The Plots Against Hitler Read online

  Practically, Oster and his friends were tilting at windmills. Whatever the results of his trial might be, Fritsch was gone for good as far as Hitler was concerned. Meanwhile, he had already appointed a new commander in chief, an unimpressive compromise candidate named Walther von Brauchitsch.25 Worse still, contrary to the perception of Oster and his friends, Fritsch was never a closet resistance fighter, not even an oppositionist. Although he did become embittered, he continued to admire Hitler to his last day. Yet the quest to defend him was not completely futile, as it helped to draw the conspirators together.

  Simultaneously with Brauchitsch’s appointment, Hitler established his control over the army. Taking the war portfolio for himself, he appointed Gen. Wilhelm Keitel as his chief of staff and head of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces (OKW). Keitel, who during the war was often nicknamed Lakeitel (a pun on his name, Lakai can be translated as “lackey”), was no more than a petty bureaucrat.26 The man who was expected to represent the interests of the army to Hitler rarely dared to question or to doubt, let alone to criticize, his leader. Keitel, according to Constantine FitzGibbon, was “obsequious to his seniors and hectoring to his juniors, [and] would have well become the head waiter in an expensive and squalid night club.”27 In a way, Keitel’s appointment symbolized the new, weakened position of the Wehrmacht after the 1938 reshuffle. Fritsch was loyal to Hitler, but he could speak his mind. Keitel did not even pretend to have an independent voice. Far from being the “second pillar of the state,” alongside the party, the Wehrmacht of Keitel and Brauchitsch became a tool to be used by the Führer at will.

  The reshuffle was not limited to the military. Hitler used the opportunity to deepen the Nazification of some major government ministries, too.28 The purge created a more solid National Socialist bureaucracy in preparation for war, but simultaneously some of the demoted gravitated to the opposition clique of Oster, Gisevius, and Goerdeler. In addition to their personal embitterment and joint aspiration to protect Fritsch, many of the newly won members were deeply concerned with Hitler’s irresponsible foreign policy and incessant use of violence.

  The first venue for the purges was the foreign ministry. Hitler replaced the conservative minister Constantine von Neurath with his sidekick Joachim von Ribbentrop. Neurath, like Blomberg and Fritsch, was a loyal follower of Nazi policy but still a bit too cautious for Hitler’s taste. Ribbentrop’s appointment, which was taken badly by some conservatives at the foreign ministry, gave a pretext for establishing a minuscule opposition group in the diplomatic corps. The central actor in the cell was Erich Kordt, a young, bespectacled adviser known as a rising star in the ministry. Ironically, he was trusted even by the new Nazi minister, who relied on his expertise in international affairs and entrusted him with top-secret documents. Officially, he was a party member; he even held a high honorary rank in the SS.29

  Kordt, however, was a closet anti-Nazi and a confidant of Hans Oster. From his privileged position at the ministry, protected by Ribbentrop and his SS uniform, he was able to supply the opposition with valuable inside information. As usual, ties of kinship and friendship in the ministry were used to bring about a revolutionary mutation. Kordt’s most loyal ally was his older brother Theo, a promising young diplomat serving at the London embassy.

  Another key figure in the incumbent conspiracy at the foreign ministry was Ulrich von Hassell, the German ambassador to Italy—an old-school diplomat, a well-educated conservative, and a patriot. Hassell, too, supported Hitler right after the takeover but was later horrified by the Gestapo reign of terror, the persecution of the Jews, and the harassment of the church. In addition, he had strong professional reservations against National Socialist foreign policy, especially the alignment with Italy and Japan against the Western powers.30 He was finally sacked as part of the reshuffle of 1938, maybe as a result of his nonconformist views.

