An Honourable Defeat (17 page)

And then, at the very last minute, in one of those baffling volte-faces that were, curiously, his preservation, Hitler cancelled the order to advance.

Hitler was worried by Britain and France after all. No offer of mediation had come, and the two countries appeared to be standing firm. The Führer’s ambitions had always been eastward, not westward; but he could not leave his barely constructed West Wall at the mercy of an Allied attack while he drove into Poland. His intelligence network had given a very strong picture (which was exaggerated) of France’s military preparation. What was more, Italy announced that it could not carry out its supportive role owing to a lack of
matériel
. Mussolini had never wanted to chance his arm for Hitler’s benefit in any case, and now once again he was looking for a way out of the Pact of Steel he had signed with Germany in late May.

These influences had caused the generals to waver once more. Hitler addressed the Reichstag in muted tones. On 26 August he even summoned Sir Nevile Henderson, the British Ambassador who had formed such a favourable impression of Nazi Germany, and proposed a non-aggression pact with Britain, though this was an irrelevancy in view of Britain’s agreements with Poland. For a moment the Resistance held its breath, and then gave way to jubilation. They had still hoped at the last minute to persuade Brauchitsch and Halder to support Schacht with a detachment of troops to arrest Hitler the moment he declared war on Poland. So close did they come that it was only when Schacht, Gisevius and General Thomas arrived by car at Canaris’s office to collect him in order to go to Brauchitsch and Halder that they learned, from a delighted Oster, that Hitler had called the invasion off three-quarters of an hour earlier. He had announced it at 2.50p.m. on 25 August; it was now 7p.m.

‘The Führer is finished,’ said Oster. ‘Peace has been saved for the next twenty years,’ said Canaris. But once again, violently and without warning, Hitler was to change his mind. Perhaps he knew that to save himself he had to go on; perhaps something in his make-up impelled him towards war, no matter what.

On 28 August he told Brauchitsch that he would fight a war on two fronts after all if he had to, and proceeded hastily to map out a plan whereby an act of Polish ‘aggression’ could be engineered to give him the excuse to attack — and a new date was set for 1 September. In the two intervening days he also managed to present to the British Ambassador a conciliatory sixteen-point plan by which the Polish ‘problem’ might be resolved; but refused (via Ribbentrop) to let Henderson have a copy of them. They were merely read out to him in German. Henderson did not take the proffered translation from Hitler’s translator, Paul Schmidt (who was also on the side of the conspiracy), which would have helped, as Henderson’s German, though good, was not up to diplomatic finesse. The conspirators Ulrich von Hassell and State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker had copies of the sixteen points, but before they could relay them to Henderson (in any case not the most secure of men even at such a crucial moment as this), they were expressly forbidden to have any more diplomatic contact with the British by Ribbentrop. However, Weizsäcker managed to telegraph the contents to Theo Kordt, still on the staff of the German Embassy in London, who, under conditions of strict secrecy, was able to show them to Sir Robert Vansittart. But, even as he did so, his wife rang from Germany to say that they had just been publicly announced over the wireless, with the comment that Poland had failed to send a representative to sign agreement to these reasonable proposals — Hitler had made sure to set an impossible deadline for such a signing, but this was not revealed. He had duped the British into thinking he meant to keep secret something he had every intention of making public — his stratagem had been simple and totally effective.

It was past the eleventh hour now, but if Brauchitsch and Halder could have changed their minds even this late the situation might have been saved. It was a vain hope. Hitler gave the final order for Operation White, and this time he did not revoke it. Canaris wept. ‘
Finis
Germaniae
,
’
he said to Gisevius, quoting the words of the Chief of the Imperial Civil Cabinet when, in 1917, he had learnt of the decision to wage unrestricted submarine warfare on neutral shipping: ‘This means the end of Germany.’ There was no more question of a coup — in reality, there had not been since 25 August — events had unrolled too quickly and too crazily. Also, Hitler had felt confident enough to lay down a clear challenge to those of his senior officers who might be planning anything: ‘I have just one thing to say to anyone who’s thinking of stabbing me in the back: watch out!’

