An Honourable Defeat (14 page)

Unfortunately, while agreeing with Beck’s point of view, the generals reached no consensus on action. Brauchitsch did not encourage them to, and offered them no firm leadership. Instead of making the speech Beck and Oster had prepared for him, he merely read out the memorandum of 16 July and made no appeal for a demarche.

The generals had lost the initiative, and now — either through Reichenau or Brauchitsch himself — Hitler learnt of their meeting. At about the same time the Abwehr learnt that Britain had no intention of letting the Sudetenland become a
casus
belli
: Chamberlain was already showing himself to be a man prepared to avoid war whatever the moral or ethical cost of peace. On 10 August Hitler called a meeting at the Berghof, his country residence at Berchtesgaden in Austria (where Himmler took over the former home of the von Trapp family). There the chiefs of the Armed Forces were treated to a three-hour harangue in the course of which Hitler worked himself into a violent rage, brushing aside objections that German defences in the West were nowhere near strong enough to withstand a French assault, and reasserting his determination to crush Czechoslovakia.

A week later, Brauchitsch summoned Beck and told him that Hitler had issued a general order forbidding interference by the Army in political questions at any level, and demanding ‘unconditional obedience’ from all generals including the Chief of the General Staff. This was the last straw for Beck, who nevertheless made one last appeal to Brauchitsch to join him in resigning. Brauchitsch refused, taking refuge behind the principle which so many senior officers were to use to evade responsibility: ‘I am a soldier. It is my duty to obey.’

Beck felt that he owed his country a greater duty than blindly to follow a leader bent on its destruction. Despite the reluctance of Britain and France to confront Hitler, he was sure that the Führer would not rest until he had committed Germany to a war of territorial conquest. He had done his utmost to avert this while in office, and now he had no option but to resign.

He did so forthwith and, after two days’ hesitation, Hitler accepted his resignation on 21 August. He handed over to his deputy, Franz Halder, on 27 August. General Hossbach remembers the impression Beck made on him as he said farewell: ‘He was the last real Chief of the General Staff of Germany, directing the gaze of his beautiful eyes into the distance...’

Beck remained in the Army, taking over the command of 1st Army in Wiesbaden, but Hitler would not feel safe with such an intelligent and influential opponent in any position of power. Beck was obliged to retire at the end of October, ending a career of forty years’ distinguished service. He was never to wear uniform again, and thenceforward dressed in dark, sober suits. His health was not good, and he looked older than he was, his face marked by disappointment and stress. In 1943 he underwent a successful operation for cancer at the hands of Professor Ferdinand Sauerbruch, his old friend of the Wednesday Club, and was thus able to continue at the head of the Resistance until the final crisis of 20 July 1944. After retiring, he took up residence in Goethestrasse, in the quiet south Berlin suburb of Lichterfelde. He attended meetings of the Wednesday Club, and worked in his garden, where he took special pleasure in growing fruit and vegetables.

Beck was still too much an old-fashioned officer to make publicity capital out of his resignation as Chief of Staff, but he may also have been disappointed that none of his brother officers followed him. He had expected his resignation to result in a cry of protest, demands for an explanation, even that it might trigger a popular condemnation of Hitler. But there was barely a ripple. Beck might have withdrawn completely, but he had already confided in his brother his determination to continue his fight against Hitler whatever happened to his career, and now that he was without other employment he was able to give the Resistance not only his full time, but, in his person, a point of focus and a respected leader. His unusually broad outlook and his intellectual strength enabled him to bridge the gap between military and political opponents of the regime, and his close relationship and collaboration with Carl Goerdeler led to some of the most important conservative political theory to come out of Resistance thinking. The most urgent task for the present, however, was not how the country would be managed after the fall of Nazism — temporary rule by the Army would have to be accepted — but to get rid of Hitler before he could plunge Germany into war.

