THE SUMMER THAT would end with the world plunged into war began with bright sunshine and blue skies over Western Europe.
Sophie Scholl prepared to take a vacation with her boyfriend, Fritz Hartnagel. Mildred Fish-Harnack spent glorious days with her books, sitting among the sunbathing crowds at the inland beach at Wannsee. But if life went on, there was a dreadful undercurrent to it all. Dietrich Bonhoeffer felt it keenly, and agonized over his and Germany’s future. Now aged thirty-three, the pastor was becoming eligible for compulsory military service, during which he knew he would have to swear the personal oath to Adolf Hitler. Bonhoeffer told his friends that he viewed the oath as both corrupting and sacrilegious and as “perhaps the worst thing of all,” but in truth, there was something worse: He might also find himself in a war for the Nazis, which he would find “conscientiously impossible to join.”1
Because after the Sudetenland and the Munich conference, Hitler had the confidence to push his aggressive, expansionist foreign ambitions much further.
THE WORLD HAD predicted it but done too little to prevent it. On March 15, 1939, Hitler moved his forces into the rest of Czechoslovakia. German tanks and trucks headed toward Prague with only the mist and snow to slow them down.
Hitler knew the Sudetenland occupation had given him a chance to occupy the whole of Czechoslovakia. Consumed by both racism and egomania, he had always had an intense personal dislike of the Czechs but also yearned for the opportunity of a triumphant entry into the historic city of Prague.
Before the Munich Agreement, he had confided to Goebbels that he would concede to Britain and France, wait a short time, and take the rest of Czechoslovakia later.2 The Czech regions of Bohemia and Moravia were industrial heartlands, rich in raw materials, which would be valuable in a coming war—as would the Czech government’s large reserves of gold and foreign currency.
Hitler blustered and threatened, and fearing the sight of Stuka dive-bombers over Prague, the new Czech state president, Dr. Emil Hácha, told his armies not to resist occupation. Again German tanks and troops marched forward, unopposed. As he headed to Prague, Hitler—with a dubious, prejudiced sense of history—told his personal staff that the “union of Czechia with the Reich” had been striven for for centuries, and this was the “happiest day of my life.” He spent one night in Prague to celebrate, but the streets were deserted and the snow fell hard. His feelings of euphoria fell flat. He left the next morning, leaving his troops to run what had been Central Europe’s last democracy.
Hitler’s reception was warmer in Berlin. Goebbels organized a tunnel of light on the Unter den Linden, with huge searchlights crossing in the sky, and a firework display that lit up the sky as his leader accepted the cheers of the crowd from the balcony of the Reich Chancellery. How different it was from a few months earlier when the people thought the crisis over the Sudetenland would mean war. Of course, much of the crowd were the party faithful, organized by Goebbels, and many Germans were not persuaded by Hitler’s actions. “Was that necessary?” many people asked, and they wondered what right Germany truly had to Czechoslovakia. Most northern Germans had no connection—personal, spiritual, or political—to the Czech lands.3
William Shirer wrote: “It is almost banal to record his breaking another solemn treaty. But since I was personally present at Munich, I cannot help recalling how Chamberlain said it not only had saved the peace but had really saved Czechoslovakia.”4 The Western powers quibbled over their obligations to the Czech state, and as the French put it when they were told Hácha had told his forces not to resist, “Well, Czechoslovakia wasn’t invaded, was she?”5
But Poland was now in the Führer’s sights. Hitler was determined to turn it into a German satellite state, an ally and buffer against the Soviet Union. Its very existence as an independent country was a frustration, its having been ceded by the Treaty of Versailles both the port of Danzig and a corridor of land that allowed it access to the sea—land that cut German East Prussia off from the rest of the Fatherland. Ribbentrop had proposed a nonaggression pact in which Poland would return Danzig to Germany, but Warsaw had resisted.
