The Third Reich

by Thomas Childers

  The leaflets—there were six in all—took the form of short essays, sprinkled with literary and philosophical references, and were aggressively antiwar and anti-Nazi. They created a stir among students when they surfaced in late 1942 and early 1943; they were, after all, the first open expressions of opposition against Hitler and his regime anyone had seen. “Don’t wait for someone else to take action,” the first leaflet urged. It was “the responsibility of every individual as a member of Christian and western culture” to guard against “the scourge of humanity, against Fascism, and every similar system of the absolutist state. Practice passive resistance—resistance wherever you are, prevent the continued functioning of this atheistic war machine before it is too late, before the last cities are reduced to rubble, like Cologne, and before the last of the Volk’s youth is bled to death for the hubris of a subhuman. Don’t forget, that every people deserves the regime it gets.” Although the group did not focus on Nazi crimes against the Jews, its second leaflet informed the public that “since the conquering of Poland 300,000 Jews in that country have been murdered in the most bestial way. Here we see the most frightful crimes against the dignity of man, crimes like no other in the whole of human history.” Its third leaflet called for “sabotage in armaments factories, sabotage of all meetings, demonstrations, celebrations, organizations of the National Socialist Party. Prevent the smooth functioning of the war machine that works for a war that only serves for the preservation and maintenance of the National Socialist Party and its dictatorship.”

  On February 18, 1943, the day of Goebbels’s Total War speech, the Gestapo arrested the Scholls. It had been only a matter of time. They had taken a suitcase full of leaflets to the university, left stacks of them outside the lecture halls, and finally tossed them from the top floor into the atrium below. They were observed by a maintenance man who reported them to the Gestapo. Four days later they were tried before the infamous Judge Roland Freisler of the People’s Court, who screamed furious imprecations at them, rarely giving them an opportunity to utter a word. They were not afforded an attorney. At one point in the proceedings, Sophie Scholl managed to say to Freisler, “You know as well as we do that the war is lost. Why are you so cowardly that you won’t admit it?” It came as no surprise when they were found guilty of treason and, together with Christoph Probst, were beheaded in Stadelheim Prison that very day. Trials of others associated with the White Rose dragged on into October; the six most closely involved with the group shared the Scholls’ fate. The activities of the White Rose were courageous and idealistic; they were martyrs, living manifestations of a growing discontent in German society, and their activities added to the nervousness of the regime in the aftermath of Stalingrad. But their story did not end there. Helmut James von Moltke, leader of the Kreisau Circle, another resistance group, managed to smuggle a copy of the sixth leaflet to Scandinavia, where it made its way to London. In July, at the height of the bombing, RAF aircraft dropped tens of thousands of copies over Germany under the title “Manifesto of the Munich Students.”

  Since the late 1930s, a group of nationalist conservatives who wished to see the downfall of the Third Reich had gathered around Carl Goerdeler, the well-connected former mayor of Leipzig and until 1936 Reich commissar for prices. His circle included former Prussian finance minister Johannes Popitz, Ulrich von Hassell, ambassador to Rome, and other establishment conservatives. They hoped to bring about the overthrow of the Nazi regime and the establishment of a conservative government with the return of the Hohenzollern dynasty. They were mistrustful of mass democracy, which they held responsible for the rise of the populist Nazis, and in a proposed constitution advocated elections that balanced the popular vote with representatives from local councils and others nominated by the churches, trade unions, universities, and business groups. They also insisted that a post-Nazi state should include Austria, the Sudetenland, and West Prussia, all territories annexed by the Nazis, a position unlikely to find favor in Allied capitals. Goerdeler even wrote letters to Hitler and Himmler attempting to convince them that they were on the wrong course, and until late in the day believed that if only he could have a serious conversation with Hitler, he could convince the Führer to step aside.

  It was clear to all involved in the resistance that their activities could not bring about the fall of the regime and that Hitler could be overthrown only by force—and that force would have to be provided by the army. Since 1936 Goerdeler had been a leading figure in efforts to recruit senior military men to join with him and his conservative allies to overthrow the Nazis. Even before the war, a number of high-ranking officers had come to the conclusion that Hitler’s reckless foreign policy was leading Germany into certain catastrophe and that he must be removed. Foremost among them was General Ludwig Beck, chief of staff of the army until August 1938. Beck had supported Hitler’s revitalization of the military, though he was concerned by the Führer’s SS and its threat to the army.

