Plotting Hitler's Death

look like nothing more than a passionate debating society. Moltke’s elation at Freisler’s conclusion that Moltke did nothing, ar­ranged nothing, and planned no violent acts-that he merely thought-remains one of the keys to understanding the resistance. German philosophy is often said lo be rather removed from reality, and this characterization certainly holds true for the German resis­tance. All the discussion papers, draft constitutions, cabinet lists, and endless debates about a new order were at least partially an escape from the practical needs of the moment. Only a few conspirators avoided the temptation to indulge in theorizing. Indeed, it seems likely that if Stauffenberg had not appeared on the scene the conspir­ators would have spent the rest of the war discussing with great pro­fundity the many insurmountable problems impeding them.

Closer examination also reveals that a deep melancholy settled over the conspirators as a whole (excluding, of course, the indomitably optimistic Goerdeler). Even Tresckow was said to suffer from it; Yorck was described at one point as having been “very serious and sad the last few weeks,” and Trott observed just before the assassination attempt: “If this colossus Hitler falls, he will drag us all into the abyss.”²⁷ At some deeper level, the conspirators all seemed to realize that their chances of success were small. The assassination of Hitler would not necessarily liberate Germany from Nazi tyranny. All it would do for certain was free German soldiers from their loyalty oaths and possibly rouse some senior officers from their moral slum­ber. But those results would not necessarily have been any more decisive than the successful launch of Operation Valkyrie. The real struggle would have only then begun, and its outcome would by no means have been certain. Goerdeler’s objections to violence were based not only on moral principles but on practical political consider­ations as well: he feared it might lead to civil war, thereby destroying the last of the conspirators’ hopes; to defeat on the battle fronts, especially in the East; and to chaos and lawlessness. Finally, Germany might be forced to surrender unconditionally, a result he hoped to the end to avoid.

Goerdeler may well have understood the uncertain consequences of Hitler’s assassination better than those who advocated it. Stauf­fenberg, however, thought in different terms. Determined to over­throw the Nazi regime, he knew that there was no realistic alternative to violence. He felt it was absurd to attempt, as Carl Langbehn and Johannes Popitz had, to turn the Nazis against one another or to undermine the system from within. No less unrealistic, to his mind, was Goerdeler’s hope that a public debate with Hitler would trigger a broad popular uprising. If there were no alternatives worth discuss­ing, then the only way to break out of the conspirators’ “little debat­ing circle,” as Stauffenberg called it, was clearly to assassinate Hitler and stage a coup.

Like Goerdeler, Stauffenberg was still confident that an anti-Nazi government would be able to work out an arrangement with the Al­lies and avoid unconditional surrender. Julius Leber sought in vain to disabuse him of this illusion. In a paper apparently written by Stauffenberg himself and left behind in army headquarters on Bendlerstrasse on July 20, the hope was expressed that Germany would remain a “significant factor in the constellation of powers” and that the Wehrmacht would be an “effective instrument” in bringing about negotiations “on an equal footing” with the Allies.²⁸ The tenacity with which Stauffenberg clung to this misconception has often been noted. Perhaps, as some commentators have speculated, he needed it as much as he needed his moral outrage in order to take action.²⁹ After all, any clearheaded assessment of the situation could only have led to the conclusion that events should be allowed to play themselves out to the bitter end. The historian Gordon Craig regards the German conspirators as incurable “romantics,” and his characterization is probably apt, even in respect to Stauffenberg. But the critical under­tone of that judgment denies them the dignity of their efforts, how­ever desperate, impulsive, and irrational they may have been.

The particular heroism of the German resistance resides precisely in the hopelessness of the conspirators’ position, in what one historian calls the “last hurrah of a lost cause.”³⁰ Utterly without support or encouragement from within or without, they carried on the struggle even though, by the end, no national or tangible political interest could be advanced. Thus the assassination attempt of July 20 was launched in the spirit of Tresckow’s words to Stauffenberg: “coute que coute”—do it “whatever the cost.” Stauffenberg surely knew that the political goals he was serving by killing Hitler were now a mere fan­tasy. To the Allied demand for unconditional surrender he and his friends responded with an equally unconditional determination to act, motivated at this point by only the most abstract and general ideals: the dignity of humankind, justice, responsibility, self-respect. It is revealing that all discussion of the “right psychological moment,” which had played so prominent a role in the debates of previous years, had long since ceased.