Munich indicated to Hitler that Britain and France were reluctant to argue with German claims in Central and Eastern Europe. With bravado and trust in Providence, Hitler was prepared to gamble all. But this time Britain and France had guaranteed to protect the Poles. Neville Chamberlain for once was very clear as to where Britain stood. “In the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence, and which the Polish government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty’s Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power,” he told the House of Commons on March 31, 1939.6
When Hitler saw that threats against Poland had not worked and that this time the British were clear that they would fight against him, he flew into a rage, slamming his fist on the marble-topped table of his study in the Reich Chancellery. Staring Ribbentrop in the eye, he shouted: “I’ll brew them a devil’s potion!”
He ordered Colonel-General von Brauchitsch to draw up a plan for the invasion of Poland. Known as Fall Weiss (Case White), it was delivered to the Führer’s study having been prepared in extra-large type so that he could read it without spectacles. Hitler then added his own preface to the plan, stating that should Poland “adopt a threatening attitude towards Germany,” the aim would be to “destroy Polish military strength” and return Danzig to the Reich. Fall Weiss was issued to the army with instructions that units should be ready to carry out the invasion any time after September 1. The chief of the general staff, Halder, who a year earlier had supported Oster’s coup plans, now enthusiastically backed the “instinctively sure policy of the Führer” and predicted a rapid victory over the Poles.
Hitler heard Halder’s words with a smile. This time there would be no hesitation from his generals. They would smash Poland quickly, hopefully limiting the war to a single campaign, but if Stalin or Chamberlain interfered, then so be it.
However, perhaps there was a way to keep the Soviet Union out of the battle over Poland.
Stalin had felt sidelined by the British and French when they had cut him out of the Munich peace talks, and Poland had further angered him by moving into the Czech province of Teschen at the same time as Hitler had taken the Sudetenland. Deeply concerned by the West’s failure to stand up to Hitler, Stalin offered to make an alliance with Britain and France in which they would all agree to come to the aid of any Central European country threatened by an aggressor. Chamberlain feared antagonizing Hitler and hated Communism, but he did not wish to turn down the Soviet dictator, so he played for time.
Once again, Hitler sensed hesitation. He believed his successes so far were down to his iron will, and to the fact that he had refused to be hemmed in by Britain and France. He summoned his foreign minister, Ribbentrop, and outlined the most outlandish proposal: a pact between Nazi Germany and the Communist Soviet Union. Ribbentrop’s staff had already been intimating to the Russians that there “was a possibility of improving Soviet-German relations.”7 Ribbentrop and Soviet diplomats began work on an agreement that would allow Hitler to wage his war against Poland and, if necessary, Britain and France without Soviet interference, and would give Stalin the opportunity to seize the Baltic states and sections of eastern Poland, unopposed by Hitler. Importantly for Stalin—who knew that one day it was inevitable that the Soviet Union and Germany would fight over the right to dominate Europe—the agreement would also mean that he would be left alone to rebuild his armies after the purges and that Germany could be weakened by a war in the West.
The world first learned about the pact at 11:30 a.m. on August 21 when an announcement was made by the German Foreign Ministry. Two days later Ribbentrop flew to Moscow to sign the deal. For the German people there was immense relief: The fear of being drawn into a war with the mighty Soviet Union had been a terrifying prospect. Stalin toasted Hitler with Ribbentrop.
Meanwhile, at the Berghof, Hitler’s home at Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps, the Führer clenched his fist and banged the table—this time not in anger, but in triumph. “I’ve got them!” he shouted to his aides. “I’ve got them!”8
His promise to Stalin could be broken at any time, when he was ready. But for the time being, it allowed him the freedom to press on with his plans for Poland. Even now, he believed Britain and France would shrink from war when the time came.
IN MARCH, SHORTLY after Hitler’s armies rolled into Prague, Dietrich Bonhoeffer told Bishop Bell in a letter that if he took a public stand, his actions “would be regarded by the regime as typical of the hostility of our church toward the state.” He was afraid he might put in danger other members of the Confessing Church who might not even agree with him on his military duties.9
Visiting England that same month, he sought out Bell’s advice face-to-face, and early in April was introduced to a Dutchman named Willem Visser ’t Hooft, the thirty-eight-year-old secretary-general of the Geneva-based World Council of Churches. Hitler’s Reichskirche had recently published a declaration stating that the “Christian faith is the unbridgeable religious opposition to Judaism,” and Visser ’t Hooft had urged a response that denied the idea that race, national identity, or ethnic background had anything to do with Christian faith. “The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of the Jewish hope,” the organization stated in response to the Reichskirche’s declaration. “The Christian church rejoices in the maintenance of community with those of the Jewish race who have accepted the Gospel.”
