An Honourable Defeat (10 page)

By the end of 1937 Hitler felt himself to be in a strong enough position to reveal his wider ambitions to the Armed Forces. Accordingly he called a meeting on 5 November in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. Present were Blomberg and Fritsch, together with the commander of the fleet, Erich Raeder, and Göring for the Luftwaffe. The minutes were taken by Colonel Friedrich Hossbach, one of the Führer’s aides and also a representative of the General Staff. Ludwig Beck was not in attendance.

The forgathered military experts were in for a shock. In the course of the meeting, which lasted for over four hours, Hitler peremptorily presented them with nothing less than his plans for a war. He expatiated on the need for ‘living space’ for the German masses; this should be found in the lands adjoining Germany, which meant ‘breaking the resistance’ of those who happened to be living there at present. The ideal time to strike would be when the Reich’s principal potential enemies — Britain and France — were preoccupied with internal problems. In any case Austria and Czechoslovakia should be taken as quickly as possible and consolidated so that France — the most immediate enemy — could be faced in time. Germany should not wait later than 1943 — certainly not later than 1945 — to strike. Hitler implied that Poland, Russia and Britain would be unlikely to involve themselves — at any rate not until after Germany had armed itself sufficiently to deal with them too.

It is hard to imagine the immediate reaction of those present to this proposal. Göring, hitherto a moderate, certainly sided with Hitler. Those most nearly affected, however, those who would have to plan the details and implement them, order troop movements and take responsibility, were Blomberg and Fritsch. They raised objections, technical and political. Germany was not strong enough to oppose Britain or France and the risk of their not standing idly by while fellow European nations were invaded was too great. Czechoslovakia had a strong armaments industry and solid fortifications along its frontier with Germany. Hitler listened to the objections without losing his temper, although the argument became sharp at times. Neither Blomberg nor Fritsch actually refused to carry out the plans, neither man offered his resignation or expressed the slightest objection on the grounds of violating international law. Nevertheless they had shown that they were not wholeheartedly with the Führer, and Hitler did not want such men in charge of the Army.

The fall of Blomberg and Fritsch marked the change within the services able to do anything practical about toppling the regime — the Abwehr, the Foreign Office and the Army — from information gathering and discussion to concerted action. The storm clouds were gathering with a speed no one would have imagined possible.

Beck, when he learned of the matter from Hossbach, was appalled, and, as was his habit, committed his thoughts and objections lengthily to paper, pointing out the dangers of making enemies out of France and Britain, and also the long-term impossibility of running Germany as an autarchy, which was another of Hitler’s proposals. Like most of the men who were to become conspirators against the regime, Beck was a European, not a Nationalist, and he accurately foresaw a future in which states would depend increasingly on trade with each other. He regarded the idea of an unprovoked war with Czechoslovakia with particular distress.

In the meantime, Hitler was making plans to get rid of Blomberg and Fritsch, and it so happened that the possibility to do so — with a little engineering of events — was quickly available in both cases. At the beginning of 1938, on 12 January, Göring’s birthday, the widowed Blomberg had married a girl called Erna Gruhn. In the old days this would have been a problem, because Fraulein Gruhn was a member of the working classes. The various accounts that exist suggest that Blomberg had met her in a nightclub. He must have been besotted with her, but he did consult Hitler and Göring about the marriage before embarking on it. They had no objections — indeed, it accorded with Nazi ideology for someone in Blomberg’s position to feel free to marry ‘a girl of the people’ — and even acted as witnesses. Unfortunately, soon after the marriage a routine vice squad check turned up some pornographic photographs of the War Minister’s new wife, and a discreet follow-up revealed that Erna had worked at least part-time in a Berlin brothel. This information, which quickly leaked to various members of the High Command in the form of rumours, threatened to cause a major scandal. The Chief of Police of Berlin, Graf von Helldorf, an old SA man who later became a prominent member of the Resistance, was responsible for the documentation the vice squad enquiry had landed on his desk, and took it first to Wilhelm Keitel, then Blomberg’s Chief of the Ministerial Office. Keitel was an old friend of Blomberg’s — his daughter and the War Minister’s son were later to marry — and backed off handling it, referring Helldorf to Göring.

