Plotting Hitler's Death

would have changed. The Allies would not have altered their aims, abandoning their demand for unconditional surrender, nor would they have modified the decision made later at Yalta to occupy and divide Germany. It is also unlikely that the myth that Germany had been sabotaged from within would yet again have arisen, as many feared it would. There is little reason to share Goerdeler’s optimism that, if he and his colleagues had gained access to the radio waves “for just twenty-four hours” and freely proclaimed the truth about the Nazis, a wave of indignation would have swept the Reich. Even less justified was his hope that Hitler could then have been deposed with­out violence. There is, however, at least a grain of truth to Goerdeler’s version of events: although many individuals have pub­lished defenses of their activities during the Hitler years, no signifi­cant attempt has ever been made to exculpate the Third Reich itself. Public horror over the depth and extent of its crimes-the thing Goerdeler always counted on-has not permitted such forgiveness. The Nazi regime, like totalitarian governments everywhere, proved unable to generate a sustaining mythology, except among the few diehards whose fate was linked to Hitler.

In the final analysis, the German resistance cannot be measured by the futility of its efforts or by its unfulfilled hopes. Although it had very little influence on the course of history, it nevertheless radically changed how we view those years. History consists not only of those dates and great events we commemorate but also, and perhaps more tellingly, of deeds motivated by self-respect and moral commitment. Beck, Schulenburg, Goerdeler, and others believed that the issue of whether the Nazi regime was ultimately brought down from without or overthrown from within would have an enormous effect on Ger­many’s reputation and reacceptance into the ranks of civilized na­tions.³⁵ On a moral plane, failing in the attempt is as worthy as succeeding.

The importance of the resistance cannot seriously be challenged. Opinions continue to vary on almost every facet of it: its alliances, its view of society, its illusions, its passivity, and the resolve it finally mustered. The main questions about it, though, were raised early on. The day after the attack on Hitler, Emmi Bonhoeffer returned to Berlin to find her husband, Klaus, and her brother, Justus Delbruck, clearing the wreckage of a neighbor’s house. When they sat down to rest amid the ruins, she asked whether the two men could draw any lesson at all from the failure of the plot. There was a momentary pause while they weighed their answer. Finally Delbruck responded in a way that captured the pathos and paradox of the resistance: “I think it was good that it happened, and good too, perhaps, that it did not succeed.”³⁶

NOTES

Preface

1. Among the major titles discussed here are Hans Bernd Gisevius, Bis zum bittern Ende (Zurich, 1954); Helmuth Groscurth, Tagebucher eines Abwehroffiziers, 1938- 1940 (Stuttgart, 1970); Ulrich von Hassell, Die Hassell-Tagebucher 1938-1944: Aufzeichnungen vom Andern Deutschland, ed. Friedrich Hiller von Gaertingen, rev. and exp. ed. (Berlin, 1988); and Hans Rothfels, Deutsche Opposition gegen Hitler Eine Wurdigung, exp. ed. (Tubingen, 1969). See also A Note on the Texts at the end of this volume.

2. Alexander Stahlberg, Die verdammte Pflicht: Erinnerungen, 1932-1945 (Ber­lin and Frankfurt, 1994), 456ff.

3. Karl Dietrich Bracher, Das deutsche Dilemma: Leidenswege der politischen Emanzipation (Munich, 1971), 158.

4. Peter Hoffmann lists a large number of these organizations in Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat: Der Kampf der Opposition gegen Hitler, 3rd ed. (Munich, 1979), 34ff, 226ff. The motives, goals, and activities of some of them, however, remain virtually unknown.

1. The Resistance That Never Was

1. Walter Frank, “Zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus,” Wille und Macht (1934), 1.

2. Count Harry Kessler, Tagebucher, 1918-1937 (Frankfurt, 1962), 702. For more about Hitler’s seizure of power, about which only a little can be said here, see Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die deutsche Diktatur: Entstehung, Struktur, Folgen des Na­tionalsozialismus (Cologne and Berlin, 1969), 209ff.

3. Wilhelm Hoegner, Flucht vor Hitler (Munich, 1977), 56.

4. Goebbels’s introduction to Hitler’s speech in the Berlin Sportpalast on Feb. 10, I933; rpt. in Hitlers Machtergreifung, by Josef and Ruth Becker (Munich, 1983), 59-60.

5. See Heinz Hohne, Die Machtergreifung: Deutschlands Weg in die Hitlerdiktatur (Reinbek, 1983), 279ff.

6. Fritz Stern, “Der Nationalsozialismus als Versuchung,” Der Traum vom Frieden und die Versuchung der Macht: Deutsche Geschichte im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1988).

7. Qtd. in Dorothea Beck, Julius Leber: Sozialdemokrat zwischen Reform und Widerstand (Berlin, 1983), 257.

8. Hoegner, Flucht, 111ff., esp. 122-23.

9. Letter to her parents, Jan. 30, 1933; qtd. in Ger van Roon, “Widerstand und Krieg,” Der Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus: Die deutsche Gesellschaft und der Widerstand gegen Hitler, ed. Jurgen Schmadecke and Peter Steinbach (Mu­nich, 1986), 55.

10. Martin H. Sommerfeldt, Ich war dabei: Die Verschworung der Damonen (Darmstadt, 1949), 42.

11. See Peter Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat: Der Kampf der Opposition gegen Hitler, 3rd ed. (Munich, 1979), 31-32.

12. Qtd. in Andre Francois-Poncet, Botschafter in Berlin, 1931-1938 (Berlin and Mainz, 1962), 136.

13. Heinrich Bruning, Memoiren, 1918-1934 (Stuttgart, 1970), 657.

14. Julius Leber, qtd. in Hagen Schulze, Weimar: Deutschland, 1917-1933 (Ber­ lin, 1982), 313.

15. Breitscheid qtd. in Fabian von Schlabrendorff, Offiziere gegen Hitler (Frank­ furt and Hamburg, 1959), 12; Leber, Ein Mann geht seinen Weg: Schriften, Reden und Briefe von Julius Leber (Berlin, 1952), 123-24.

16. Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militargerichishof Nurnberg, 14. November 1945-1. Oktober 1946 (Nuremberg, 1949), vol. 41, 267.

17. Qtd. in Count Lutz Schwerin von Krosigk, Es geschah in Deutschland. Menschenbilder unseres Jahrhunderts (Tubingen and Stuttgart, 1951), 147; Politische Studien 10 (1959): 92.

18. See Erich Mathias and Rudolf Morsey, eds., Das Ende der Parteien 1933 (Dusseldorf, 1960), 152ff.

19. Mathias and Morsey, Ende, 175ff.

20. Mathias and Morsey, Ende, 692, 698.

21. The term is Gunther Weisenborn’s.

22. Karl Otmar von Aretin, qtd. in Ulrich Cartarius, Opposition gegen Hitler (Berlin, 1984), 14.

23. Konrad Heiden, Geburt des Dritten Reiches: Die Geschichte des Nationalsozi­alismus bis Herbst 1933, 2nd ed. (Zurich, 1934), 260.