An Honourable Defeat (13 page)

Through his position in the Abwehr, Dohnanyi was able to facilitate travel abroad for his brother-in-law, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, when the latter became associated with the Resistance in the early forties. Bonhoeffer’s older brother Klaus was also able to make a contribution from his senior position in the state airline, Lufthansa. As a trusted lieutenant of Hans Oster, Dohnanyi was closely involved in all coup planning up until the collapse of the Abwehr and his own arrest in 1943, but possibly his most important single contribution was the painstaking compilation of an archive of Nazi crimes. These papers, which were ultimately to bring such disaster upon the Resistance, came to be known as the Zossen Documents.

They took their name from the place they were stored — a safe in a secure office at Army Headquarters in the town of Zossen, a little way south of Berlin. Dohnanyi began to put the massive dossier together long before he joined the Abwehr, when he was working as the personal assistant to the Minister of Justice, and therefore in a position to see the paperwork attaching to all Nazi use and abuse of the law in the early days of its power, from getting rid of rivals and enemies in opposition to settling internal scores. As the archive grew — Dohnanyi was in the fortunate position of being responsible for its official filing — it came to include reports on the maltreatment of prisoners of war, notes by Goebbels on the handling of the Jewish ‘problem’, and film of the atrocities carried out in Poland after the conquest of that country. The Resistance took huge risks by storing documents dealing either with the conspiracy, with post-Nazi constitutional plans, or, as here, with the gathering of evidence for the prosecution of crimes against the proper constitution (that of the Weimar Republic, which was never formally revoked). Goerdeler, Beck and others seemed compelled to commit their thoughts and plans to paper, and if the Gestapo had developed more sophisticated methods of detection, the conspirators would not have survived for as long as they did. It is to the credit of those senior Army officers who were approached to join the conspiracy, and who declined, that they did not denounce their fellows to the Nazi authorities.

With his annexation of Austria unopposed and successfully achieved, Hitler began to turn his sights on Czechoslovakia. Aware of the dismay his proposals of November 1937 had caused, he was careful to ensure that senior generals whom he knew to be against any war plans were dispersed from Berlin and given postings at some distance from each other. A constant problem of the Resistance within the Army was to be that of postings: the conspirators might spend many painstaking months building up a key group in a given place, only to have it disrupted simply because the officers belonging to it were relocated elsewhere by the Army Personnel Office.

For the moment his popularity was such that Hitler may have been unaware, or felt that he could afford to ignore, the depth of feeling his treatment of Blomberg and, especially, of the popular von Fritsch had aroused in several of the older generals. Now for the first time soldiers outside the General Staff and the Abwehr — commanders of the Regular Army — began to see that Hitler was no statesman but a dangerous threat to world security, and one which could not be combated through the law. It was clear, too, that outside help could not necessarily be depended on, though the Resistance was to make appeals to Britain and France and, later, to the United States, from now until 1943.

Among the first such disabused men to declare himself was Erwin von Witzleben, whom Hitler was to make a Field Marshal in 1940. Witzleben was a career soldier from a military family. He was born in Breslau (now Wroclaw) in 1881 and had served both at the Front and on the General Staff during the First World War. In 1934 he took over the important post of Commander of Army District III, which included Berlin. Never a man to concern himself with politics, and lacking the intellectual capability of Beck or the complexity of Canaris or Oster, he had other crucial qualities. He was a practical man, whose common sense and knowledge of military affairs equipped him to cut straight through to the core of any problem which confronted him. He was the senior officer whom Oster had so appalled by bringing secret papers to a meeting openly in his car. It was he who, during the confusing and desperate afternoon and evening of 20 July 1944, was able to pull the disintegrating conspiracy together for one last effort. Once his decision to make a stand against Hitler had been made, he never wavered.

