Plotting Hitler's Death

10, 1940]).

3. Halder, Kriegstagebuch, vol. 2, 335ff.

4. Gerhard Ritter, Carl Goerdeler und die deutsche Widerstandsbewegung (Stuttgart, 1954), 323. For Jodl’s statement at Nuremberg, see Prozess gegen die Hauptkriegsverbrecher vor dem Internationalen Militargerichishof Nurnberg, 14. November 1945-1. Oktober 1946 (Nuremberg, 1949), vol. 15, 339.

5. The meeting, described by Ulrich Hassell, took place on April 8, Hassell- Tagebucher, 248 (entry of May 4, 1941). For the guidelines themselves, see Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, “Kommissarbefehl und Massenexekutionen sowjetischer Kreigsgefangener,” Anatomie des SS- Staates, by Hans Buchheim et al. (Olten and Freiburg, 1965), vol. 2, 223-24 and 225ff.

6. Archiv Peter, ed., Spiegelbild einer Verschworung: Die Kaltenbrunner-Berichte uber das Attentat vom 20. Juli 1944 (Stuttgart, 1961), 368.

7. Bodo Scheurig, Henning von Tresckow: Eine Biographie (Dusseldorf, 1970), 70.

8. Scheurig, Tresckow, 84.

9. Rudolph-Christoph von Gersdorff, Soldat im Untergang: Lebensbilder (Frankfurt and Berlin, 1979), 87.

10. Gersdorff, Soldat, 87ff. Gersdorff records many further vivid details. The inkwell scene was probably meant figuratively.

11. See Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, “Kommissarbefehl,” 153, and Heinrich Uhlig, “Der verbrecherische Befehl,” Die Vollmacht des Gewissens (Berlin and Frankfurt, I960), vol. 2, 320ff. Christian Streit takes a more critical view of the generals in Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen, 1941-1945 (Stuttgart, 1978), 83ff. Gersdorff wrote in the army group war diary: “In all longer conversations with officers, I was eventually asked about the shooting of Jews, with­out my having mentioned them in any way. I got the impression that virtually the entire officer corps opposed the shooting of Jews, prisoners, and commissars. They opposed the shooting of commissars especially because it strengthened the enemy’s will to fight. The shootings are seen as a blot on the honor of the German army and especially of the German officer corps” (qtd. in Peter Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat: Der Kampf der Opposition gegen Hitler, 3rd. ed. [Munich, 1979], 334). For Arthur Nebe, see Hermann Graml, “Die deutsche Militaropposition vom Sommer 1940 bis zum Fruhjahr 1943,” Vollmacht des Gewissens, vol. 2, 442. Gersdorff said he noticed that Nebe carried out the ordered mass executions much more often than he admitted to the army group.

12. Hassell, Hassell-Tagebucher, 256 (entry of May 29, 1941).

13. The staff officer was Friedrich Olbricht (Suddeutsche Zeitung, Aug. 7, 1986). See Heinz Boberach, ed., Meldungen aus dem Reich: Auswahl aus den geheimen Lageberichten des Sicherheitssdienstes der SS, 1939-1944 (Neuwied and Berlin, 1965), 155ff. See also Marlis G. Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen: Stimmungen und Haltung der deutschen Bevolkerung im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Dusseldorf and Vienna, 1970), 206ff, which cites the observation of the chief public prosecutor of Bamberg that “much of the population was still incapable of understanding that Germany would assume the role in the world as the leading country in Europe through the direct absorption of the eastern territories.”

14. Horst Muhleisen, ed., Helmuth Stieff: Briefe (Berlin, 1991), 127 (Sept. 5, 1941) and 138 (Nov. 24, 1941); Hans Meier-Welcker, Aufzeichnungen eines Generalstabsoffiziers, 1939-1942 (Freiburg, 1982), 121. The pogrom in Kovno, ordered by Heydrich, took place between June 25 and June 29, 1941.

15. See the extensive description in Gersdorff, Soldat, 96ff. Gersdorff, too, re­ ported the incident to the OKH. A notation on the original document indicates that it was shown to Brauchitsch, although after the war he claimed he could “not remem­ber anymore.”

16. Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941-1944 (London, 1953), 44.