  In 1938, he was in close contact with other military leaders who were convinced that Hitler’s brinkmanship over the Sudetenland would plunge Germany into a European-wide war. Beck was not opposed to smashing Czechoslovakia or Hitler’s expansive plans for Lebensraum, but he believed that Hitler’s determination to go to war in 1938 was premature. When it became clear that Hitler was not to be moved, Beck undertook a clandestine campaign for a mass resignation of army commanders, forcing Hitler to abandon his plans for an invasion. His efforts proved futile, and he resigned in August. After his resignation he kept in touch with many senior military figures, men who shared his conviction that the Nazis were pushing Germany into certain disaster. Among them was Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of Military Counter Intelligence (the Abwehr), who allowed his command to become a magnet for dissenters in the military. Beck also came into contact with a more activist group of army officers—Colonel Hans Oster, Friedrich Olbricht, Erwin von Witzleben, and Hans Bernd Gisevius—who were not only determined to prevent war in 1938 but were convinced that Hitler and his regime must go.

  Hitler’s dramatic diplomatic successes between 1936 and 1938 and his spectacular triumphs of the early war years deflated hopes for a successful military conspiracy, but the mounting disasters in 1942–43 gave new life to the regime’s military opponents. Top-ranking officers were difficult to recruit, although many, including Halder and Brauchitsch, listened sympathetically but in the end took no part in the conspiracy. The fact that the conspirators could approach other officers without fear of being reported was a remarkable reflection of the code of solidarity within the military. Colonel Henning von Tresckow of Army Group Center was tireless in attempting to bring down Hitler, and in early 1944 he was behind a number of assassination attempts, but each failed to come off for one reason or another.

  Things came to a head in the summer of 1944 when a young colonel, Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, appeared on the scene. Badly wounded in Tunis—he lost an eye, an arm, and several fingers on his remaining hand—Stauffenberg was assigned to a post in Berlin where he came into contact with Beck and other like-minded military men. He also met the leaders of the conservative group around Goerdeler, whom he considered hopeless reactionaries. He was far more attracted to another set of younger resistance figures who had gathered around his cousin Peter Yorck von Wartenburg and Helmut James von Moltke. Both men were appalled by the sheer brutality of the regime, its anti-Semitism, and by the barbarism of the SS in the Soviet Union. Theirs was a moral rejection of the regime and its leader. During the course of 1943 these aristocratic scions of two renowned Prussian military families formed a heterogeneous group of civil servants, socialists, Protestant and Catholic clerics, and young aristocrats. They held meetings at Kreisau, Moltke’s estate in Upper Silesia, and Yorck’s small house in Berlin Lichterfelde. There they developed plans for a post-Hitler government but with a more progressive mixture of socialist and Christian ideas. They had no illusions about holding on to Hitler’s annexed territories and endorsed the idea of war crimes t
rials. Like Stauffenberg, they considered the Goerdeler group backward-looking and far too conservative, and in 1944 Socialist members of the group sought to make contact with the Communist underground. Although some in the group, especially Moltke, were opposed to assassination on moral grounds, others, Yorck in particular, became participants in the plot to kill the Führer.

  Several attempts had been made to get close to Hitler but each time the attempt was aborted. Either security was too tight or Hitler failed to keep to the anticipated schedule or Himmler was not present. The conspirators agreed that it was crucial to eliminate the Reichsführer-SS along with Hitler if the plot was to have any chance of success. In January and February 1944 the Gestapo seemed to be closing in on the conspirators. Moltke was arrested in January and Admiral Canaris a month later; Julius Leber, a Socialist leader close to the Kreisau Circle, was seized after attempting to make contact with the Communist underground. Stauffenberg’s arrival—and the precipitous decline in Germany’s military position—galvanized the military conspiracy anew. Although neither he nor Goerdeler liked one another, they managed to work together to bring about a Putsch that planned to remove Hitler and then establish a new post-Hitler Germany. They sounded out men they hoped would join a new German government, and Goerdeler, who was not the most cautious of men, made lists. General Beck would be the head of a provisional government, and Goerdeler would be Reich chancellor. Others would be mortified to discover that he committed these things to paper. The list included Hans Oster, Erwin von Witzleben, Henning von Tresckow, all military men as well as representatives from the Socialists (Leber), several Zentrum members, and a number of men from the conservative DNVP. Rommel, though not directly involved in the conspiracy, was aware of it, and indicated that although he would not participate in the plot to assassinate Hitler, he would support it at the appropriate time.

