Killing Hitler (15 page)

Despite the general euphoria that the
Anschluss
with Austria had engendered, some were troubled by the events of that spring. Following the Blomberg and Fritsch affairs and the subordination of the army, those still unseduced by the Nazis saw the Austrian adventure as a dangerous escalation. Whereas Hitler had previously confined his actions to domestic affairs, now they saw him embarking on foreign adventures. Whereas Hitler had previously reacted to events, now they saw him forcing the pace. What was more, they saw that the bloodless victory against Austria had reinforced his contempt for all those who had advocated a more cautious policy. They saw him become impervious to all those who counseled moderation. When, soon after his triumphant return from Vienna, he set his sights on Czechoslovakia, they saw that it was time to act.
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Throughout that spring and summer, a number of emissaries from the resistance embarked on clandestine missions to Western capitals. Their brief was to warn the British and French that
Hitler was bent on war and to convince them that only a resolute and unyielding stand from Paris and London could deter him. The messengers, most of whom were sent by Oster, came from widely differing backgrounds. They included a Pomeranian landowner, an industrialist, a diplomat, and an eminent historian. All of them had high-level contacts in London. All of them delivered their message in the starkest terms. All of them failed.

The fundamental problem was that the British were committed to a policy that was diametrically opposed to what the German resistance demanded of them. They were of a mind to yield to Hitler’s demands rather than stand firm. Their policy of appeasement, synonymous with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, was predicated on the widespread feeling that Germany had been harshly treated at Versailles and was entitled to a position in the world commensurate with her population and resources. Moreover, Nazi Germany was anti-communist, and communism was widely viewed as a greater threat to the established order than fascism. At the root of appeasement, however, lay the understandable desire to avoid another war. The British Empire had barely survived the First World War and another large-scale conflict would surely spell its end.

Yet appeasement was more than mere woolly-headed pacifism. Chamberlain’s policy, though subsequently vilified, was more hardheaded and realistic than is often appreciated. A series of negotiated territorial concessions, it was thought, would leave Hitler’s Germany “sated, indolent and quiescent.”
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War would be avoided, Hitler would be pacified, and the established order—and the Empire—could be maintained. The British, therefore, viewed the emissaries of the German resistance with barely disguised incomprehension, if not distaste. They offered sympathy and kind words, but little more. They were, after all, looking to avoid confrontation rather than provoke it.

Nonetheless, Oster was undaunted and continued with his planning. In this, he was aided by a number of prominent soldiers and politicians, who met repeatedly that summer to finesse their plot. The network of conspirators included two successive chiefs of the General Staff, Ludwig Beck and Franz Halder; the head of
the Reichsbank, Hjalmar Schacht; and the commander of the Berlin Military District, Erwin von Witzleben. It consisted of two distinct groups. The first, represented by Beck and Halder, was what one might call the anti-war party. They were mostly military men who were desperate to avert the disastrous military confrontation toward which Hitler appeared to be headed. The second, the coup party, represented by Schacht and Witzleben, aimed to remove Hitler and replace him with a more cautious, conservative leader. In many ways, therefore, the conspiracy was an uneasy marriage of disparate allies driven by political convenience and desperation. Not all of its members were enthusiastic traitors or even convinced resisters.

One of its key players was the head of the Berlin police, Wolf von Helldorf. Helldorf made a most peculiar resister. A notorious anti-Semite, playboy, and former leader of the Berlin SA, he had become disillusioned by Nazism and had apparently been appalled by the treatment meted out to General von Fritsch.
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According to Schacht, he may also have been moved by a sense of guilt for his previous enthusiasm for the Nazi cause and was seeking to rehabilitate himself by making contact with the opposition. Whatever his motivations, Helldorf provided the plotters with vital inside knowledge and even supplied Oster with documentary evidence of Nazi misdeeds. His exposition of the callous and underhanded treatment of Fritsch and Blomberg, meanwhile, won many converts to the cause, including Schacht.
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So, armed with moral indignation, the plotters devised a plan in the summer of 1938. Once a mobilization against Czechoslovakia had been ordered—thereby giving proof of Hitler’s recklessness—they would engineer a coup. It was a bold plan. Troops of the crack 23rd Infantry Division, based in Potsdam, would occupy all key ministries, radio stations, and police, Gestapo, and SS installations in Berlin. The 1st Light Division would block the return to the city of Hitler’s bodyguard division, the
SS-Leibstandarte
, then stationed in Saxony near the Czech border. A third force would then take the Reich Chancellery, capture Hitler, and spirit him away to a secret location.

