What if the allies had responded to German opposition appeals in 1943 and 1944 by agreeing to grant more favorable conditions of peace to a post-Hitler government in which they had confidence? “More favorable conditions” is defined here as representing in the view of the opposition and potential recruits a substantial improvement on unconditional surrender. As only the Army could oppose Hitler effectively, its leaders had to be persuaded that Germany's position could be improved by the removal of Hitler and his henchmen.
This had been attempted in July and August 1938 by General Ludwig Beck, then Chief of the General Staff of the Army. Beck failed to convince Colonel-General von Brauchitsch, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, and the other senior commanders, of his firm belief that most of the desired revisions of the settlement of 1919 and 1920 that Germany sought could be achieved through negotiations. Neither did the victors of 1918 offer any assurances in this regard until September 1938, nor did the commanders accept Beck's reasoning that “the soldier's duty to obey ends when his knowledge, his conscience and his sense of responsibility forbid him to carry out a certain order,” in this case the invasion of Czechoslovakia.1 They did not support his proposal to confront Hitler with a refusal to carry out orders in this case which Beck had expected would have led to Hitler's overthrow.
After 1 September 1939, most senior Army commanders continued to be skeptical in this regard. Their perception was that the war was imposed on Germany. Germany had just grievances against Poland, and Polish intransigence was made possible by a Polish-British pact. Britain declared war on Germany for the Balance of Power. France, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada followed with declarations of war; the United States immediately supported Britain and France with shipments of arms and other necessities of war.
Until the beginning of November 1939, the Chief of the General Staff of the Army, General Halder, was committed, verbally at least, to supporting a coup d'état against Hitler's regime. But on 10 November 1939 he said to one of the conspirators who tried to press him to take action against Hitler, and to prevent the planned offensive against France: “1. It violates tradition. 2. There is no successor. 3. The young officer corps is not reliable. 4. The mood in the interior is not ripe. 5. It really can not be tolerated that Germany is permanently a “people of helots” for England. 6. Concerning offensive: Ludendorff, too, in 1918 had led the offensive against the advice of everyone, and the historical judgment was not against him. He, Halder, therefore did not fear the later judgment of history either.”2 Halder gave voice to sentiments widely held.
Further, there was the matter of loyalty to the legitimate Supreme Commander and Head of State. If someone removed him, the position would be changed; but until then, most military leaders were not willing “to act” to help eliminate the power bases and structures of the Nazi state. The question of the oath is left aside here. Suffice it to say that it was less an ethical issue than one of military necessity and tradition.3 In January 1943, Manstein insisted that the Soviet Union could and should be fought to a draw. Even Stauffenberg believed in the summer of 1944 that Germany must be maintained as a power factor if she were to have any hope of negotiating for acceptable armistice conditions; only in the desperate weeks of July did Stauffenberg accept the necessity of unconditional surrender on all fronts.
In weighing retrospectively the impact that allied support to the German Resistance in the form of acceptable peace conditions might have had, one must keep in mind the long series of efforts to overthrow Hitler, beginning in 1938, all of which were made without any allied assurances to the German opposition. Equally, one must not overlook the events of the winter of 1939-40. When there was what had to pass for substantial encouragement to the conspirators, it failed to stimulate a coup d'état. An offer of more favorable conditions might well have led the opposition to redouble their efforts, later in the war, to win the military support they needed; but in view of the attitude of most military leaders, and of all those who commanded forces capable of military combat, nothing suggests that these efforts would have met with greater success. Allied assurances might have improved the circumstances in which a coup could have taken place in Germany. Whether or not they could have stimulated a coup d'état at other times than those of the known attempts, is subject to doubt.
Both Rommel and Kluge made fairly far-reaching commitments to the conspirators. In somewhat different ways and for slightly different reasons, neither Rommel nor Kluge could be fully relied upon by the conspirators. Rommel was opposed to assassination, and Kluge kept changing.