But still, on its eve, only a few Germans had any conception of the war that was about to be unleashed, and what it would bring to their country. The school holidays were still on, the cities were empty, and the coastal resorts packed. In Berlin, Wilhelm Furtwangler was conducting Bruckner’s 7th Symphony at the Philharmonia; and
Die
Fledermaus
was playing at the Metropol. The following morning at 3.15a.m. German divisions moved into Poland.

The campaign was ruthless, brilliantly executed and completely successful. In less than a month Poland was at Germany’s feet. The Poles had fought bravely, but how can you attack armoured divisions with cavalry, or shoot down Messerschmitts with rifles? And by the terms of the treaty with the USSR, Soviet forces had moved in to occupy the eastern areas allocated to them by late September. The Poles had had no help from Britain or France. There had been no attack on Germany from the west. The sixty-seven-year-old General Maurice Gamelin, wary of the locked front of the First World War, had decided on a strategy of dug-in defence, from which even Poland’s fall would not move him. He was replaced in 1940 by the even older General Maxime Weygand, whose thinly spread line of defence ensured that the Germans’ deep penetration attack was utterly successful, just as it had been in Poland. Ironically, Hitler’s star tank general, Erich Hoepner, would soon become one of his most determined opponents.

But the fall of France was still in the future, and at the end of the Polish campaign Germany drew breath. To go on now would be to sacrifice any last grain of a chance of avoiding world war. During this period of phoney war, another chance of a coup seemed momentarily to offer itself. Even enthusiastic Nazis thought that Germany could not cope with a long campaign on several fronts for many months, and few could have been blind to the potential threat of the inexhaustible resources of Russia and America, should Germany’s ambitions become too much for them to tolerate.

The first person to grasp the new possibility of bringing Hitler down was Kurt von Hammerstein. Two of his sons, both young officers, were also involved in the Resistance from an early date, and he had retained his commitment to it. With the war, he had been recalled from retirement and placed in command of Army Section A, based in Cologne. Unimpressed by any of Hitler’s early successes, he shared Ludwig Beck’s conviction that ‘this war was lost before the first shot was fired’, and his disgust at Hitler was subsequently reinforced by reports of the atrocities committed in Poland. He was appalled that the generals in the east said nothing in protest. He said to his acquaintance, the anti-Nazi journalist, Rudolf Pechel: ‘I am an old soldier, but these people have turned me into an anti-militarist.’

His plan, developed in liaison with the Resistance centres in Berlin, was to persuade Hitler to visit the West Front, and arrest him. By now the infrastructure of the Resistance was quite firm in Berlin. Regular contact between conspirators in the Foreign Office, the Abwehr and the Regular Army, as well as the police, had been developed using junior officers, and officers whose official duties made them go-betweens, as couriers. Nevertheless, the number of people involved was kept as small as possible as a security precaution, and wherever feasible conspirators operating at ground level did not know each other’s identity. Two important additions to the Army’s group of conspirators were General Karl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, Halder’s deputy, who had been involved with the proposed coup of 1938, and General Eduard Wagner, the Quartermaster-General-in-Chief.

Hammerstein’s go-between was Lieutenant Fabian von Schlabrendorff, who in the very first days of the war had been able to maintain contact with the last remaining British diplomats in Berlin, among them Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes, the Chargé d’Affaires. On 3 September, after the British ultimatum to Germany had expired at 11a.m., Schlabrendorff was given the job of seeking out Sir George and telling him what Hammerstein planned.

The British Embassy in Berlin was already closed. But I succeeded, between 1 and 2 in the afternoon, in making contact with Sir George Ogilvie-Forbes at the Hotel Adlon in Unter den Linden and in giving him my news. While I was still speaking to Sir George in the foyer of the hotel several SS Officers came in and immediately went up to a waiter [waiters were notorious Gestapo informers], who pointed in our direction. For a moment I was worried that the SS gentlemen would take an interest in me, since I was taking refreshment with a senior British diplomat immediately after war had been declared between Britain and Germany, but luckily they took no notice of me. After a short conversation with Sir George, they left. He had not lost his composure for an instant, and returned to our table to tell me that the SS had merely wanted to settle a few details relating to the departure of the remaining British diplomats and embassy staff
.
[53]

Hammerstein made every effort to persuade Hitler to visit Cologne, insisting that a visit by the Führer to the west while his forces were campaigning in the east would bolster morale and show the French how seriously he was taking their threat; but Hitler, obedient to his sensitive instinct of self-preservation, stayed away. Not long after, with the end of the Polish campaign, Hammerstein was put on the retired list once more. Still by no means an old man, he would shortly fall victim to the cancer that would kill him in 1943, his sixty-fifth year. But although out of the Army, and from now on burdened with failing health, he remained a source of advice and moral support for the more active conspirators.

