into nothing more than apolitical circles of friends who met to reminisce about the days when their cause had seemed to be the wave of the future. Occasionally they produced leaflets to stir fading memories. Those party leaders who had remained in Germany had withdrawn into their private lives or joined the various civilian resistance groups, which offered at least intellectual opposition to the regime.

Recognizing that it was nearly impossible to mount a broad-based coup, the plotters resorted to assassination attempts. In May 1940 Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg resigned as regional commissioner in Silesia and joined his reserve regiment, because he believed that he could serve the resistance more effectively from within the army. Together with Eugen Gerstenmaier, a theologian and member of the Kreisau Circle, he attempted to form a commando unit to undertake Hitler’s assassination. They failed, however, to assemble the nearly one hundred people required, and their plans were frustrated by transfers, orders to travel on official business at inopportune times, and Hitler’s unpredictable changes of location.

Also busy conspiring, from their positions in Paris, were members of the staff of Erwin von Witzleben, commander in chief of the west­ern army groups, who was promoted to field marshal after the French campaign. Two members of this group, Major Alexander von Voss and Captain Ulrich Wilhelm Schwerin von Schwanenfeld, hoped to have Hitler shot by sharpshooters during the repeatedly postponed parade of German troops down the Champs-Elysees. Schwerin was also determined to kill Hitler with a hand grenade upon his first visit to the western front. But Hitler never went to Witzleben’s headquarters, and the parade down the Champs-Elysees was finally canceled once and for all on July 20, 1940, partly to spare the feelings of the French population and partly because Goring could not guarantee safety from British air attacks.

The Nazi regime exploited the victory over France and the distractions it afforded to advance its special agenda with less outside inter­ference than ever before. In the sections of Poland under his administration, Governor General Hans Frank undertook a mam­moth “security operation” in May involving widespread mass execu­tions. These activities, he said, had been “intentionally” delayed until the world “lost interest in events in the government general.”⁹

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In the summer of 1940 the civilian opposition began to gather strength, a development that cannot be ascribed solely to the silence of the generals and their withdrawal into apolitical pride over their great victory in France. Civilians like Goerdeler, Beck, Hassell, and Moltke were no less impressed by the military accomplishments of the Third Reich, but at the same time they were increasingly certain of the regime’s imminent collapse. Thanks perhaps to their greater remove from military events and their ability to think politically, they were convinced that Hitler had been carried away by his own suc­cesses and was hopelessly overextending Germany’s resources.

It is an indication of this growing confidence that in the very hour og Hitler’s greatest triumph, when he stood at the pinnacle of his power, Goerdeler was writing a paper predicting the quick end of the Nazi dictatorship. The Fuhrer would prove incapable, Goerdeler ar­gued, of ruling the conquered territories “in such a way that the honor and freedom of the peoples living there are preserved.” He concluded with Baron von Stein’s celebrated words of October 1808 urging Friedrich Wilhelm III to resist Napoleon: “The only salvation for the honest man is the conviction that the wicked are prepared for any evil.… It is worse than blindness to trust a man who has hell in his heart and chaos in his head. If nothing awaits you but disaster and suffering, at least make a choice that is noble and honorable and that will provide some consolation and comfort if things turn out poorly.”¹⁰

By this time Goerdeler had indisputably become the central figure in the civilian opposition. Although he was always surrounded by some controversy, he had established over the years an extensive net­work of like-minded friends, including business people, government officials, professors, clergymen, and labor leaders. To be sure, individ­ual members who objected to his “open risk taking” or, like Julius Leber, to his “illusions” about foreign policy, were always dropping out of the network. Others were put off by his peculiar combination of antimodernism and social progressiveness, practicality and naive idealism. Generally, though, Goerdeler managed to conciliate the many sharp differences of opinion within the network and succeeded in steadily increasing its members.

As a result Goerdeler was unanimously considered not only the hub of the civilian opposition but its driving force as well; he pushed ahead tirelessly, insisting on action and fostering confidence among the conspirators. In the end it was his indomitable spirit in the face of any adversity that most distinguished him from his associates, who were prone to feelings of hopelessness and dejection. It is still hard to say whether his curiously restricted view of people and the world around him stemmed from his ability to reduce problems to their most basic terms, a skill that all his associates found praiseworthy, or from the natural simplicity of a man who trusted all too readily that reason would ultimately prevail. Many saw in the former mayor of Leipzig a strange combination of city-hall pragmatism and Prussian enlightenment, seldom encountered in such arid purity. Darker, more complex phenomena were beyond his comprehension. The phi­losopher Theodor Litt, who was teaching in Leipzig at the time and had contacts with the Goerdeler group, remarked: “Goerdeler was a clear-headed, decent,