Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis полностью

The origins of a coup d’état to eliminate Hitler dated back, as we saw in earlier chapters, to the Sudeten crisis of 1938. Hitler’s determination to risk war with the western powers and court disaster for Germany had at that time prompted a number of highly-placed figures in the Army High Command, diplomatic service, and the Abwehr, together with a circle of their close contacts, to plot to remove him should he attack Czechoslovakia. Though fraught with difficulties, the conspiracy had, in fact, taken shape by the time that Chamberlain’s readiness to come to terms with Hitler at Bad Godesberg, then at Munich, removed the opportunity and took the wind out of the sails of the plotters. Their planned action might, in any case, have failed to materialize. The following summer, as the threat of war loomed ever larger, the same band of individuals had attempted to revive the conspiracy that had faltered with the Munich Agreement. But the fainter flickerings of opposition a year after Munich had come to nothing — floundering on internal divisions, Hitler’s continued popularity among the masses, and, not least, the loyalty (if at times appearing to waver — reluctant, but ultimately and decisively intact) of the army chiefs whose support for any coup was vital. The same ingredients would hamper the conspiracy against Hitler in immensely more difficult conditions during the war itself.

The Swabian joiner Georg Elser had, working alone, shared none of the hesitancy of those operating from within the power-echelons of the regime. He had acted incisively, as we saw earlier, in the Bürgerbräukeller on the night of 8 November 1939, and come within a whisker of sending Hitler into oblivion. Good fortune alone had saved Hitler on that occasion. But outside the actions of a lone assassin, with the left-wing underground resistance groups, though never eliminated, weak, isolated, and devoid of access to the corridors of power, the only hope of toppling Hitler thereafter lay with those who themselves occupied positions of some power or influence in the regime itself.

On the fringes of the conspiracy, the participation in Nazi rule in itself naturally created ambivalence. Breaking oaths of loyalty was no light matter, even for some whose dislike of Hitler was evident. Prussian values were here a double-edged sword: a deep sense of obedience to authority and service to the state clashed with equally profound feelings of duty to God and to country.² Whichever triumphed within an individual: whether heavy-hearted acceptance of service to a head of state regarded as legitimately constituted, however detested; or rejection of such allegiance in the interest of what was taken to be the greater good, should the head of state be leading the country to ruin; this was a matter for conscience and judgement.³ It could, and did, go either way.

Though there were numerous exceptions to a broad generalization, generational differences played some part. The tendency was greater in a younger generation of officers, for example, than in those who had already attained the highest ranks of general or field-marshal, to entertain thoughts of active participation in an attempt to overthrow the head of state. This was implied in a remark by Stauffenberg himself, several months before his attempt on Hitler’s life: ‘Since the generals have up to now managed nothing, the colonels have now to step in.’⁴ On the other hand, views on the morality of assassinating the head of state — in the midst of an external struggle of titanic proportions against an enemy whose victory threatened the very existence of a German state — differed fundamentally on moral, not simply generational, grounds. Any attack on the head of state contituted, of course, high treason. But in a war, distinguishing this from treachery against one’s own country, from betrayal to the enemy, was chiefly a matter of individual persuasion and the relative weighting of moral values. And only a very few were in a position to accumulate detailed and first-hand experiences of gross inhumanity at the same time as possessing the means to bring about Hitler’s removal. Even fewer were prepared to act.

Beyond ethical considerations, there was the existential fear of the awesome consequences — for the families as well as for the individuals themselves — of discovery of any complicity in a plot to remove the head of state and instigate a coup d’état. This was certainly enough to deter many who were sympathetic to the aims of the plotters but unwilling to become involved. Nor was it just the constant dangers of discovery and physical risks that acted as a deterrent. There was also the isolation of resistance. To enter into, even to flirt with, the conspiracy against Hitler meant acknowledging an inner distance from friends, colleagues, comrades, entry into a twilight world of immense peril, and of social, ideological, even moral isolation.