Bonhoeffer and Visser ’t Hooft had heard a lot about each other but had never met. Within a short time, Visser ’t Hooft remembered later, they were chatting like old friends. War was coming, probably later that year, Bonhoeffer told him, and “had not the time now come to refuse to serve a government that was heading straight for war and breaking all the commandments?”10 Visser ’t Hooft said he had been visiting friends in Tübingen and Stuttgart at the time of Kristallnacht and had been shocked to see the synagogues in flames, and that if Bonhoeffer ever needed him he should come to Switzerland.
On his return to Germany, Bonhoeffer received notice that he must report for his compulsory military service, but it seemed Bell and Visser ’t Hooft had helped him make up his mind. He decided to take up invitations from New York to serve as a pastor to German refugees and to teach at the Union Theological Seminary. But he made the trip with a heavy heart: He did not want to leave Germany at this time of crisis and, within days of arriving in the United States, told astonished friends he wanted to return to Germany as soon as he could.
His friends told him to remain in America, that he was in danger, but he felt the tug of home. Sitting in the peace of the Union seminary, looking out over Broadway and 121st Street, he could not stop thinking about his homeland. “Nearly two weeks have passed without any news of what is happening over there,” he confided to his private journal. “It is almost unbearable.”
It was June in New York and hot in the subway, but Bonhoeffer would make his way to Times Square and stare up at the newsreel, or smoke a cigarette and read a newspaper in Central Park. All the while he thought of his brethren at home, and when a friend described his fear about the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States, Bonhoeffer saw that his place was in his own troubled homeland. He thought of Dohnanyi and the others, bearing witness to the hatred, and he realized he must be there with them. He had known it from the moment he left.
After less than a month in New York, Bonhoeffer boarded a ship heading for Europe. It would turn out to be the last scheduled steamer to cross the Atlantic before the outbreak of war.
He had received a twelve-month deferral on his military service, but friends were sad to see him return, feeling he was sure to put himself in greater danger with the regime as war approached. But as Bonhoeffer wrote in his journal: “We cannot escape our destiny.”
ON AUGUST 23, 1939, the day Ribbentrop flew to Moscow to sign the deal with the Soviet Union, the British ambassador to Germany, Sir Nevile Henderson, went to Munich and drove up to the Berghof. It was a last-ditch attempt to stop war. Hitler told him the British had encouraged the Poles to be obstinate and aggressive. When Henderson left, Hitler ordered the army to begin the final preparations for invasion.
On his return to Berlin, Henderson found that London had ordered the British embassy to burn all secret papers. Embassy staff worked through the night, some carrying bundles of documents to a bonfire while wearing their pajamas. Over the next few days staff would throw themselves enthusiastically into the task of drinking the stocks of champagne in the cellars.
On August 25, Hitler came to the capital and met again with Henderson. The Führer was angry when Henderson told him Britain wanted him to not only desist in his aggression toward Poland but also withdraw from Czechoslovakia. That night Britain and Poland signed a formal pact. Hitler was shocked, but when Göring asked Hitler whether an attack on Poland was necessary, the Führer told him: “In my life I’ve always gone for broke.”11 For Hitler that was answer enough.
LATE IN THE afternoon of August 31, 1939, with the outbreak of war just hours away, the conspirator Hans Bernd Gisevius went to Abwehr headquarters to see Oster. The atmosphere was charged; all knew that Germany was about to declare war on Poland. He was spotted by Admiral Canaris, who took him aside. “This means the end of Germany,” Canaris told him.
AS DURING THE Munich crisis, Mussolini again offered to mediate, but this time Hitler rejected the offer. He was ready for war. The battleship Schleswig-Holstein was off to Danzig, ready to rain down shells on Polish positions near the mouth of the Vistula. A million and a half German troops were amassed near the border, with General Heinz Guderian determined to push his Panzer force into Poland at a mind-spinning pace.