  General Olbricht in the Reserve Army headquarters had developed a scheme to subvert an existing plan approved by Hitler to deal with the possibility of an uprising by the millions of foreign workers in Germany. Olbricht believed it possible to use the plan, code-named Valkyrie, to stage a coup once Hitler was dead. The order would be given to mobilize the Reserve Army and to use it not against rebelling foreign workers but against the SS and the Nazi elite. But first, the Führer had to be eliminated. Several abortive attempts had already been made. Then, on July 1, Stauffenberg was appointed chief of staff to General Friedrich Fromm, commander of the Reserve Army, headquartered in the Bendlerstrasse in Berlin. That not only put him at the command center of the Reserve Army but also meant that he was able to attend Hitler’s military conferences as Fromm’s deputy. Four times in the first weeks of July Stauffenberg attended these briefings in both the Obersalzburg and Hitler’s East Prussian headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair, carrying a bomb in his briefcase, but in each case he was unable to detonate the explosives. On July 20, Stauffenberg was scheduled to attend a Führer conference at the Wolf’s Lair. By this time, the conspirators had decided that the assassination had to take place whether Himmler was present or not. Besides, with the Gestapo apparently closing in, the time to take action had come. Again he carried a bomb.

  The conference began just after noon. Stauffenberg carried two bombs in his briefcase, but he had time to activate the timer on only one, and his aide, Werner von Haeften, took the other away. Upon entering the conference room, he placed his briefcase under the heavy oak conference table on which the situation map was spread. About twenty officers were in attendance, standing or sitting around the table. About ten minutes into the briefing, while Hitler was bent over the table studying the map, Stauffenberg said that he had to make an important call and left the room. This was not unusual at such briefings, and no suspicion was aroused. He quickly left the building and made his way toward the airfield. He and Haeften had to bluff their way through two security checkpoints at the inner and outer rings of the complex. As they reached the second checkpoint, a tremendous blast resounded, and a pall of black smoke swirled into the air, but the guard let them pass. They raced to the waiting aircraft and took off for Berlin. The explosion shattered the flimsy wooden conference building, killing four officers and critically wounding several others. But Hitler miraculously survived. At the time of the blast, he was leaning over the table, and someone had apparently shifted Stauffenberg’s briefcase to the outside of the thick wedge of the table support, channeling the force of the blast away from Hitler. His right arm was wrenched, an eardrum perforated; he had cuts and bruises on his arms and legs, but he was alive.

  By the time Stauffenberg reached Berlin shortly before 3:00 p.m. and phoned the conspirators in the Bendlerblock to report that Hitler was dead, he discovered that a phone call from the Wolf’s Lair had already informed them that Hitler had survived. Stauffenberg did not believe it, but it was clear already that a major element of the plot had miscarried—communications between the Wolf’s Lair and the outside world were to have been cut. Despite this critical setback, General Olbricht set Valkyrie in motion. Military forces acting under that plan moved against the SS in Vienna, Prague, and Paris, where the commanding officers of the SS were arrested. But soon Hitler’s staff at the Wolf’s Lair were phoning army commands around Europe, assuring them that the Führer was alive and that a small clique of disgruntled officers in Berlin had undertaken a Putsch. Army troops and Waffen-SS personnel descended on the Bendlerblock and after a brief exchange of gunfire, the leaders of the conspiracy were seized. Beck was allowed to commit suicide, though he botched the job and had to be finished off by an SS man. Stauffenberg, Haeften, Olbricht, and Mertz von Quirnheim were led into the courtyard and shot by a firing squad, Stauffenberg shouting out “Long live sacred Germany” just as the shots were fired.