While it was true that the generals of the Polish campaign had returned flushed with triumph — the technique of Blitzkrieg had paid off — some of them were also disgusted at what they had seen. Hitler was not slow to send in murder squads of SS behind the front line, and on 12 September Ribbentrop had delivered to Keitel the Führer’s order for the slaughter of the Jews, the clergy, the aristocracy and the intelligentsia: the Jews because it was part of Hitler’s plan to wipe them from the face of the earth, the others because all potential leadership in Poland had to be liquidated.

The conquest of Poland was completed by 27 September. There was some hope among the generals now of a peace treaty to prevent the escalation of the war, but Hitler was already in pursuit of plans to open up the offensive on the West Front. Curiously though, almost before the High Command had time to react, the Führer addressed the Reichstag in a speech which definitely suggested peace feelers directed at the Allies. The terms were impossible: Britain and France should recognise Germany’s territorial gains up to and including Poland. Britain should cause Germany’s colonies, confiscated under the Treaty of Versailles, to be returned; but Germany would drop its claim to Alsace-Lorraine. Both Daladier and Chamberlain rejected the proposal, which may only have been made to gain time, but before they had even reacted, Hitler had swung round once more to the idea of an invasion of the west — ‘Operation Yellow’ — to be carried out as soon as possible, and in the same manner as the Polish campaign.

In this atmosphere Halder, under the influence of Ludwig Beck, began to warm towards the idea of a coup once more. One of his closest associates was Major (later Lieutenant-Colonel) Helmuth Groscurth, who was a liaison officer between the Regular Army and the Abwehr, and who also had close contact with Weizsäcker’s Army liaison officer, Hasso von Etzdorf. Halder knew that Groscurth was involved in the Resistance — it was to Groscurth that he had confided his desire to shoot Hitler personally. Groscurth wrote in his personal diary for 1 November 1939: ‘With tears in his eyes H[alder] said he had been going to see Emil [one of the Resistance’s nicknames for Hitler] with a pistol in his pocket for weeks in order to shoot him down.’ But, as we have seen, Halder could never bring himself to the point. Now, despite his evident desire to see this latest coup attempt work, and the resurrection and adaptation by Oster of the 1938 plans to help him — for the Chief of the General Staff was a powerful figure and the Resistance could not but assist Halder if he showed himself willing, however unreliable he had proved in the past — he fudged the attempt. It was almost a replay of 1938 — everything depended on Hitler’s declaring war on the west this time — but the doubts remained the same. How far would the population and the bulk of the Army react to a coup? What would happen if it misfired?

On 22 October Halder learned that Hitler proposed to launch his attack on 12 November. Senior Army commanders immediately objected that they could not possibly be ready in time to meet that date. The conspirators, who also knew Hitler’s plans, were quick to foment military discontent. Oster in particular discussed the matter with Stülpnagel, the Deputy Chief of Staff already involved in the Resistance, at Army HQ in Zossen.

But it was as if Hitler knew what was going on. On 27 October he invited Brauchitsch and Haider to lunch, along with a dozen other officers, and awarded them all the Knight’s Cross — one of the highest military decorations. After the ceremony the Commander-in-Chief and the Chief of the General Staff attempted to dissuade Hitler from his attack date, but without success. The following day Brauchitsch was already in defeat, but Halder tried again. Hitler would not listen. Halder, who knew Stülpnagel was involved in the conspiracy, sent him to the West to inspect the front line. Stülpnagel told Halder to put Brauchitsch under lock and key and appeal to the senior generals (all of whom were opposed to a western offensive at this time) to range themselves behind him. The true purpose of Stülpnagel’s visit to the West Front was to sound out the Commanders of Army Groups A and B, Gerd von Rundstedt and Fedor von Bock. Neither of these old guard officers would commit himself to a coup, but Wilhelm von Leeb, the commander of Group C, who had already spoken out against the French campaign, agreed to be associated with it. Moreover Witzleben commanded the 1st Army, within von Leeb’s Group.