And for months the Goebbels-controlled press and radio had been streaming seemingly endless anti-Polish propaganda about the aggressive stance of the government in Warsaw and the plight of Poland’s ethnic Germans. The pièce de résistance came in the grotesque form of a fake Polish attack carried out by a handpicked group of SS men on a German customs post and radio station in the border town of Gleiwitz. The Germans stormed into the radio studio, firing shots into the air and pretending to be Polish soldiers launching an attack on Germany. One grabbed the microphone and gave a speech in poorly delivered Polish, which ended with the words “Long live Poland!” Meanwhile, outside, his comrades pulled the drugged bodies of concentration camp prisoners from a truck and scattered them around the building. The prisoners were then machine-gunned and left as the apparent casualties of a brief gun battle.
German radio broadcast news of the Polish “attack.” At 4:45 a.m. the German tanks rolled.
BRITAIN AND FRANCE ordered the general mobilization of their troops and at first issued ultimatums to Hitler without clear deadlines for the removal of German troops from Poland.
When Chamberlain appeared before the House of Commons, the mood was hostile. He realized his government would fall if he did not take a firmer line with Hitler.
On September 2, the oppressive summer heat in London broke with the lashing rain of a heavy thunderstorm. Chamberlain summoned the French ambassador to Downing Street, and they agreed just before midnight on the words of their two countries’ new ultimatums to Hitler.
These were issued first thing the next morning. In Berlin, Hitler was completely taken aback and turned on Ribbentrop, who had been ambassador to Britain a couple of years previously and had repeatedly assured him that Britain would never go to war over Poland. “What now?” Hitler asked him.
The deadline for a response was 11 a.m. None came. The summer was over.
AS THE WORLD had stumbled toward war, Sophie Scholl had been coming of age through her deepening romance with Fritz Hartnagel.
They had spent a fortnight together in northern Germany, with the sun blazing down on them as they took boat trips and walks. Hartnagel’s officer’s pay allowed them to enjoy good meals and visits to art galleries, and they laughed and swam in the North Sea.
But in quiet moments they wondered where events would take them, and Hartnagel in particular—for he was a young man, a soldier, and the war was about young men and soldiers, wasn’t it? It was they who fought.
While Sophie worried, Hartnagel held her face in his hands and said their time together made him ready to face his work again. When Hitler ordered mobilization, Hartnagel was recalled from his leave early.
With typical independence of mind, Sophie stayed on for a short time in Worpswede, near Bremen, and took walks alone along the North Sea coast. The landscape was dark and peaceful, the air clean and pure. The wind in her short hair made her feel free.
But she was no longer any freer than the whole of Germany. Suspicion was everywhere and was growing with the threat of war. One night she returned to the youth hostel to find that another guest had looked through her books, found banned literature, and reported her to the manager. A row broke out and Sophie became very frightened, but the manager persuaded the snoop not to go to the police; she did it not to protect Sophie but to save her hostel from embarrassment.
On the eve of war, the incident felt like a warning.
By the time Sophie returned to Ulm to begin her final year at school, the war that they dreaded had begun. Sophie wrote to Hartnagel: “I just can’t believe that people’s lives are now under constant threat. I’ll never understand it, and I find it terrible. Don’t go telling me it’s for the sake of the Fatherland.”12
NEWS FROM POLAND was reported excitedly on German radio. The bombing raids on Warsaw. The army groups invading from Prussia in the north and Slovakia in the south who would soon meet at Lodz in the center of Poland. The brave Stuka dive-bomber pilots who paved the way for Blitzkrieg—the lightning war that saw the leading Panzers reach the outskirts of the capital on September 8, having covered 140 miles in only eight days. The unpreparedness of Western leaders and the counteroffensive from Britain and France that did not come: British forces landed in France but did not clash with the Germans until December; French armies were geared to defensive strategies and did nothing.
On September 17, the Red Army crossed the Polish border to the east, as Stalin and Hitler had secretly agreed. Poland was doomed. Warsaw held out bravely for eighteen days of continuous bombing but finally surrendered on September 27. Those Poles who could fight on joined the underground or escaped west, many eventually joining the Royal Air Force. Some carried fistfuls of Polish earth in their pockets.
