The autumn of 1939 would provide a crucial testing-time for the national-conservative resistance. In the end, they would resign themselves to failure. At the centre of their concern was not in the first instance the bestiality in Poland (though the detailed reports of the abominations there certainly served to cement oppositional feeling and the sense of urgency, both for moral reasons and out of a sense of national shame, at the need to be rid of Hitler and his henchmen who were responsible for such criminal acts).178 Nor was it the ‘euthanasia action’. Of the mass murder in the asylums they had not for months any real inkling. At any rate, it was not voiced as a matter of prime concern. The key issue for them, as it had been for two years or so, was the certainty that Hitler was leading Germany to catastrophe through engaging in war with the western powers. Preventing a calamitous attack on France and Britain, and ending the war, was vital. This issue came to a head in the autumn of 1939, when Hitler was determined to press on with an early attack on the West. But even before Hitler pulled back — because of poor weather conditions — from such a risky venture in the autumn and winter, then went on the following spring to gain unimaginable military successes in the western campaign, the fragility, weakness, and divisions of the nascent resistance had been fully laid bare. No attempt to remove Hitler had been made.179
Hitler could by late 1939 be brought down in only one of two ways: a coup d’état from above, meaning a strike from within the regime’s leadership from those with access to power and military might; or, something which the Dictator never ruled out, an assassination attempt from below, by a maverick individual operating entirely alone, outside any of the known — by now tiny, fragmented, and utterly powerless — left-wing underground resistance groups which could so easily be infiltrated by the Gestapo.180 While generals and leading civil servants pondered whether they might act, but lacked the will and determination to do so, one man with no access to the corridors of power, no political links, and no hard-and-fast ideology, a Swabian joiner by the name of Georg Elser, did act. In early November 1939 Elser would come closer to destroying Hitler than anyone until July 1944. Only luck would save the Dictator on this occasion. And Elser’s motives, built on the naïvety of elemental feeling rather than arising from the tortured consciences of the better-read and more knowledgeable, would mirror not the interests of those in high places but, without doubt, concerns of countless ordinary Germans at the time. We will return to them shortly.
For Hitler, the swift and comprehensive demolition of Poland did not signal a victory to sit upon and await developments. Certainly, he hoped that the West, having now witnessed the might of the Wehrmacht in action, would — from his point of view — see sense, and come to terms with Germany. The peace feelers that he put out in September and October were couched in this vein. As Weizsäcker — reckoning the chances of peace to be no higher than 20 per cent — put it early in October, summarizing what he understood as Hitler’s desired outcome, in the somewhat unlikely event that London might agree to a settlement at the expense of Poland, Germany ‘would be spared the awkward decision on how England could be militarily forced down’.181 The western powers had done absolutely nothing militarily to help Poland.182 Perhaps they could now be persuaded to accept the fait accompli, agree to a relatively generous victor’s peace, and end the war, giving him the return of former German colonies and, especially, the free hand in the east that he had always demanded.183 Had the western powers complied with such proposals — and further overtures to Britain would be made during 1940 — it would merely have deferred the inevitable conflict that Hitler had reckoned with since 1937. As it was, Hitler, though his overtures were serious enough, had few expectations that Britain would show interest in a settlement, particularly once the British cabinet had announced that it was preparing for a war that would last at least three years. He was sure that the western powers would try to hold out as long as possible, until their armaments programmes were complete.184 That would mark a danger-point for Germany. Though — a view not shared by his generals — he held the French military in some contempt, he had a high esteem of British resilience and fighting-power.185 And behind the British, there was always the threat (which at this time he did not rate highly) that in due course the Americans would intervene. So there was no time to lose. On the very day after his return to Berlin, with the shells still raining down on Warsaw, Hitler told his military leaders to prepare for an attack on the West that very autumn.186