Beck and Goerdeler now formed the core of a developing Resistance network which had representatives in the Army, the Church, the Abwehr, the Foreign Office, the conservative opposition and the Berlin police force. Links were kept loose and constantly changed, though the Abwehr and the Foreign Office worked closely together. Despite the relative inefficiency of the Gestapo in the early days, the conspirators had to be on constant guard against informers, and those of them who were well known to the authorities had to exercise extreme discretion when meeting — though it is sometimes hard to imagine why they were not arrested far earlier than they were. By the time Beck resigned, plans for a coup were already well advanced, under the auspices of Hans Oster — a practical man with no personal political ambition, but possessed by a profound moral drive. Witzleben and Brockdorff-Ahlefeld were prepared to stand their men by, and General Erich Hoepner, in command of 1st Light Division in Thuringia, was ready to move against the large SS garrison in Munich, if its men should be ordered to march north to the aid of the Führer in Berlin. In Berlin itself, police neutrality during the coup was guaranteed by Helldorf. Though regarded with some suspicion by other members of the conspiracy on account of his long connection with the Party, and his tough and volatile temperament, Helldorf had been influenced by his own deputy, Fritz-Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg, and would prove to be a consistent opponent of the regime. Schulenburg, an aristocrat who had joined the Party for idealistic reasons, having believed in its socialist message, had long been disillusioned by Hitler.

The plan was to isolate the Reich Chancellery and then for a small unit of hand-picked officers to enter the building and seize Hitler. Oster did not underestimate the difficulty of this final assault. Hitler was protected by a bodyguard of about forty men at all times, and these belonged to the fanatical SS unit ‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’. The Resistance was divided in its opinion of what to do with Hitler, once he had been arrested. The difficulty was compounded because public reaction was an unknown quantity. The older conspirators, especially Beck and Canaris, were concerned that Hitler be taken alive and publicly tried for his crimes, to avoid the risk of making a martyr of him. Goerdeler also supported the idea of bringing Hitler to trial — and would cling to this principle as the years passed, long after his colleagues had accepted the necessity of assassination. Hans von Dohnanyi was already preparing a case for the prosecution, assisted by Karl Sack of the Judge-Advocate-General’s Department. Meanwhile, Dr Karl Bonhoeffer, father of Klaus and Dietrich, was engaged in secretly preparing a report on Hitler’s mental condition to be used as a basis for declaring him insane.

This was the official line of the Resistance, but Oster had private reservations, and not for the last time he took a lonely decision that cut through all the discussion. As long as Hitler was alive, he argued, there would be a risk of forces loyal to him mobilising to rescue him. He was a popular figure and it would be better to demonstrate to the nation what crimes he had in fact committed — but this should take place only after he was dead. Accordingly he gave secret instructions to the leader of the team detailed to arrest Hitler — a tough former Freikorps fighter called Friedrich Heinz — to arrange a mêlée in the Reich Chancellery during which Hitler would be ‘accidentally’ killed.

To prevent anarchy and reduce the risk of civil war in the event of one of the other Nazi leaders providing a rallying-point, it was crucial that the Army take control of the country following the coup. This could be achieved legally, but it would require Brauchitsch’s complete collaboration, and Brauchitsch could not be trusted. The conspirators decided to involve him only at the last possible moment. Beck’s successor as Chief of Staff, Franz Halder, though not a wholehearted supporter of the Resistance, at least seemed sympathetic, and Beck had a high opinion of him.

Preparations took until mid-September. Meanwhile, the conspirators kept an anxious eye on the negotiations which were continuing over Czechoslovakia. It was essential for the justification of the coup that it would take place immediately after Hitler had given the final order for Operation Green — the invasion of Czechoslovakia — to take place, but before hostilities broke out. It was Halder’s job to signal this hiatus to the conspirators, at which time Witzleben would use his troops to isolate Berlin. It was equally crucial that neither Britain nor France should reach any peaceful compromise with Hitler. Indeed, it was essential, if the coup was to be presented to the German public as the only means of avoiding war (and war was not a popular idea), that the Allies should confront Hitler with the unequivocal threat of it if he persisted in pushing his territorial designs on Czechoslovakia.