Unreported went the killings of civilians and Jews. Confidential German army documents revealed that more than 16,000 civilians were executed in Poland that September, and 65,000 met the same fate by the end of the year.13 There were large-scale massacres in gravel pits near Mniszek and the woods near Karlshof. For many soldiers and ethnic German militia units, the bearded Jews of the East, who removed their hats on greeting and were nervously eager to be respectful and liked after lifetimes of persecution, conformed neatly to the racist stereotypical evasive and ingratiating Jew of the Nazis’ vicious propaganda.
In Germany, victory in Poland without major interference from Britain and France seemed like another victory for Hitler. Some Germans now began to dream that peace might be possible—after all, the “dispute” over Poland was concluded, the problem removed. The Allies, who had pledged to defend Poland, had failed. They could now walk away, without war. That, in fact, was Hitler’s gamble.
After a visit to Poland at the end of the campaign, he stood before the Reichstag, which assembled in the Kroll Opera House, to justify his actions but also to offer peace. “Why should there be war in the West? To restore Poland? The Poland of the Treaty of Versailles shall never rise again.” The structure of the Polish state was for Russia and Germany to decide, not the West. God, he said, might find a proper path “so that not only the German Volk but all of Europe may rejoice in the new happiness of peace.”
Rumors spread through Germany that this offer of peace had been accepted, and people said they heard an early-morning report on the radio say that the British government had fallen and there would be an armistice. Journalist William Shirer in Berlin wrote colorfully that on hearing the rumor, “fat old women in the vegetable markets . . . tossed their cabbages in the air, wrecked their own stands, and made for the nearest pub to toast the peace with schnapps.”14 Goebbels went on the radio to condemn the “peace-loving rumour mongers” and the “fishwives’ gossip.”15
William Russell, a clerk at the American embassy, watched a gloom descend on Berlin when the city realized there would be no peace. “The faces which had been alight with joy all day were secret and hurt,” he wrote. “Berlin was completely blacked out. Just like every other night. But in the heart of the people it was blacker still.”16
In Ulm, Sophie Scholl—who spent a great deal of time thinking about the meaning of her dreams—described the latest in a letter to her boyfriend in the Wehrmacht. It felt like a dark glimpse into the future of many of those whose destiny was to oppose Nazism now that it finally had brought war down upon the world.
“I dreamt I sat in a prison cell,” she wrote, with a “heavy iron ring around my neck.”17
BRITAIN AND FRANCE had declared war on Germany, but as yet, they had made no move against Hitler’s borders. Belgium and the Netherlands remained neutral. Hitler’s plan remained to “bring the French and British to the battlefield and to rout them,” but many of his generals felt Germany should maintain a defensive position, consolidate its successes, and let the war go “to sleep.” Brauchitsch and Halder urged caution, while others—specifically General Georg Thomas, chief of the armaments office, and General von Stülpnagel, quartermaster general—were vociferous in their objections, talking of the “insanity of the attack” on Poland.18
Over walks in the Tiergarten and meals in discreet restaurants, Hans Oster outlined to friends how he saw the situation. The German people did not want full-scale war with Britain and France, he said. War had been declared, but no damage had yet been done in the West. Peace was still achievable.
Oster knew that many senior officers in the German army had been seduced by Hitler’s successes and that arguments that Germany was not prepared for war were no longer believed by many officers who might earlier have opposed Hitler’s aggressive foreign policy. Many of those whom he and Beck had recruited to the September 1938 plot had been transferred, promoted, or seduced by Hitler’s successes, or simply had lost interest in being involved.
But Oster still enjoyed the support of a core group who believed plans to undermine and remove Hitler must continue. Witzleben continued to recruit anti-Hitler officers to his command; Erich Kordt and another diplomat, Ernst von Weizsäcker, sought to recruit in Germany’s foreign service; and that small cabal at the heart of the Abwehr continued around Oster himself. If Germany and Britain could reach a negotiated settlement, Oster told friends, peace might still be restored. Could he and other conspirators, such as Beck, remove Hitler and replace him with a government determined to keep the peace?