He brought with him into the conspiracy one of his divisional commanders, Walter von Brockdorff-Ahlefeld, whose troops were based in Potsdam, on the edge of Berlin. Potsdam was also the home of Number 9 Infantry Regiment, which had a higher percentage of officers opposed to Hitler than any other unit in the German Army. Thus it was that in 1938 the Resistance had at its disposal sufficient troops close to Berlin to crush the Nazi leadership before the SS could organise a counter-attack. Meanwhile, Oster’s undercover activity and association with the former Gestapo lawyer, Hans Bernd Gisevius, had resulted in two more useful allies: Wolf von Helldorf, the Chief of Police of Berlin, and Artur Nebe, head of the Criminal Police Department. Through the offices of these disillusioned Party members it was later possible to trace the location of secret and newly established SS barracks throughout the country, as the police had to be informed about all newly established brothels!

Hitler’s excuse for moving against Czechoslovakia was the liberation of the Sudetenland, a broad strip of land along Czechoslovakia’s frontier with Germany which was largely inhabited by ethnic Germans. The area was of vital strategic value to Czechoslovakia: its occupation by Germany would leave the Czechs virtually without defences. To add to the Czechs’ problems, Poland, which had territorial pretensions on the Czechs’ north-eastern border, was eager to take the area around the town of Teschen. Hitler had been careful to arrange a non-aggression pact with Poland. On the other hand, Czechoslovakia enjoyed the support of France and Russia.

Tension continued throughout the spring of 1938 as Hitler’s move was awaited. At the end of April the French prime minister, Daladier, flew to London to seek Britain’s support for Czechoslovakia. His British opposite number, Neville Chamberlain, was to disappoint him. Chamberlain’s view was that Czechoslovakia was not worth risking a war over. Hitler knew that, however averse Chamberlain was to war, Britain would side with France if full-scale hostilities broke out. Meanwhile, Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry churned out emotional stories of Czech atrocities perpetrated on the Sudeten Germans.

Towards the end of May, the Czech president decided to bring matters to a head and ordered a partial mobilisation. Hitler saw this as a chance not to be missed and ordered a conference of his generals on 28 May. At it he said that the oppression of the Sudeten Germans had grown intolerable, that it was time they were granted autonomy, and that if they were not, he was determined to take it for them by force. In his estimation there would be no opposition. The Russians were in no position to help Czechoslovakia; the French would not attack without British support, and the British were not sufficiently armed to enter a war. Among those present were Brauchitsch and Beck, who sat ‘granite-faced’ as Göring effusively congratulated the Führer on his ‘masterly plan’. In fact this plan had been under discussion for some time in secret as ‘Operation Green’, and two days after the meeting on 28 May Hitler issued a directive to the Commanders-in-Chief of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force: ‘It is my unalterable decision to destroy Czechoslovakia by military action within the foreseeable future.’ A deadline for preparations was set for 1 October.

By now any official line of defence was utterly compromised. Those present at the 28 May meeting were mainly men of straw: Brauchitsch, suborned by money (what had happened to the integrity of the senior German officer? Brauchitsch was no arriviste — his family down the years had provided Germany with a dozen decent generals); Keitel, the handsome lackey; Göring, the brave fighter ace of twenty years ago — now an overweight drug addict with a wardrobe and a make-up case to make the vainest woman envious. At least his new wife, the little provincial actress elevated by her marriage with the Reichsmarschall to leading lady of the Berlin Schauspielhaus, Emmi Sonnemann, worked hard at the State Theatre in what was then called Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin.
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Part of her work was trying to do justice to major roles of which she was patently incapable. Another part, in collusion with the theatre’s homosexual artistic director, Gustav Gründgens, was the protection of Jewish fellow artists. The theatre enjoyed Göring’s special protection as part of his rivalry with Goebbels. Goebbels was the supreme arbiter as far as art was concerned; but Göring had the State Theatre and if it was going to be a bastion against ‘Little Joe’, then so much the better.

Hitler’s decision to take Czechoslovakia by force concentrated the minds of those opposed to him. Beck had already sent a memorandum to Brauchitsch on 5 May in which he had clearly warned that such an action would inevitably lead to a pan-European war. That warning was ignored. After Hitler’s directive of 30 May, Beck took up his pen again. At this stage, it must be remembered, men like Beck and Goerdeler still believed in the power of argument to sway Hitler — Goerdeler continued to do so for several years more. The question of actually killing the dictator had not yet occurred to them, though Oster at least already knew that that would be the only sure way to secure a coup.