17. See Gersdorff, Soldat, 84 and 99; for Stauffenberg, see Christian Muller, Oberst i.G. Stauffenberg: Eine Biographie (Dusseldorf, 1970), 203-04. For the im­ portance of the mass murders in the East as a motivation for the resistance, see also the so-called Kaltenbrunner reports, Spiegelbild, 424ff.

18. Muhleisen, Stieff, 123 (Aug. 23, 1941): “This bloody amateurism, which is still supported by such glorious representatives as Keitel and Jodl, may well, God knows, cost us the war.”

19. Hassell, Hassell-Tagebucher, 278 (entry of Oct. 4, 1941).

20. Hassell, Hassell-Tagebucher, 280 (entry of Nov. 1, 1941).

21. Peter Bor, Gesprache mit Halder (Wiesbaden, 1950), 214.

22. See Gersdorff, Soldat, 93; Henry Pickler, Hitlers Tischgesprache im Fuhrerhauptquartier, 1941-1942 (Stuttgart, 1965), passim; and Werner Jochmann, ed., Adolf Hitler: Monologe im Fuhrerhauptquartier, 1941-1944 (Hamburg, 1980), passim.

23. Muhleisen, Stieff, 150 (Jan. 10, 1942); Hassell, Hassell- Tagebucher, 283 (entry of Nov. 30, 1941).

24. Karl Silex, cited in Scheurig, Tresckow, 125-26.

25. Hassell, Hassell-Tagebucher, 307 (entry of March 28, 1942). Gerhard Ritter already speaks in the winter of 1941-2 of a troika consisting of Beck, Goerdeler, and Witzleben that will form the provisional government after a coup (Goerdeler, 348).

26. It was Olbricht’s widow who called attention to this maxim. She set herself the admirable task of filling in the blanks in research on the resistance and correcting the neglect from which Olbricht has always suffered and the errors that studies of July 20 have made in assigning credit. See Helena P. Page, General Friedrich Ol­bricht: Ein Mann des 20 Juli (Bonn and Berlin, 1992).

27. Fabian von Schlabrendorff, Offiziere gegen Hitler (Frankfurt and Hamburg, 1959), 55-56. See also Gersdorff, Soldat, 124-25.

28. Schlabrendorff, Offiziere, 55.

29. Hans Bernd Gisevius, Bis zum Bittern Ende (Zurich, 1954), 389.

30. Gisevius, Ende, 508. Goerdeler informed Gerhard Ritter in late 1942 of the various views on arresting Hitler (Goerdeler, 535, n. 14).

31. Hoffmann, Widerstand, 338.

32. Qtd. in Scheurig, Tresckow, 133.

33. H. Kaiser, qtd. in Count Romedio Galeazzo von Thun-Hohenstein, Der Verschworer: General Oster und die Militaropposition (Cologne and Berlin, 1969), 224.

34. Count Detlef von Schwerin, Dann sind’s die besten Kopfe, die man henkt: Die junge Generation im deutschen Widerstand (Munich, 1991), 289.

35. The available information about why the Boeselager plan was not carried out is contradictory, and it is probably impossible now to clarify the course of events. See Hoffmann, Widerstand, 351, and his Die Sicherheit des Diktators: Hitlers Leibwachen, Schutzmassnahmen, Residenzen, Hauptquartiere (Munich, 1975), 165-66. Scheurig does not discuss the plan. For the course of the visit to Smolensk, see in addition to the works cited above Schlabrendorff, Offiziere, 71ff. After the war Schlabrendorff said that Kluge could not be persuaded to agree to an assassination attempt by the Boeselager unit; see Thun-Hohenstein, Verschworer, 230.

36. See Hoffmann, Widerstand, 353 and 760, n. 93, and Schlabrendorff, Offiziere, 74-75.

37. Gersdorff, Soldat, 128-29.

38. Gersdorff, Soldat, 132-33.

39. Hassell, Hassell-Tagebucher, 347 (entry of Feb. 14, 1943).

40. Qtd. in Hoffmann, Widerstand, 370. For Groscurth’s message from encircled Stalingrad, see his Tagebucher eines Abwehroffiziers, 1938-1940 (Stuttgart, 1970), 93. Groscurth was taken prisoner along with the remnants of the Sixth Army, soon contracted typhus, and died on