Oster shared his friends’ concerns and sense that they had been let down by Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler at Munich. Like them he had been left demoralized and unsure what to do next. But the period of stasis following the defeat of Poland offered a fresh opportunity—as long as he could find new ways of communicating with the British now that war had been declared. Without some British recognition and support for the opposition, a coup would again be impossible.
One day an idea came to him and he visited Canaris’s office to run it past his chief. The German resistance’s ideas must be conveyed to the Western powers through a neutral and respected head of state, Oster said, and with a dramatic pause he suggested Pope Pius XII.
Canaris digested the idea while looking fondly at the model of one of his former ships, the light cruiser Dresden, which he kept in his office. After a long pause he stood and walked in silence to the small balcony that looked out over the Landwehr Canal. Always thinking of several angles at once and fascinated at the thought of opening up a channel to the Vatican, Canaris at last said he liked the idea. He told Oster he had known Pius when he was papal nuncio to Germany, and they had often ridden together in the Tiergarten. But he was intrigued: How did Oster think such an approach should be made?
Oster and Dohnanyi set about finding the right emissary and discovered a Munich lawyer named Josef Müller. He was clever, cunning, and well-known in the Vatican for the work he had done keeping church property out of the hands of the Nazis. Müller was invited to Berlin for a secret meeting with Oster. “We know far more about you than you do about us,” Oster the spymaster said, preparing to extort Müller’s allegiance.19
Müller shrugged. He was not one to be bullied. Far from being a typical city lawyer, Müller was a physically strong farmer’s son who rejoiced in the nickname “Ochsensepp”—“Joe the Ox.” Forty-one years old and a devout Catholic, he hated the Nazis and was proud of it.
Oster relaxed. “The central directorate of German military intelligence, where you now are, is also the central directorate of the German military opposition,” Oster told him grandly. “We are led by General Beck.”20
Oster said he knew about Müller’s excellent church connections and that he was friends with Cardinal von Faulhaber, the archbishop of Munich-Freising, a churchman who had complained about the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews. After Kristallnacht, Cardinal von Faulhaber had sent a truck and driver to the chief rabbi of Munich to help him save the sacred relics from the ruins of the synagogue.
Those church connections were now one of the most valuable assets to the resistance, Oster said. General Beck requested Müller “in the name of decent Germany . . . to re-establish contact with the present Pope” to ask him to act as a go-between with the British government and to explain that German officers were planning to overthrow Hitler to prevent an attack on the West.”21
Müller told him he had already made several trips to the Vatican, carrying sensitive documents from the German Catholic Church, which had suspected its mail was being read by the Gestapo. Without hesitation, he agreed to help Oster.22
Oster said he would bring him into the Abwehr so that it would be easier for him to travel. It also served Oster’s plan to keep his conspirators close and within the organization. Müller was given the rank of lieutenant of the Reserve Army, with his own office at Abwehrstelle Munich. Canaris told those who asked that Müller was keeping an eye on the Italians—it was excellent cover, as many senior Nazis mistrusted Mussolini’s government. The operation would be designated X after Müller’s code name for the trips to Rome.
Müller made his first trip to Rome at the end of September 1939 and with the help of a friend met with Father Robert Leiber, a German Jesuit who was the pope’s confidential assistant, and explained the nature of his mission. Leiber said he would consult with the pope, and when Müller returned to the Vatican a few weeks later, Leiber told him that, while the pope would not meet him personally, he would convey Müller’s messages to the British. Leiber said the pope had told him: “The German opposition must be heard in Britain.”
Pius XII understood diplomacy. He had been cardinal secretary of state for nine years prior to his elevation. Despite being fond of the German nation, the pope was disturbed by Hitler’s invasion of Poland. As well as allowing Leiber to meet with Müller, he urged another German, Monsignor Ludwig Kaas, to seek out the British ambassador at the Vatican, Sir Francis D’Arcy Osborne, and explain the situation. Kaas, the former leader of Germany’s Center Party, which had helped Hitler pass the Enabling Act that had provided the constitutional foundation for Hitler’s dictatorship in 1933, was skeptical, but did as he was asked.