  Capitalizing on his influence in conservative circles, Goerdeler spread the message of resistance among old-school politicians and noblemen. One of his closest allies in this endeavor was the colorful aristocrat Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin, a major landholder and politician in rural Pomerania. Kleist, renowned for his honesty and bravery, was an implacable enemy of the Nazi regime from January 1933 onward.31 The staunch conservative, monarchist, and antidemocrat was one of few members of the German National People’s Party to believe that the real enemy was not on the left but on the right.32 National Socialism, a new pagan religion, was bound to destroy Germany, as its race cult was diametrically opposed to Christianity and the values of the German-Prussian tradition.33 For the biblically minded Kleist, Hitler and his followers were a new reincarnation of the worshipers of Ba’al and Ashera, the old Canaanite idols. To oppose them, the true champions of faith and nation would have to be rallied, “All the knees which have not bowed unto Baal” (1 Kings 19:18).34

  Kleist’s hatred of fellow conservatives who turned into Nazis knew no bounds. The leaders of the German right, he claimed, betrayed their fatherland, religion, and nation. Therefore, in the future, people would say, “As godless as a Protestant pastor, as characterless as a Prussian civil servant, and as honorless as a Prussian officer.” He himself refused to donate money to the Nazi Party, not even a mark, and flatly declined to fly the swastika flag over his manor house. A special role awaited his son and follower Ewald-Heinrich, one of the few would-be assassins of Hitler.35

  From then on, the German resistance movement began to take shape. Lieutenant Colonel Oster connected the officers and the civilians, and through Goerdeler he came to know Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin and his conservative friends. The thrust of his efforts, though, was directed at the army itself. The biggest fish to catch was the chief of the General Staff, Ludwig Beck. The tactic was to surround him with enemies of the regime. For that purpose, Oster formed a contact with Gen. Franz Halder, a General Staff officer known as a Beck confidant and a staunch anti-Nazi. At the same time, Oster applied increasing pressure on his commander, secret service chief Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, and gradually convinced him to support the conspiracy. “Until our last breath,” Oster wrote, “we shall stand firm, according to our education as children and later as soldiers. We have nothing to fear but the wrath of God.”36

  But what does it mean to “stand firm”? Forming oppositional networks is all very well, but Oster had no clue how to overthrow the regime. He did have some key military allies, first and foremost Halder, but Halder could do nothing without the support of General Beck, his hesitant commander. In any case, the formidability of the Nazi regime and the weakness of the army precluded most options for active insurgency. The conspirators had to work slowly and carefully, as even one informer would be enough to obliterate the movement altogether. In addition, civilians could not arrange coups d’état by themselves, and only a small number of generals were even slightly sympathetic to the conspiracy.

  While Oster’s tiny network was slowly expanding, Hitler reshuffled the political cards. On March 12, 1938, following formidable diplomatic bullying, the German army entered Austria, and Hitler’s own homeland was united with the Reich. Support for the Anschluss in Austria was anyway skyrocketing, and most Austrians loudly welcomed the invading troops. The first overt act of Nazi international aggression was an astounding success, and not a shot had been fired.

  The newspaper headlines celebrated the Anschluss, and it became the major topic of discussion in the elites and the officer corps. With all the brouhaha, the ugly plot against Fritsch was forgotten. The general was acquitted by a court-martial chaired by Hermann Göring, but he never resumed his position as commander in chief. In a conversation with the Wehrmacht leadership, Hitler expressed his personal sympathy for Fritsch’s fate but insisted that as a leader, he could not go back on his word.37 The frustrated Fritsch was angry, but he consistently refused to cooperate with the opposition. “Hitler is Germany’s fate, for better or worse,” he told Hassell, the former ambassador who tried to win him over to the network.38

  The recr
uitment efforts of the network, however, were focused not on Fritsch but on the chief of the General Staff, Beck, whose internal break with the Nazi regime was drawing ever closer. Like his fellow officers, he was a firm Anschluss supporter, but unlike them, he opposed the way in which this fruit was plucked: through Hitler’s military bullying. When ordered by the Führer to draw plans for Case Otto, the code name for a German invasion of Austria, he agreed to do so only reluctantly, arguing that Germany was not yet ready. After the Anschluss, he praised the Führer for his ability to fulfill his dream without shedding blood, but the gap between him and the government was widening. The chief of the General Staff began to believe that this would be only the beginning of Hitler’s military adventures, and the result might be a disastrous world war. The unrelenting Oster, ever watchful, was quick to notice the cracks in Beck’s defenses, and turned him into a personal project. Shortly afterward, he noticed an opportunity, a large-scale international crisis that was to transform Beck’s theoretical critique of the regime into a practical one.