  Throughout the night and into the following day members of the conspiracy were hunted down by the Gestapo and arrested. Many, like Tresckow, committed suicide before the Gestapo came for them. Beginning on August 7, the regime staged show trials in the People’s Court, with Roland Freisler serving as presiding judge. Before being led into the courtroom the accused had been tortured for days, and to humiliate them, they were dressed in ill-fitting civilian clothes, no ties or belts allowed, so that some had to tug at their trousers to keep them from falling down. In the proceedings Freisler, perched beneath an enormous swastika banner, heaped abuse on them, bullying them, shrieking so shrilly that the film crew assigned by Goebbels to record the trials reported that his screaming interfered with the recording. One of the defendants did manage to slip in a retort when Freisler roared that he would soon roast in hell. Bowing, the defendant shot back, “I’ll look forward to your own imminent arrival, your honor!” Even the Nazi minister of justice complained about Freisler’s outrageous conduct.

  The condemned were taken directly from the courtroom to Plötzensee Prison, where they were hanged by piano wire from meat hooks. It was a slow agonizing death, in some cases taking twenty minutes before the victim finally strangled. While they were writhing in unbearable pain, guards pulled down their trousers, adding a last dose of humiliation to their horrific misery. Hitler, seething with rage and a bloodthirsty desire for vengeance, had the executions filmed. “Now I finally have the swine who have been sabotaging my work for years,” Hitler raged. “Now I have proof: the whole General Staff is contaminated.” The failures of the generals to produce the victories he had foreseen could now be explained. “Now I know why all my great plans in Russia had to fail in recent years. It was treason! But for these traitors we would have won long ago.”

  In the aftermath of the failed Putsch, more than two hundred people directly implicated in the conspiracy were arrested and executed. Yorck, Witzleben, Goerdeler, Moltke, Leber, Oster, and others were murdered over a matter of months. Goerdeler was put to death in February 1945, while Canaris and Dietrich Bonhoeffer of the Confessing Church were hanged in April. In a major police operation that followed the show trials, more than five thousand persons, many who had no connection whatsoever wit
h the plot, were arrested. The most prominent among them was Rommel. As mentioned, Rommel knew about the plot but refused to take part. The conspirators thought that he signaled that he would support a new German government once Hitler was removed, and his name had emerged from Gestapo interrogations of the conspirators. On July 23 Rommel was recovering at home from wounds suffered in an Allied strafing when he received word that he had been implicated in the conspiracy. He was an enormously popular commander, a genuine military hero, and the regime was willing to offer him a choice: he could commit suicide and be given a state funeral with all the military honors, and his wife and children would not be separated and sent to concentration camps (as were Stauffenberg’s). If he refused the offer of suicide, he would be tried before the People’s Court. He chose suicide.

  Hitler drew two paradoxical conclusions from the events of July 20. On the one hand, he was convinced that his survival was an act of providence, a sign from the fates that he was meant to complete the great work of his life. It contributed massively to his already overdeveloped messianic self-perception, reaffirming his conviction that his chosen path was preordained. It also reinforced Hitler’s deep-seated suspicion—turning it into an almost primeval conviction—that he was surrounded by treachery and betrayal on all sides, but especially in the army and its High Command. Second, and not so reassuring, he had believed at the outset that the Putsch was the work of a tiny clique of officers, many of whom were aristocratic and hence remote from the people. That was the official interpretation of the conspiracy spun by Goebbels after July 20, but the results of the Gestapo’s far-reaching investigation and the mass arrests revealed something quite different. Most Germans were shocked by the attempted assassination and rallied to their embattled Führer, and support for the conspirators within the Wehrmacht was minimal at best. Still, the extent of the conspiracy and the evidence of widespread disaffection with the regime was troubling, especially at a juncture in the war when the Reich’s military fortunes were in sharp decline. The conspirators were themselves aware that most Germans would hate them as traitors and that the plot would in all probability fail, but it was important to demonstrate to the world that there were Germans willing to take a stand against this evil regime. As Henning von Tresckow said to Stauffenberg, “The assassination must be attempted at any cost. Even should that fail, the attempt to seize power . . . must be undertaken. We must prove to the world and to future generations that the men of the German resistance movement dared to take the decisive step and to hazard their lives upon it. Compared with this object, nothing else matters.”