Over the coming months Müller would make a number of trips to Rome, where he would make a telephone call from the small Abwehr office to Leiber and state simply: “I am here.” Leiber would then suggest a meeting time, and on arrival at the Vatican, Müller would be ushered inside Leiber’s personal quarters at the Gregorian University and be asked to answer a query or provide a clarification for the British. As time passed and Müller became concerned about following the same routine, they switched the meeting place to a small Jesuit church on the outskirts of Rome.
Each time Müller left, the pope would request a visit from Osborne and then give him an oral briefing on what had been said. Osborne would then write a report, which would be put into the diplomatic pouch for the Foreign Office.
The pope told Osborne that the messenger said that the German opposition to Hitler existed in strength and that what they wanted from Britain was an assurance that when Hitler was dead they would not be forced to accept a draconian peace settlement like Versailles.
The conspirators were buoyed to hear that their messages were getting through.
As well as Oster’s Operation X, there were other attempts by anti-Hitler factions to appeal to Britain to keep the war from escalating.
The Foreign Ministry included a number of senior men who despised Hitler and wished to avoid war. These included the Kordt brothers; Ulrich von Hassell, a former ambassador to Italy; and Ernst von Weiszäcker, a former Imperial Navy commander and now state secretary. All knew each other well, and Hassell—who had lost his job in Rome during the Fritsch affair—was a friend of Goerdeler’s and Ludwig Beck’s.
Beck told Hassell that he had been to Poland and “found his worst suspicions surpassed.” The SS had “taken 1,500 Jews, including many women and children, and shuttled them back and forth in open freight cars until they were all dead.” Peasants were forced to dig graves for the Jews and were then themselves murdered.23
In February 1940, Hassell visited Arosa in Switzerland, where his son was in a sanatorium. The visit provided a cloak for a meeting with James Lonsdale-Bryans, a British adventurer who had offered himself as a mediator for Lord Halifax. Although suspicious of Hassell, Halifax supported the meeting because such talks “can do no harm, and may do a lot of good.”
Hassell found Lonsdale-Bryans to be a literary man, an anti-Communist, and a conservative—in short, a man after his own heart. Lonsdale-Bryans assured him that he was a personal emissary for Halifax and that Hassell’s name would not be revealed to anyone else. “I am not in a position to name the men backing me,” Hassell told him as they sat in the diplomat’s room in the Hotel Isla. “I can only assure you that a statement from Halifax would get to the right people.”
Hassell was seeking a statement from Britain that an “eventual regime change in Germany would not be exploited by the other side” but would be used as a “means of arriving at a lasting peace.”24 Hassell told Lonsdale-Bryans to stress to Halifax that the agreement could only be reached before the opening of military operations in the West.
This “mad” war, Hassell went on, had to be stopped quickly or Europe was in danger of complete destruction or “Bolshevization.”
When Lonsdale-Bryans reported back, the British considered what was said and noted that it tallied with the messages from “Mr. X” in Rome. But they did not feel they could give the written assurance that Hassell required. In the meantime, Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway. When Lonsdale-Bryans and Hassell met again, the German diplomat got the impression that Halifax had “no real faith in the possibility of attaining peace” through regime change in Germany.
After conversations with Oster, Weiszäcker sent Theo Kordt to Bern in neutral Switzerland to meet his old friend, the pro-German historian Philip Conwell-Evans. He told Conwell-Evans that “the removal of Hitler would mean the deaths of thousands instead of millions.”25 The Englishman told him that London was losing patience and demanding an assurance that Poland be evacuated of German forces as soon as Hitler was overthrown. Kordt discussed this with Beck, who said they could only make that assurance if there was no longer a threat from the Soviet Union—which in the meantime had invaded Finland.
Kordt told Beck that he and his brother, Erich, had done “all that was humanly possible to convince our friends [in England]” of the “absolute reliability” of the opposition to Hitler.
To Conwell-Evans, Theo Kordt said he would continue to strive for peace even after Hitler moved westward. He did not want to be a German, he said, who, like Samson in the Bible, tore down the pillars of the palace and buried everything in the ruins.