Rommel thought it “stupid” to try to assassinate Hitler because of the aura which surrounded Hitler in the eyes of the German people. He thought the revolt ought to have been launched in the west, by German retreat resulting in an unopposed occupation of Germany by the forces of the western allies. Thus Hitler would have been presented with an accomplished fact. Rommel and his chief of staff Speidel in the middle of July concluded that the German front in France would collapse within a few weeks. They decided to open independent peace negotiations and made preparations for them. According to Rommel's account to his family, they won over Kluge. On 15 July, Rommel drafted a message to Hitler in which he gave an account of the situation. He concluded by saying he felt in duty bound to speak plainly, and to say that “the unequal struggle is approaching its end,” and that it was “urgently necessary for the proper conclusion to be drawn from this situation.”4 In Rommel's account, this message had the character of a “last warning”: he did not want it said that he had stabbed anyone in the back. But the weight of Rommel's account is that he would have done just that if his “last warning” had gone unheeded. Rommel did not make clear how he and Kluge expected to carry this off without being sacked immediately at the slightest hint of disloyalty.
If Rommel had been in his position as Commander of Army Group B on 20 July 1944, if he had been informed of the assassination attack, and soon afterwards of its failure, it cannot be ruled out that he might have carried out his plan for a negotiated retreat in the west. As soon as this would have transpired, he would have been removed from command and arrested if he did not escape by shooting himself or by going into hiding. On the other hand, Rommel's opposition to assassination might have caused him to keep his distance from the plot. He might have decided to postpone carrying out his plan until the furor over the assassination attempt had subsided.
The possibility that Rommel might have carried Kluge along cannot be ruled out. But Kluge's commitment was always tentative.
Hofacker and his co-conspirators in Paris, particularly Gotthard Freiherr von Falkenhausen, all agreed that independent action by German forces in the west was impossible for the following reasons: it was clear to the conspirators that neither Rundstedt nor Rommel or Kluge intended to disobey an incumbent Führer in any major way; it was also their perception that, had these commanders attempted to take the western front out of the war, there would have been internal warfare as Hitler undoubtedly would have called upon the Eastern Front and the Home Front to combat the Western Front!
Doubt about the likelihood that Rommel and Kluge would have tried to seek some sort of unauthorized arrangement on the Western Front is increased by a lack of reliable evidence that they had taken any steps in that direction. There is, furthermore, no indication that such steps had any prospect of success. Rommel and Kluge appear not to have had any evidence of an allied willingness to make some accommodation in the west. In December 1943, Helmuth Count von Moltke transmitted to Alexander Kirk in Cairo an offer, based on the condition of the continuance of an unbroken Eastern Front along an approximate line from Tilsit to Lemberg, of “military co-operation with the allies on the largest possible scale” which, the offer stipulated, must lead to a rapid occupation of Germany. There was no allied response to this offer. It appeared that the United States and the United Kingdom were determined to bring the war to conclusion only in conjunction with the Soviet Union, and only on the basis of the unconditional surrender of German forces on all fronts. Nor is there any indication who would have been prepared to honor Moltke's commitment, or how this could have been accomplished before Hitler and Göring had been removed. There is no evidence that Moltke's December overture was based on any firm understanding with a commander in the west; Rommel was appointed Commander of Army Group B officially as at 1 January 1944; it is conceivable that Moltke had some assurances through Lieutenant-Colonel von Hofacker, the conspirators' liaison with Rommel, and his cousin Stauffenberg. Kluge was not, of course, appointed to succeed Rundstedt until 2 July 1944. An account by Rommel's chief of staff, Speidel, that Colonel J. E. Smart, formerly of General Eisenhower's staff, had been shot down over Vienna on 10 May 1944 and had wished to be put in contact with Rommel with a view to an “independent conclusion of the war” remains unconfirmed.5 Equally, nothing is known on the allied side concerning Otto John's Madrid connection. It is quite clear, on the other hand, that Adam von Trott's various efforts in Sweden produced no allied support for the German conspirators.
Hitler named Göring his successor on 23 April 1938; he declared this publicly in his speech of 1 September 1939, naming Hess as second in line of succession; after Hess's flight to Scotland, Hitler reconfirmed Göring as heir apparent in a decree on 29 July 1941 and excluded Hess whose position as Personal Secretary was now relinquished entirely to Martin Bormann.
Minutes after the assassination attack at 12.50 P.M., on 20 July1944, a communications blackout went into effect, but not before the most important leaders, including Göring, had been notified by their various representatives in Hitler's headquarters. Göring hurried over from his own field headquarters in East Prussia to Wolfschanze. Had Hitler been killed, Göring would have proceeded to take control as the Führer's successor.