It was at this point, however, that the plotters’ plans appeared
to diverge. The military men among them were content for Hitler to be formally tried or declared insane, while a new government would take charge. Others were less optimistic. Chief among the latter was Friedrich Heinz, an Abwehr colleague of Oster’s.
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Heinz was a typical example of the “lost generation” that had flocked to the Nazi ranks. He had served in the First World War and the postwar
Freikorps
and had participated in the right-wing Kapp Putsch of 1920. He then featured in almost every right-wing terrorist and conspiratorial organization of the interwar years, including the Organization Consul, the Ehrhardt Brigade, and the Viking League, before joining the Nazi Party in 1928. However, as a follower of the “national-bolshevik” wing of the party, under Otto Strasser, he soon found himself increasingly at odds with the leadership. Expelled from the party in 1930, he became, in effect, an anti-Hitler Nazi.

In 1935 Heinz joined the Abwehr, where he was responsible for monitoring the German press. By 1938, he was one of the key figures in the Oster plot. His initial task was the recruitment of the
Stosstrupp
, or raiding party, that was to take the Reich Chancellery and arrest Hitler. He recruited mainly from the Abwehr but also included friends and acquaintances that he considered politically sound and ruthless enough to carry out the action.
⁶⁰
By mid-September, he had a commando unit of around twenty individuals armed and installed in safe houses around Berlin. All that was needed now was the trigger.

For much of the summer of 1938, Europe stood on the brink of war. Hitler’s relentless saber rattling against Czechoslovakia, ostensibly in support of the Sudeten German minority in the country, had spurred a round of shuttle diplomacy in an attempt to defuse the crisis. So, just as the German resistance was sending its emissaries to London demanding firmness, so London was sending its own emissaries to the Czechs demanding submission. Though every concession was made, it was all in vain. As Hitler had told the Sudeten German leader that summer: “We must always demand so much that we can never be satisfied.”
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In this way the crisis continued to worsen, with the British increasingly
determined to placate Hitler, while Hitler was increasingly determined not to be placated.

By 12 September, matters appeared to be coming to a head. On that day, as Hitler stepped up to the microphone at the Nuremberg rally, many expected him to declare war on the Czechs. He resisted, but his speech was a masterpiece of defiance and veiled menace:

The…abnormal Czechoslovakian state…[was pursuing] a mission to ravage and rape a mass of millions of other nationalities…. The misery of the Sudeten Germans defies description. [But they] are neither defenceless nor have they been abandoned…. If these tortured creatures can find neither justice nor help by themselves, then they will receive both from us…. It is the duty of all of us never again to bow our heads to any alien will.
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The following day, right on cue, the Sudeten German leader demanded the secession of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia.

Oster’s plans, meanwhile, were in a high state of readiness. Meetings had been convened and procedures agreed upon. The day before Hitler’s Nuremberg speech, Oster and Gisevius had made a tour of Berlin by car, reconnoitering the government quarter and discreetly inspecting the target buildings. Escape routes had been identified and copious notes taken. Heinz’s men were already in place, and the cooperation of the key military units had been ensured. The coup was set to take place following Hitler’s order for a mobilization, which was expected on 15 September. Oster told a colleague that the action would be launched within the following forty-eight hours.
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Everything was ready. Confidence was high. On the evening of the fourteenth, one of the plotters, Helmuth Groscurth, confided to his brother, “Hitler will be arrested tomorrow!”
⁶⁴