Beck now wrote another memorandum to Brauchitsch in which he reiterated his warnings, politely and with close reasoning. He pointed out that there was a high likelihood that Czechoslovakia’s allies would counter-attack, and that the resulting war would be disastrous for Germany, whose own rearmament programme was not yet complete. Though Beck’s view was shared by many of the High Command, Brauchitsch refused to answer the questions he raised immediately, taking a few days’ diplomatic leave instead.

As a result, Beck consulted Goerdeler and other senior colleagues associated with the conservative civilian opposition. Beck himself knew that sooner or later he would have to resign, but he wanted to sound others out on this matter as well — a mass resignation in protest at his plans might still just be enough to deflect Hitler from his plan. But Beck was a reluctant revolutionary, too modest to believe that his own isolated action would do any good, and he was in a difficult position. His duty was clear, but his loyalty was still torn. During June and July, he had a number of long talks with Oster, during which the Abwehr General (Oster had been reinstated and promoted since joining the Abwehr) sought to persuade him to lead a more drastic action. This was very far from the traditional role of a Chief of the General Staff, and still Beck hesitated. Yet his words of warning through official channels continued to fall on deaf ears. Hitler would reply to Beck with counter-arguments, alluding to his reliable military intuition. Beck would answer these politely, point by point. But he got nowhere. In response to a memorandum of 3 June, Hitler remarked in exasperation: ‘I’m not asking my generals to understand my orders, but to obey them!’

Finally, on 16 July, knowing that his opinion was shared by the vast majority of the General Staff and the High Command, Beck wrote a memorandum to Brauchitsch, in which he did not mince his words. Repeating his warning that France and Britain would certainly declare war if Germany marched on Czechoslovakia, he concluded:

On the basis of the data given above, I now feel duty bound...to ask insistently that the Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht [Hitler] should be compelled to abandon the preparations he has ordered for war, and to postpone his intention of solving the Czech problem by force until the military situation is basically changed. For the present I consider it hopeless, and this view is shared by all my Quartermasters-General and departmental chiefs of the General Staff who would have to deal with the preparation and execution of a war against Czechoslovakia
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Beck also formally proposed to Brauchitsch that a representative group of leading generals should now approach Hitler and, if unsuccessful in getting him to change his mind, resign. The delegation, Beck suggested, should not only raise the already outlined objections to the Czech campaign, but take the opportunity to protest against the totalitarian conduct of the regime and demand an end to the rule of terror, political arrest and imprisonment, the curbing of free speech, and official corruption. There should be a return to the rule of law, and to the fundamental Prussian principles of cleanness and simplicity.

This was the moment when, if they had held firm, the generals could have toppled the regime. This was still a time when they believed that Hitler could be separated from the Party — in that way, their Oath of Loyalty would not be compromised and Germany could retain its popular head of state: the Army would have acted in the best interests of its ultimate leader. Had Beck been followed at this juncture, a bloodless coup might have been the outcome. The SS was still building up its strength. But the plan did not really have a strong chance. Not only was Brauchitsch the last man to cross Hitler at this point; but Beck himself had not understood that Hitler and the Party were one and the same. Hitler was not a good man misled by his minions, however much Beck might have wanted to believe that. Men like Oster, who for a long time had understood precisely which way the land lay, could only wring their hands in frustration and wait for another opportunity.

Brauchitsch had to respond to Beck’s memorandum. One can imagine his state of mind. He was himself an experienced enough soldier to see that Beck was right; but he had a job which put him at the height of his career, he owed his private happiness to Hitler, his new wife was an ardent supporter of the Führer, Brauchitsch himself lacked moral fibre, and he was personally scared of his leader. He finally called a meeting of all senior generals and divisional commanders at the Armed Forces Central Administrative Building in Bendlerstrasse in Berlin for 4 August. By that time a commission under the British Lord Runciman had been set up to look into peaceful ways of settling the Sudeten problem — a move by the Allies which made Beck look something of a Jeremiah. However the senior generals stood behind him still — notably Witzleben, but also Kurt von Hammerstein and two other generals who would play key roles in the Resistance: Karl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel and Erich Hoepner. There were only two dissenting voices, those of Generals Reichenau and Busch — but they had already nailed their colours to Hitler’s mast.