There is no reason to believe that anyone – Keitel, Ribbentropp, Himmler or Bormann – would have tried to prevent Göring from taking the reins initially. All would have been interested in maintaining the appearance of a stable leadership; in fact, the Führer's death would have probably have been kept secret as long as possible, as indeed the communications blackout was meant to prevent news of the assassination attack from getting out.
The conspirators also wished to isolate the headquarters; one in their number, General Fellgiebel, Commander of Wehrmacht Signals Troops, was prepared to act to accomplish this. As it happened, the wishes of the conspirators and the interests of the surviving Hitler regime coincided on this point during the first two to three hours after the assassination attempt. Legends about a plan to destroy the communications centers in the headquarters had wide currency after 1945, but no substance. The new leadership was not likely to lose control of the instruments of the state as long as their reign appeared legitimate and legal. Neither the civil service nor the population at large were likely to deny them their continued support.
Mussolini's special train, due to arrive shortly to take him to Wolfschanze for a visit with Hitler, would have been delayed for an hour or two, as in fact it was. Probably the visit would then have gone forward, with Göring in Hitler's place.
Whether or not, and if so, how soon Göring would have thought of appointing a new commander-in-chief of the Army is difficult to guess. He was himself certainly incompetent to lead the Army; if the Chief of the General Staff, General Zeitzler, had been ordered to carry on as deputy commander-in-chief, it is doubtful that he could have managed the Army in the face of its greatest crisis thus far, the collapse of Army Group Center, with casualty numbers far greater than those incurred at Stalingrad. Moreover, neither Zeitzler nor Göring were the personalities to restore the primacy of the Army in matters of land-warfare. Ambitious OKW and Wehrmachtfuhrungstab men such as Keitel, Jodl and Warlimont might well have thought the moment had come to combine control of all theaters of war in the OKW. In case of such conflicts, a com promise would probably have been struck, with the appointment of Rundstedt or Manstein as armed forces chief of staff or as commander-in-chief of all land forces.
Göring was heir apparent: the failed genius of the German airforce, a sporadically energetic organizer of men and materials, a morphine addict but still from time to time an efficient intriguer in the corridors of power, an extreme hedonist who took along on trips a pot of diamonds to play with. What is known of him does not afford reliable guidance for surmises about his actions in the situation envisioned. He would have understood that his negotiating position could only be based on his ability to do further damage to Allied forces, and on his willingness to use or forego the opportunity. He would have understood equally that his ability to do damage could be enhanced by sacrificing untenable positions. He might have followed the advice of Kluge on a partial withdrawal in the west, thus avoiding the pocket at Falaise. He might have even authorized the withdrawal of German forces from France entirely. As a man concerned with the economic side of the war, he would probably have held on to Norway and Denmark in order to secure the material resources of Sweden. But he would have probably permitted Army Group North to retreat to more tenable positions, and generally tried to consolidate the Eastern Front somewhere east or southeast of East Prussia. He might have given one or the other order, as that for the retreat of Army Group North, during the day of the attempted coup d'état, but most of his military decisions would have been delayed by events more immediately pressing.
Later in the afternoon of 20 July 1944, the news of Stauffenberg's return to Berlin and the coup d'état attempt in the capital would have reach Keitel. The headquarters might have reacted by denying Hitler's death. The moment of truth would have come when Major Remer, commanding officer of the Berlin Guard Battalion and acting under orders from the insurgents, tried to arrest Goebbels. If Goebbels had by this time been informed of the events in Wolftchanze and of Hitler's death, he might have confidently rung up Göring to let Remer speak to him. Had Goebbels been in the dark, he probably would have sought to reach the Führer, but would have settled, for the moment at least, for the Führer's successor. Göring would probably have sensed the importance of reassuring Remer and would have done his best, which would very likely have been very good, to convince Remer that he was the victim of traitors. If Göring had succeeded, events would have gone as they did: the coup d'état would have collapsed in the capital.
