Why was the second bomb left unused and simply thrown out of the car on the way to the airfield?-are best answered with reference to the unconscious aversion to the murder of a head of state.
Many highly placed officers were also dissuaded from joining the opposition by their vivid memories of Hitler’s amazing string of triumphs both before the war and in its early years. They belonged to a generation that had known nothing but defeat and humiliation, from the First World War to Versailles to the never-ending insults of the Weimar Republic. They were therefore all the more impressed by Hitler’s victories, scored time and again in flagrant defiance of the warnings and advice of experts. Hitler’s uncanny success did much to undermine the officers’ confidence in their own judgment, especially as they had been trained and were accustomed, like military strategists in all other countries, to think strictly in terms of outcome.
A number of officers were also cool toward the resistance because, by the time war broke out, the notion of
These were the dilemmas facing men like Rundstedt, Leeb, Sodenstern, and Kluge as they decided how they would respond to the impending assassination attempt and coup. They were by no means typical Nazi generals and they did not betray the conspirators, but neither did they provide encouragement or support. “Just do it!” is how General Heusinger responded on a number of occasions to requests from Tresckow’s circle to join the conspiracy.20 Like many others, Heusinger himself preferred to withdraw into a posture of more or less blind-or at least silent-obedience. A considerable number of these officers were capable of realizing that adherence to abstract ideals about a soldier’s duty would ultimately bring catastrophe on Germany and some, including Manstein and Bock, were expressly told as much by colleagues in the opposition. Most of them, however, continued to shrug their shoulders and seek solace in rationalizations, all the while nurturing the hope that disaster would ultimately be avoided, as it had been so many times in the past.
There were also those who, though they did not join the resistance, found the conflict of values unbearable and sought escape in death. This is the only way that Gerd von Tresckow’s insistence on incriminating himself can be understood. The commanding general at Cherbourg, Erich Marcks, was acting on a similar impulse when he headed into the front lines, telling those around him that a soldier’s death was the best a man could meet. Field Marshal Walter Model served the regime loyally for many years, but in mid-April 1945, while commanding his army group in the Ruhr valley, he was suddenly seized by the conviction that he had been serving a false master and a false cause; in despair, he committed suicide. His successor, Albert Kesselring, returned to business as usual; he inaugurated his command by complaining to his general staff that nowhere on his journey through the army area had he seen a hanged deserter, a sure sign of ineffective military leadership.21
A final reason for the reluctance of most officers to assist the resistance was its lack of support among the general population, a state of affairs continually lamented by voices in the army ranging from Chief of General Staff Halder to General Wagner. The upper echelons of the military were staffed largely by men of high social rank who had little truck with the common people, and in the wake of the Reichenau and Fritsch affairs, nothing so impressed them as Hitler’s ability to sway the masses and make himself their wildly acclaimed spokesman. An attempt was made to use Wilhelm Leuschner’s network of former trade union members to bring the opposition message to the people, but this single initiative was not enough to break the social isolation of the rebels. Inquiries conducted primarily by Julius Leber and Alfred Delp in late 1943 indicated that most industrial workers remained loyal to the regime, even as the war ground on. Security Service reports on the mood of the people in the days following July 20 concluded that Hitler was increasingly popular even in such traditionally “red” areas as Berlin’s Wedding, a heavily working-class district.22 Although the resistance had for years been concerned with the problem of how to reach the general population and enlighten it as to the criminality of the Nazi regime, a satisfactory solution was never found.
This was one of the main differences between the resistance in Germany and its counterparts in the occupied countries. These groups, too, represented only tiny minorities (not until after the war did everyone claim membership, as national pride demanded). Nevertheless they built genuine, viable resistance movements, which, unlike the opposition in Germany, could count on support from the general population. They had an infrastructure, bases, and battle-ready units. They also had a clear and simple purpose: to drive the enemy from the motherland. There were no torn loyalties, broken oaths, or concerns about treason, no need to engage in esoteric debates about the new order to be instituted after the Nazis were driven out. In short, the resistance movements in the occupied countries found moral, political, or nationalist justifications within themselves.
In addition, they enjoyed psychological and material support from the Allies. When Anthony Eden told Bishop George Bell in the summer of 1943 that the German resistance, in contrast to the movements elsewhere, had never demonstrated a thoroughgoing determination to oppose the regime, Bell responded that the others had been promised liberation in return for their efforts while the Germans were offered nothing more than unconditional surrender.23 Although the clear aim of all resistance movements was the overthrow of Nazi rule, for the Germans that meant surrendering their homeland to bitter foes, not only from the West but also, and much more terrifying, from the East. It is hard not to appreciate the psychological torment of those Germans who abhorred Hitler and were horrified by his crimes yet knew what Stalin had proved capable of, from the Red Terror to mass murders in the forest of Katyn.
The view toward the West was different, but as we have seen, there was never a meeting of minds between the German resistance and the American and British governments. The objections raised by Eden were undoubtedly justified. But the psychological warfare waged by the West, the most important manifestation of which was the bombing campaign, has been rightly deplored.24 Contrary to expectations, it did not demoralize the German people but rather tended to rally them around the Nazis in a gesture of defiance that benefited the regime at a time when it had grown increasingly concerned about the atmosphere of anxiety, apathy, and war weariness following the reversals of the winter of 1942-43. Paradoxically, the Allied bombing campaign only succeeded in driving the people back into the arms of the regime, as they heeded the instinct to stand together in times of mortal danger. Meanwhile the opposition grew even more isolated.
Thus, the decision to join the resistance also meant, for a German, withdrawal from the social mainstream and personal loneliness. It meant the rearrangement of one’s entire life and reliance on the few people who shared one’s views. Long-term friendships were severed and relations with the outside world were necessarily tainted by suspicion, deception, and duplicity. Deciding to resist the Nazis meant placing one’s family and friends in serious danger. Writing to his British friend Lionel Curtis in June 1942, Moltke described the awkward lengths to which he and all the other conspirators had to go in their daily lives. Oster and Tresckow never once dared to meet or to speak directly, for example, despite the countless questions they had to resolve or clarify.25
All these special circumstances gave the resistance its highly individualistic, insular character. Postwar analyses have blamed the bourgeoisie, the army, the churches, the traditional curriculum in the schools, and various other social factors for the Germans’ failure to resist the Nazis more resolutely. In actual fact, no institution, no ideological current from either the left or the right, no tradition, nor any social class proved sufficient to confer on its members or adherents immunity from Nazi blandishments. Resistance was entirely a matter of personal character, whether it occurred in the bourgeoisie, the unions, or the army. The conspirators’ social background or intellectual training provided them at most with support against occasional doubts or the temptation to give up. The German resistance has thus quite properly been called a “revolt of conscience.”26
The large role played by personal determination and individual strength of character turned out, ironically, to be one of the reasons the resistance failed. It explains the lack of a unifying ideology, the disagreements, and the characteristic indecision. One person’s views were apt to raise the hackles of someone else, whose convictions would in turn be denounced by still others. The ensuing rounds of discussion and debate soon degenerated into arguments over basic philosophies that demanded to be resolved, everyone seemed to believe, rather than simply papered over with easy compromises. The result was the inaction that in retrospect makes the German resistance
