For the ordinary German, too, there was no way out. It was taken for granted that the regime was finished. The only hope was that the British and Americans would hold off the Bolsheviks. The most common reactions, as yet another war winter loomed, were apathy, resignation, fatalism. ‘It’s all the same to me. I can’t judge the situation any longer. I’ll just work further in my job, wait, and accept what comes’ — this approach, reported by the regional agencies of the Propaganda Ministry in autumn 1944, was said to be prevalent not just with ‘the man on the street’, but also among Party members and even functionaries, some of whom were no longer wanting to wear their Party insignia.98 It was a clear sign that the end was on the way.
The institutional pillars of the regime — the Wehrmacht, the Party, ministries of state, and the SS-controlled security apparatus — remained intact in the second half of 1944. And Hitler, the keystone bonding the regime’s structure together, was still, paradoxically, indispensable to its survival while — by now even in the eyes of some close to the leadership — at the same time driving Germany inexorably towards perdition. The predictable rallying round Hitler following the July assassination attempt could not, therefore, for long conceal the fact that the regime’s edifice was beginning to crumble as the Nazi empire throughout Europe shrivelled and the increasing certainty of a lost war made even some of those who had gained most from Nazism possible exit-routes. The aftermath of the bomb-plot saw the regime enter its most radical phase. But it was a radicalism that mirrored an increasingly desperate regime’s reaction to internal as well as external crisis.
Hitler’s own obvious reaction in the wake of the shock of Stauffenberg’s bomb had been to turn to his firm loyalist base, the Party leadership, and to his most long-standing and trusted band of paladins. In the backs-to-the-wall atmosphere of the last months, the Party was to play a more dominant role than at any time since the ‘seizure of power’, invoking the overcoming of adversity in the ‘time of struggle’,99 attempting to instil the ‘fighting spirit of National Socialism’ throughout the entire people in the increasingly vain attempt to combat overwhelming Allied arms and material superiority by little more than fanatical willpower.
As had invariably been the case in a crisis, Hitler had lost no time following the attempted coup on 20 July in ensuring the continued loyalty of the Gauleiter, the Party’s provincial chieftains. Among them were some who had been among his most dependable lieutenants for close on two decades. Collectively, the Gauleiter constituted now, as before, a vital prop of his rule. His provincial viceroys were now, their Party positions enhanced through their extensive powers as Reich Defence Commissars, his insurance against any prospect of army-led unrest or possible insurrection in the regions. Bormann had sent out a string of circulars to the Gauleiter on 20 July and immediately thereafter, ensuring that they were well informed of the gravity of what had taken place and the steps taken to crush the uprising.100 Within days, he was arranging a conference of the Reichsleiter and Gauleiter to take place in Posen on 3–4 August, as he put it ‘to intensify the war effort’.101 Speer, Himmler, Goebbels, and Bormann himself were among those to address the Party leaders. Speer was able to impress them with figures on armaments production — far greater than they had imagined and helping calm their nerves. Himmler fired them with a lengthy prehistory of the ‘treachery’ of 20 July, and with his plans for a thorough reorganization, ‘according to National Socialist principles’, of the Reserve Army, whose command Hitler had placed in his hands. Goebbels told them that the state and the army had caused the Führer only problems. ‘That is going to end now,’ he declared. ‘The party will take over.’102