The coup d'état party had little to set against the formidable constitutional and physical resources of the Wolfschanze command center, which also controlled the fighting fronts and their supply. The odds were that they would have lost the battle for control of the Reich if Hitler had been dead and succeeded by Göring. The Berlin conspirators controlled only a few secondary command centers and training troops of the Home Army; they controlled even these forces uncertainly. Had Göring succeeded Hitler, it would have been probably just as difficult as it turned out to be on 20 July to move any troops into Berlin. With Goebbels still in office, the coup d'état party would equally have failed to gain control of the radio stations and transmitters which are so important in a modern dictatorship. There would probably not even have been a civil war, although there might have been altercations between Army and SS units here and there.
The situation in the military districts and military governments in the occupied territories was hardly more favorable for the success of the coup d'état in the case that Hitler had been killed and Göring had succeeded him. Had Göring emerged quickly as Hitler's successor, the officers in the military districts would very likely have transferred their loyalties to him at once.
Due to the uncertainty among the conspirators in Berlin about the success of Stauffenberg's assassination attack until he returned to tell of it, orders went out to military districts and command centers in Germany and in the occupied territories only late in the afternoon of 20 July. The orders claimed that Hitler was dead, they directed the immediate assumption of executive powers by Army forces, and the arrest and removal of the Nazi leadership in all its forms. In a good number of cases, these orders arrived in the absence of the commanding general, and in the absence, after duty hours, of his chief of staff. This caused delays independent of whether or not Hitler was alive. When the responsible officers were eventually confronted, some as early as about 5 P.M. others much later, with the coup orders to seize control of Nazi Party and government installations, they would have already received, or they would have received almost simultaneously, urgent messages from Wolfschanze insisting either on Hitler's survival and continued control, or on Göring's legal succession, and they would have demanded unquestioning loyalty in the interest of maintaining the fronts. Such an appeal would very likely have succeeded.
Thus, some of the events would have unfolded as they did. In Berlin, the leaders of the coup d'état were likely to have been shot, the survivors of the initial hasty court-martial held by the embarrassed Commander of the Home Army, Colonel-General Fromm, would have been arrested by the Gestapo; in Prague, Vienna and Paris there would have been moves towards a seizure of control, and they would have been aborted during the night, and followed by arrests.
Göring would have sought to rally all of the state's forces by an appeal to völkisch and national-socialist ideals, by vowing to fulfill the Führer's legacy and to redouble efforts to fight the enemies in the east, west and south to a standstill. But, hoping to be accepted by the Allies as a negotiating partner, he would probably have halted the mass murders in the concentration camps. Taking into consideration Göring's character and his record of having attempted to prevent war from breaking out and later from expanding, one may expect that he would have spared the surviving conspirators and attempted to use some of them for overtures to the Allies. The former ambassador in Moscow, Schulenburg, would probably have played a role, and the former ambassador in Rome, Hassell, who was an in-law of Göring, would have played a role and might have replaced Ribbentropp. Göring would have been confronted with the unconditional-surrender demand. He might have tried to steer a middle course between surrender and continued fighting along consolidated fronts. In the course of the next two or three weeks after the attempted coup d'état, perhaps after the fall of Paris, he might have been persuaded to install a government including members of the conspiracy in the hope of getting better terms for Germany.
Speculation beyond the first few days or weeks is futile. Even the most accomplished chess-players can not foresee more than a few moves although they are concerned with a finite situation and only one brain with which to interact. The Second World War was infinitely more complex. There is, search as one might, no evidence to suggest any modification of Allied war aims in case a more acceptable government were installed in Germany. The military balance would not have changed at all in favor of Germany. Thus the ultimate outcome of the war would have been the same. But the war would very likely have been concluded as much as half a year before 8 May 1945.
1 Wolfgang Foerster, Generaloberst Ludwig Beck: Sein Kampfgegen den Krieg (Munich: 1953), 122.
2 Helmuth Groscurth, Tagebucher eines Abwehroffiziers 1938-1940, 236-237.
3 Captain (Res.) Hermann Kaiser, diary 20 Feb.1943 in Generale: Neue Mitteilungen zur Vorgeschichte des 20. Juli, Die Wandlung 1 (1945/46), 531.
4 The Rommel Papers, ed by B. Liddell Hart (London: Collins, 1953), 486-487.
5 Falkenhausen to Dr. Clemens Plassmann 24 March 1947. Max Domarus, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen 1932-1945 (Neustadt a.d. Aisch: Verlagsdruckerei Schmidt, 1963), 1316.