There is a theory that Göring, who had his eye on the War Ministry in any case, may have masterminded the whole episode, manipulating the naive Blomberg like a puppet. Whatever the truth of the matter, he now had the War Minister completely at his mercy. Hitler probably knew nothing of the scandal until Göring placed it before him, uttering pious expressions of regret. Indeed, the case against Blomberg seems to have shocked the Führer at first; but that may have been more because of the sordidity of the potential scandal than anything else. As for Blomberg’s colleagues, including Beck, it had been bad enough that he should have married so far beneath him; that it should turn out that he had married a whore was the last straw. He was ostracised and never admitted back into their company. It is touching to note that Blomberg stood by his wife throughout his ensuing disgrace and exile. He died shortly after the end of the war, never having re-entered active service.

When Hitler realised that he had to let Blomberg go his first reaction, despite Blomberg’s reservations about his war plans, was panic. After all, Blomberg was a pliant soldier whose military expertise was useful. But the Officer Corps stood united against him: that his wife could call herself ‘Frau Feldmarschallin’ was quite intolerable. It fell to Fritsch to perform the unhappy task of putting this to the Führer.

Seeing that there was no way out, Hitler broke the news to Blomberg as gently as possible, assuring him that he would not be left completely out in the cold, and asking his advice on his successor. Ironically, Blomberg open-heartedly suggested Göring, the next most senior officer in the High Command, but Hitler rejected this. Göring was already on the road to ruin which would lead to his disgrace and, after his own abortive coup against Hitler, to the death sentence from the Führer — followed by his escape, and capture by American troops.

For the present, Hitler was prepared to turn a blind eye to the fact that his senior lieutenant was beginning to wear make-up, and the cocaine habit had not yet fully taken hold; but Göring was clearly more interested in personal self-aggrandisement than the wider ambitions of the Reich, and would have made at best an idle and at worst a scheming Number Two. The man Hitler chose was Wilhelm Keitel — whom even Blomberg referred to as ‘just an office manager’. A yes man, however, who happened to be a good administrator, was exactly what Hitler wanted. Keitel lived up to the role so well that he soon earned the nickname ‘Lakeitel’ — little lackey.

Concurrent with the toppling of Blomberg, plans were being laid against Fritsch. Fritsch was fifty-eight years old and had never married — not uncommon in Army officers of that day, but still leaving him exposed to accusations of homosexuality. Such stories were now concocted and again Göring was the man behind them, employing the services of Himmler’s Gestapo and the head of the Security Service, Reinhard Heydrich, to set them up.
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A homosexual blackmailer called Otto Schmidt, who had been jailed a couple of years earlier, was dredged up to provide the ‘evidence’. As we have seen, Hitler could switch on an aversion to homosexuals when he wanted to — though he scarcely bothered to conceal his hypocrisy. At exactly the same time as Fritsch was being brought down, on 5 February 1938, Walter Funk, whose homosexuality was well known, was appointed Reich Minister of Economics. Fritsch was a more positive character than Blomberg, and Hitler had no compunction in scheming to get rid of him. The evidence provided by Schmidt was that he had been propositioned by the Commander-in-Chief. Fritsch demanded a confrontation with his accuser in Hitler’s presence, which occurred on 26 January 1938 — two days after the evidence concerning Erna Gruhn had landed on Hitler’s desk. Schmidt coolly asserted that Fritsch was indeed the man.

At this point, Fritsch could have done a number of things. He could have consulted a lawyer, appealed to the Officer Corps that the Führer was taking the word of a convicted male prostitute and blackmailer against the Commander of the Army, or he could have resigned in a full and self-righteous glare of publicity. Instead, totally taken off guard by the outrageous and unprecedented accusation, which he was facing alone and without back-up, he lost his temper and left, on his dignity, but with his position considerably weakened. Hitler considered (for it was convenient to do so) that Fritsch was guilty by implication. Hence Fritsch’s name did not come up during the consideration of Blomberg’s successor.

Matters now moved very fast — as usual, Hitler left no time for any opposition to get a response organised. By early February the nature of the High Command was radically changed. The old War Ministry effectively became the Oberkommando Wehrmacht (OKW) — Overall High Command of the Armed Forces. He made Keitel head of it, but took over the job of Supreme Commander himself in a fully executive, not honorary, sense. Göring was promoted to Field Marshal — two years later he would be made Germany’s first and last Reichsmarschall — and was able to add another specially designed uniform to his vast collection. Fritsch’s job went to Walther von Brauchitsch, who was promoted Colonel-General.