The tension was broken by news that Chamberlain was flying to Germany to speak to Hitler. Chamberlain believed himself to be playing his masterstroke. The sixty-nine-year-old prime minister,
who was in failing health and had never flown before, was to meet Hitler for face-to-face talks, having convinced himself that he could achieve success where others had failed. At Berchtesgaden, he was subjected to Hitler’s well-rehearsed rant about perfidious Czechs and terrorized Germans. He left to discuss matters with his cabinet, promising to return. He had succeeded only in gaining a paltry agreement from Hitler not to begin military action in the meantime, but he deluded himself into believing that he had made progress. As he later confided to his sister: “In spite of the harshness and ruthlessness I thought I saw in his face, I got the impression that here was a man who could be relied upon when he had given his word.”
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He could not have been more wrong. Hitler, for his part, viewed Chamberlain with outright contempt and among his intimates referred to the British prime minister simply as “the arsehole.”
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The plotters were initially devastated by the news of Chamberlain’s visit. What they wanted was a declaration of war, not international mediation. Further negotiations, they thought, did nothing to defuse the tension, while playing into Hitler’s hands and making all those who had counseled caution look distinctly foolish. Severely shaken by this turn of events, some of them now vowed to launch their coup only if the British declared war on Germany. Others were inclined to give up their efforts entirely. As Gisevius noted grimly: “We bowed our heads in despair. To all appearances, it was all up with our revolt.”
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Nonetheless, once their nerves had been restored, the plotters resumed their planning. On the evening of 20 September, a meeting was held at Oster’s Berlin apartment, where the plan for the coup was to be finalized. Proclamations were drafted, a constitution was discussed, and the restoration of the monarchy was even mooted. The role assigned to Heinz’s
Stosstrupp
was outlined once again, along with those allocated to the other units involved in securing the wider Berlin area. When the other conspirators left, Heinz remained behind to speak to Oster. He had long been unhappy with the plan merely to arrest Hitler and put him on trial. Even from a prison cell, he argued, Hitler was stronger than all the conspirators combined. The Führer, he said,
should be killed. This would have been wholly unacceptable to many of the senior members of the conspiracy, who would have been appalled by the cold-blooded murder of the head of state. As Beck had warned, “assassination is still murder.”
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Oster, however, was certainly not averse to the proposal; indeed, it is highly likely that he had already arrived at the same conclusion himself. After a brief discussion, he concurred with Heinz and the two agreed that during the action, regardless of the degree of resistance offered, a scuffle would be engineered and Hitler would be shot.
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The other plotters would not be informed of the change of plan. The September Conspiracy had grown a conspiracy of its own.

Meanwhile, Chamberlain’s shuttle diplomacy continued. His second meeting with Hitler was scheduled for 22 September at the Rhine resort of Bad Godesberg. He arrived in a triumphant mood, having secured Anglo-French agreement to the demands raised a week before at Berchtesgaden. But he was to be given a rude awakening. When he outlined his “good news,” Hitler was unimpressed. He then sat in fury as Hitler again raised the stakes: “I’m sorry Herr Chamberlain…this solution no longer applies.”
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The following day, exasperated and exhausted, he was presented with a fresh ultimatum—the withdrawal of Czech troops from the Sudetenland was required within four days. Chamberlain meekly replied that Hitler had “not supported in the slightest [his] efforts to maintain peace,” and flew back to London to discuss matters with his cabinet.
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The conspirators were now once again in high spirits, believing that Hitler’s fresh demands must not only cause an irrevocable breakdown in negotiations but also give unequivocal evidence of his malicious intent. When Oster heard details of the Bad Godesberg meeting, his enthusiasm returned. “Thank God,” he said, “finally we have clear proof that Hitler wants war, no matter what. Now there can be no going back.”
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In these circumstances, his primary concern was to ensure that Hitler remained in Berlin, where he had been a rare visitor for most of the previous month. He knew only too well that the putsch depended entirely on Hitler’s presence in the capital. So he asked his Foreign Office contact, Erich Kordt, for assistance: “Do everything you
can,” he instructed, “to get Hitler back to Berlin. The bird must return to the cage.”
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