They were somewhat rambling thoughts. But they were plain enough in meaning: a negotiated peace could not be considered except from a position of strength (which was in realistic terms unimaginable); the only hope was to hold out until the Allied coalition collapsed (but time, and the crass imbalance of material resources, were scarcely on Germany’s side); his historic role, as he saw it, was to eradicate any possibility of a second capitulation on the lines of that of November 1918; he alone stood between Germany and calamity; but suicide would bring release for him (whatever the consequences for the German people) within a split second. In Hitler’s extraordinary perspective, his historic task was to continue the fight to the point of utter destruction — and even self-destruction — in order to prevent another ‘November 1918’ and to erase the memory of that ‘disgrace’ for the nation. It was a task of infinitely greater honour than negotiating a peace from weakness — something which would bring new shame on himself and the German people. It amounted to scarcely less than a realization that the time for a last stand was approaching, and that no holds would be barred in a struggle likely to end in oblivion, where the only remaining monumental vision was the quest for historical greatness — even if Reich and people should go down in flames in the process.
This meant in turn that there was no way out. The failure of the conspiracy to remove Hitler took away the last opportunity of a negotiated end to the war. For the German people, it ensured the near total destruction of their country. Whatever the varied reactions to the events of 20 July and their aftermath, ordinary Germans were exposed over the next eight months to the laying waste of their cities in relentless bombing-raids against which there was as good as no defence, to the painful losses of loved ones fighting an obviously futile war against vastly superior enemy forces, to acute privations in the material conditions of their daily lives, and to intensified fear and repression at the hands of a regime that would stop at nothing. The horrors of a war which Germany had inflicted on the rest of Europe were rebounding — if, even now, in far milder form — on to the Reich itself. With internal resistance crushed, and a leadership unable to bring victory, incapable of staving off defeat, and unwilling to attempt to find peace, only total military destruction could bring a release.
For Hitler’s countless victims throughout Europe, the advances, impressive though they had been, of the Red Army in the east and the Anglo-American forces in the west and the south, were not yet nearly at the point where they could force an end to the war, and with it the immeasurable suffering inflicted by the Nazi regime. The human misery had, in fact, still not reached its peak. It would rise in crescendo in the months still to come.
Those who had risked their lives in the plot to assassinate Hitler were fully aware that they were acting without the masses behind them.66 In the event of a successful coup, the conspirators had to hope that a rapid end to the war would win over the vast majority of the population — most of whom had at one time been admirers of Hitler — and that the emergence of a new ‘stab-in-the-back-legend’ (such as had poisoned German politics after the First World War) could be avoided.67 If they were to fail, the plotters knew they would not have a shred of popular support, that their act would be seen as one of base treachery, and that they could expect to be regarded with nothing but outright ignominy by the mass of the population.
The Nazi leadership was, however, leaving nothing to chance. One Gauleiter, Siegfried Uiberreither, the Nazi leader in Styria, inquired within hours of Stauffenberg’s bomb exploding whether public displays of support for Hitler were envisaged. He was told that ‘loyalty rallies’ were welcomed, and that, in the light of his request, instructions would soon be transmitted to all Gauleiter. These were sent the next day, encouraging huge open-air mass rallies ‘in which the joy and satisfaction of the people at the wonderful salvation of the Führer’ would be expressed.68 Such rallies took place over the following days in towns and cities throughout Germany. Hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens and Wehrmacht representatives ‘spontaneously’ gave voice to their shock and outrage at the ‘foul attempt on the Führer’s life