Brauchitsch was to play a shadowy part in the battle between Hitler and the Resistance over the next three years. He seemed to want to join the forces ranging against the dictator, but he could never quite bring himself to. He was another weak man, but there was one practical contributory factor to his wavering. For five years he had lived separated from his wife, and in the meantime had started a passionate affair with a divorcée called Charlotte Schmid-Rüffer. There was no question of a divorce for Brauchitsch, because he did not have enough money to make an adequate settlement on his wife. To be fair to him, he had toyed with the idea of resignation, and Blomberg’s case must have sharpened his sensibilities, but the offer throtigh Keitel of Fritsch’s old job was too much for Brauchitsch to resist. In addition when he opened his heart about his marital difficulties to Göring, the latter reassured him and pledged his support. Not long afterwards, his financial difficulties were miraculously resolved. His divorce was now affordable and he was able to marry his new love. Hitler had put another general into his pocket, and his cause was helped by the fact that Frau Schmid-Rüffer was, in the words of the German Ambassador to Rome, Ulrich von Hassell, who was already aligned with the Resistance, ‘a two hundred per cent rabid National Socialist’. Brauchitsch took up his post on 3 February.

Fritsch did not come to trial until mid-March. By this time he had been effectively neutralised, and it did not matter much to the Nazis whether he was found guilty or not. The court of honour under — of all people — Göring’s chairmanship acquitted him on the 18th of the month. A rearguard action had been fought. Hans Oster of the Abwehr had worked closely with his assistant Hans von Dohnanyi and with the co-operation of both Fritsch’s lawyer and the examining judge of the military court, Karl Sack, to gather information proving the charges to be fabricated. Sack fought a lonely and consistent fight on behalf of true justice in the Reich courts as long as he could, and before his own downfall later did his best to prolong the trials of such men as Dohnanyi in the hope that the end of the war would overtake the Nazi prosecutions.

Sack’s investigations led to the discovery of an elderly, retired Captain Achim von Frisch, who was homosexual, and had been a victim of Otto Schmidt’s blackmail. When this evidence was brought to light the case against Fritsch collapsed.

That was not quite the end of the story. Fritsch was rehabilitated by Hitler, but not until June, and then he was shunted very far sideways, being given the command of Number 12 Artillery Regiment. The thin excuse for not restoring Fritsch to his old job was that Hitler could not expect Fritsch to have any confidence in him any more even though he had been exonerated; nor could he, as Führer, for the good of the nation, publicly admit such a major mistake. Fritsch responded to the shabby treatment he had been handed by challenging Himmler — whom he knew to have been behind the machinations against him — to a duel, but nothing came of it and he was persuaded to withdraw the challenge. After the outbreak of war, Fritsch, disgusted and disillusioned, sought death at the head of his troops in Poland and found it only days after hostilities had opened. As for Otto Schmidt, he ended up in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, but his old employers did not forget him. At the end of July 1942, Himmler concluded a report on him to Göring with the words, ‘I request your agreement, dear Reichsmarschall, that I should submit Schmidt’s case to the Führer for authorisation to execute him.’ Göring scribbled in the margin of the memo: ‘Yes. Ought to have been done
ages
ago.’

The fall of Blomberg and Fritsch weakened the Army’s independence greatly. Hitler had replaced them with two spaniels. Arguably the moment for an effective Resistance had already passed, before it had even been formed. Why did the Officer Corps not stand up for its Commander-in-Chief, so crudely maligned? The reason is that Hitler had already diluted the Corps to such an extent that it could no longer adopt a unanimous stance. Since he had taken power the number of officers above the rank of Major-General had increased sevenfold. By 1943 there were over a thousand of them, as opposed to forty-four a decade earlier. Beck’s subsequent call — later in 1938 — for a mass resignation of generals, the only possible way to stop Hitler without a coup, was a forlorn hope. Too many of the new appointments were men like Walter von Reichenau, intelligent younger generals who had thrown in their lot with the new regime. There were others whose Party affiliations brought them promotion.