Carl Goerdeler had already visited Britain to urge the government there to take a firm line with Hitler. He had not succeeded in convincing the British authorities, but he had unsettled them. A series of emissaries from the Resistance — their travel funded and organised by the Abwehr and the Foreign Office — followed his lead during the summer of 1938.
[43]
Goerdeler’s approaches were not met with success. In Britain he had enjoyed the confidence of Sir Robert Vansittart, who until recently had been Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office; but Vansittart’s star was waning. He was a staunch opponent of appeasement, and thus earned the disfavour of Chamberlain and his Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden. ‘Van’ was kicked upstairs to an advisory post at the end of 1937. Chamberlain wrote to his sister with unconscious irony:

After all the months that S.B. [Stanley Baldwin — his predecessor in office] wasted in futile attempts to push Van out of the FO [Foreign Office] it is amusing to record that I have done it in 3 days...I hope to announce it after the House [of Commons] has safely dispersed...Van will be removed from active direction of FO policy and I suspect that in Rome and Berlin rejoicings will be loud and deep.

Goerdeler did not help the case of the Resistance by making demands on behalf of the putative German government which was supposed to replace Hitler that were not dissimilar in their territorial aspects from Hitler’s own. Viewed from outside, Hitler was the legitimate leader of his country and he had certainly done nothing to justify committing one’s country to a war with him. By asking for, among other things, the cession of the Sudetenland, Goerdeler only muddied the water further. In most of its dealings abroad, the German Resistance suffered from parochialism: its own, and that of its interlocutors.

In mid-August 1938 Hans Oster organised a visit to London for Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin. His credentials were impeccable and his contacts were good. The mission had come about as the result of a chance meeting between Kleist and a twenty-five-year-old British journalist called Ian Colvin, who had been in Berlin for eighteen months as the
News
Chronicle
’s junior correspondent. Colvin’s father was Ian Duncan Colvin, the leader writer on the
Morning
Post
, and a friend of Robert Vansittart and Winston Churchill. While in Berlin, the young journalist had been introduced to the Casino Club in Bendlerstrasse, not far from Armed Forces Headquarters. The Casino was a bastion of the Establishment, not unlike the Reform Club in London or the Downtown Association in New York. He knew that here if anywhere he would learn what men of influence who were opposed to the regime were thinking.
[44]

Colvin was introduced to Kleist by Hubertus von Weyrauch, the club’s secretary and a close personal friend. The journalist was impressed by the slightly built grey-haired man whose signet ring bore a heraldic running fox. After a cautious lunch during which the two men sounded each other out, Kleist confided in Colvin his own fears for the future of Europe. ‘Czechoslovakia is the next step,’ he told Colvin. ‘The Wehrmacht insists that this is a real military venture and must be organised by the Army. Hitler says that the Party can deal with Czechoslovakia and that the Army only has to obey instructions. One thing I know for certain — if England says “No”, be it only through diplomatic channels, the adventure must be put off. Hitler admits this and fears like the plague that England will warn him. For he would have to give way and that would be a grave blow to his prestige in Germany. When the pendulum is checked, it swings the other way. That is what would happen here.’

The upshot of this meeting and those that followed was mutual respect and the idea that Kleist should go to England to make his views known there. He flew out on a Junkers 52 bound for Croydon from Tempelhof on 18 August, with introductions to Vansittart, Churchill and Lord Lloyd. As a man who was already recognised by the Nazi State as its enemy, he was taking a grave risk; but Oster’s department at the Abwehr had organised his passport, and he was seen off by his cousin, General (later Field Marshal) Erwin von Kleist. Although he made a better case than Goerdeler, Kleist was no more successful. The British cast a wary eye on such emissaries. Policy was strictly concerned with avoiding war, and reports from the Ambassador in Berlin, Sir Nevile Henderson, of Hitler’s achievements were full of praise. Ironically Henderson, one of the most disastrously misplaced diplomats ever, owed his appointment to Vansittart, who gave it to him as a reward after a long stint in South America. Henderson was more of a fool than a knave, but his naive approval of the regime seriously discoloured British thinking.