In the end success or failure no longer mattered very much. All that remained was to make a dramatic gesture disavowing Hitler and everything his regime stood for. Tresckow’s words to Stauffenberg have become the most memorable phrase of the resistance because they convey this idea in its most forceful form and express the need for action regardless of the political or practical consequences.

The July 20 attack was, therefore, primarily a symbolic act. Those who point disparagingly to the hopelessness of the conspirators’ undertaking or the inadequateness of their planning fail to see the real significance. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the decision to attack was a decision for martyrdom. Schulenburg made this explicit late in the evening of July 20 when the idea of taking flight came up again: “We must drain this cup to the dregs,” he said to Hans Fritzsche, “we must sacrifice ourselves.”³¹

Given that spirit, accusations of treason and disloyalty weighed relatively lightly on the conspirators, and concerns about the success of their mission could no longer hold them back. A few days before the coup attempt Tresckow confided to a friend that “in all likelihood everything will go wrong”; asked if the action was necessary neverthe­less, he replied simply, “Yes, even so.”³² That is the key without which nothing can be understood. The purpose of July 20 was the gesture itself; it was its own justification. The conspirators believed that failure would not detract from the idea behind the attack. Some seem to have believed that failure would actually cast their actions in an even purer light. As Stieff replied when asked what had driven him to do what he had done, “We were purifying ourselves.”³³

It is fitting that the conspirators had their great moment in court, when, free of the burden of reality, they could focus on their thoughts, principles, and beliefs. They utilized fully the few opportu­nities that the raging Freisler allowed them. Despite his efforts at humiliation, they managed to prevent the regime from using the trials as a crowd-pleasing spectacle. Public reports of the trials were quickly cut back and then stopped entirely in what was probably the most searing propaganda defeat the regime had ever suffered.

The German resistance has been called a unique phenomenon because it sought, in an era still imbued with nationalistic fervor, to oppose the policies of its own government-and at a moment when that government was enjoying one victory after another. To counter those triumphs, the resistance could offer only its conviction that no amount of success justified the government’s crimes.³⁴ Also remark­able was the evolution that the thinking of many members of the resistance was forced to undergo in extremely trying circumstances: despite the considerable power of tradition, conservatives and others began to question and ultimately to abandon such narrow concepts as the nation-state, a process that never advanced, however, beyond the initial stages. But the laudatory early accounts of the resistance tended to ignore the sympathy that many opponents of the regime originally felt for Hitler, or at least for some of his aims, and depicted these men as timeless heroes, divorced from their times. These ac­counts miss the drama that shapes so many of the conspirators’ lives. More to the point, they make the participants stranger and even more remote than they may already have seemed.

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The aura of failure that surrounded the German resistance from the outset continued after its demise. As we have seen, some of the con­spirators, especially those in the Kreisau Circle, entertained the idea of a united Europe, but they can hardly be said to have laid its foun­dations, since no one built on their work or even referred to it. If the resistance had any legacy at all, it was the aversion to totalitarianism that characterized all political parties in the early days of the German Federal Republic, regardless of their other differences. Although this sentiment was a reaction to the entire experience of the Hitler years, it was the resistance that did most to bolster and legitimize it.

Among the enduring lessons of the failed resistance is that it is virtually impossible to overthrow a totalitarian regime from within. Even the events in the Communist world in 1989-90 do little to challenge this point. The most promising act of resistance was actually undertaken before the fact, when Kurt von Hammerstein, the chief of army command, went to see Hindenburg on the morning of January 26, 1933, to voice his grave misgivings about Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. All the later plans, deeds, and sacrifices of the resistance may have represented moral victories, but politically they were con­demned to failure.

The question has periodically been raised as to what would have happened if either the July 20 assassination attempt or the coup had succeeded. The sobering-and virtually unanimous-consensus is that nothing