  4

  “In the Darkest Colors”:

  The Decision of General Beck

  BY SUMMER 1937, Field Marshal Blomberg was working on “Case Green,” a plan for the invasion of Czechoslovakia. It was clear to the generals that Hitler was striving to crash the Czech state by occupying the German-speaking Sudetenland. By doing that, he hoped to swallow the region’s formidable border fortifications, mines, iron ore, and other natural resources. The meek response of the Western powers to the Anschluss had removed the last barriers to action, and the great Sudeten crisis was on the horizon.

  Czechoslovakia, a creation of the Treaty of Versailles, was a multiethnic democracy suffering from incessant feuds between the Czech majority and the minorities.1 The most troublesome minority was the three-million-strong German community, concentrated mainly in the Sudetenland. After 1933, many of the Czech Germans had become ardent Nazis, and their leaders received orders straight from Berlin. The local Nazi offshoot, the Sudeten German Party, demanded full separation from Czechoslovakia and union with the Reich. The party chairman, Konrad Henlein, summarized his agenda in a secret 1937 memorandum: to win large parts of Czechoslovakia, not only the Sudetenland, for the German Reich.2 Hitler had applied increasing pressure on Czechoslovakia, while Britain and France, ever fearful of a new European war, were doing nothing tangible to stop him.

  On Saturday, May 20, 1938, only two months after the Anschluss, General Keitel submitted Case Green to Hitler. The scheme presupposed the annexation of Austria to the German Reich. It read, “It is my [Hitler’s] irrevocable decision to crush Czechoslovakia by military action in the near future . . . Using the opportune moment is required for success.”3 According to this plan, Germany was to occupy Czechoslovakia by use of a diplomatic provocation in order to justify, in the eyes of some European states, a military “response” and occupation. More than a few officers were uncomfortable with the plan, but very few were brave enough to show open dissent. Gen. Ludwig Beck, chief of the General Staff, was the most prominent member of this tiny group.

  A former approver of the Nazi regime, Beck had praised the 1933 takeover as the “first ray of light since 1918.” Now, however, he was horrified at the possible consequences of Hitler’s foreign policy.4 To a great extent he felt like a military Cassandra, the only one who could clearly see the approaching abyss. As a quiet, restrained, and educated officer well versed in strategy and military history, Beck believed the Clausewitzian dictum that war is the “continuation of policy by other means” and therefore must be preceded by careful political deliberations. A war is not an adventure, and a leader should never start one without a truly justified cause. In addition, Beck was one of the few officers in the General Staff who saw the army high command not only as a military tool but also as a full partner in shaping security policy. This view was completely foreign to Hitler, who saw himself as the omnipotent leader and the generals as his military yes-men.5

  When Blomberg had asked him to draft a theoretical study, code-named Schulung, on a military advance into Czechoslovakia in 1935, Beck had expressed opposition to the invasion. The chief of the General Staff was reluctant to draft such a plan, theoretical or not. At the time, his resistance was not principled but practical. Germany might invade Czechoslovakia, but only after diplomacy was exhausted, and by no means before 1940.6

  The misunderstanding between Beck and Hitler was profound. Beck certainly applauded the “breaking of the shackles of Versailles.” He, too, strove for territorial expansion and German hegemony in central Europe. He also recognized the German need for “living space” (Lebensraum), but his interpretation of the term was different from the Führer’s: not unlimited expansion in the east but, rather, limited takeovers (peaceful, if possible) of German-speaking territories, mainly Austria and the Sudetenland. Unlike Hitler, Beck recognized the principle of self-determination and was unenthusiastic about controlling “non-German” nations. After Germany had seized its “rights” and expanded to the 1914 borders (plus Austria and the Sudetenland), further expansion should be economic, not military. Hitler, by contrast, envisioned a large-scale European war, leading to the defeat of France, the crumbling of Russia, and the occupation of coveted Lebensraum in the east. Beck was opposed to such policy for moral and practical reasons. For him, though war was “part of the divine order,” a real statesman should never start one unnecessarily. He was particularly opposed to an aggressive war against Britain and France. “The three nations share Europe together,” he wrote in 1937, “and their problems are therefore to be solved diplomatically, taking the balance of power into account.”7

  Indeed, Beck’s worst nightmare was a head-on clash between the three nations on the Sudeten question. His dread over such a confrontation and its aftermath was expressed in a stream of memoranda sent to his superior, General Brauchitsch. These memoranda were written in a military, professional language, and did not challenge the basic premises of the political leadership. On May 30, 1938, for example, Beck wrote that “although Czechoslovakia in its current boundaries is intolerable for Germany, Britain and France will not tolerate further transitions in the balance of power in favor of the Reich, which is not ready for a new conflict.” Therefore, if the Führer’s plan is to be implemented, “it is impossible to portray the fate of Germany in a future war except in the darkest colors.”8

  Beck’s grievances were naturally ignored, and he became more isolated and embittered by the day. Still, he convinced himself that Hitler was redeemable, if only one could show him the way of reason by keeping the party radicals at bay. At the same time, his contacts with Goerdeler, Oster, and critics of the regime in the Wednesday Club meetings made him more and more susceptible to revolutionary mutation. As Beck became increasingly isolated from the leadership, his resistance to such mutation gradually eased.

  In July 1938, Beck was outsmarted by his rivals. Pro-Nazi officers in the General Staff, above all Walther von Reichenau and Ernst Busch, showed enthusiastic support for the Führer’s plans, and even generals who sympathized with Beck were reluctant to openly take his side. For years Beck had been an advocate for greater political influence for the General Staff, seeing his struggle against Hitler as a campaign for institutional independence. Therefore, he felt deeply hurt to see his comrades defecting one by one.9 In his despair, he suggested that the generals resign en masse. Only such a threat, he believed, could bring Hitler back onto the path of reason. He himself was adamant: never would he take responsibility for a disastrous European confrontation, setting Germany against all the other Western powers. His intentions were evident in a memorandum he wrote on July 16, 1938, later to become a seminal text of the German resistance: “Critical decisions about the future of the nation are at stake. History will cast blood guilt on these leaders [of the Wehrmacht], if they refuse to act according to the dictates of their conscience and their professional, political knowledge. Military obedience finds its limits when their knowledge, con
science and responsibility forbid following an order . . . Unusual times require unusual actions.”10

  It is easy to imagine how it tormented Beck, a man who had grown up in an atmosphere in which obedience was a paramount value, to reach a point where “military obedience finds its limits.” Only a few months before, during the Fritsch crisis, he had told Halder that “conspiracy and mutiny do not exist in the lexicon of the German officer.” Now, his attitude was changing. Suddenly, it was not only opposition to foreign and security policy that was on the line; the Gestapo’s regime of terror must be held in check, too. If only the Führer could be liberated from the Nazi radicals, Beck convinced himself, a total reform in Germany could and should be implemented. Shocked by his own insights, Beck communicated to the generals the essentials of his new program: “For the Führer; against war; against the rule of party functionaries; peace with the church; freedom of speech and the end of Cheka [Soviet secret police] style terror; . . . restoration of the rule of law; an end to the construction of palaces; housing for the common people; Prussian decency and simplicity.”11

  Caught up in his idealism, Beck still failed to understand that the Führer himself was the driving force behind the ills he described. Like many others, his political education came at the cost of a devastating personal blow. On August 4, he submitted an antiwar speech to General Brauchitsch, to be delivered to the leading generals. Brauchitsch, too, understood that a world war would be disastrous for Germany. At first, he accepted Beck’s plan, only to get cold feet at the eleventh hour. He did not use the new, more critical speech, but instead read Beck’s old memorandum from July 16. The generals, except Reichenau and Busch, agreed in principle but refused to take practical measures. Hitler, who had had enough of Beck’s endless, tedious memoranda, seriously considered dismissing him. The chief of staff perfectly understood his position and resigned on August 18. As his successor he recommended Gen. Franz Halder, whose criticism of the regime was much more radical than his own. Whether because of Beck’s recommendation or not, Halder was indeed appointed by Hitler as the new chief of the General Staff.12