A World at Arms (95 page)

One party formation was not affected by the developing alienation from the Nazi Party in the latter years of the war. The increasing devastation caused by Allied bombing made the population more dependent on the relief agencies of the government, and of these the National Socialist Welfare Organization (NSV) was by far the most important.
^b
Bombed out urban families turned to the welfare organization for help, and if they were occasionally disconcerted by the blood and bullet holes which marked some of the clothing distributed to them, they were grateful all the same.

The public supported the German war effort with a high degree of coherence. There was some apprehension in the first winter of war followed by jubilation in 1940 and increasing apprehension about the length of the war in 1941 and thereafter. The propaganda machinery helped sustain public morale in the face of growing troubles and
unease.
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The dismissals of a series of famous military leaders in the winter of 1941 and the almost simultaneous drive to collect winter clothing and equipment for the troops caused disquiet on the home front, but the Soviet victory at Stalingrad, followed soon after by the surrender in North Africa, had even greater impact in the country.

The bombing at first caused morale to drop, but after a while appears to have caused more apathy than anything else. People concentrated on survival and the most immediate concerns. Anxiety about relatives at the front and the next air raid at home dominated people’s thinking to the exclusion of most other topics. There was resentment at what looked to many like an unequal sharing of burdens by the wealthier segment of the population, but the ubiquitous slave laborers were viewed as a normal part of daily life. The mass murders of Jews and others were repeatedly mentioned in public by Hitler himself and by others, but most did not react. Assembled officers applauded Hitler’s expressions of satisfaction about the extermination program;
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the majority of the people shut their eyes and ears.

In the last two years of war, hope for the effects of new weapons provided some solace, but for many Germans strength through fear replaced the “Strength through Joy” recreation and vacation programs of the German Labor Front. Fear of defeat on the Eastern Front and a Russian invasion, fear of the peace which might be imposed on Germany, fear of punishment for past crimes, fear of denunciation to the police for defeatism with its drastic penalties, fear of a future which no one could visualize; these were only some of the characteristics which dominated the thoughts and feelings of many. As a bitter, then current, joke put it: “Better enjoy the war; the peace will be terrible.”

There were, however, those who opposed the regime. Already before the war, there were some who had their doubts about the National Socialist system; and although the war not surprisingly brought a cohesiveness to a country with which its citizens identified, there continued to be important elements highly critical of the system. And in many cases their criticism was further stimulated by what they saw and heard of atrocities carried out in the occupied territories as well as at home.
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Though some became opponents of the regime as it was obviously on the way to defeat, it would be grossly unfair to disregard the fact that many had turned against it in the years of apparent triumph.

The opponents were greatly hindered by two factors. They could see that the vast majority of their fellow citizens supported the government, many of them enthusiastically. This meant, in practice, that only a coup from the inside could topple the government.
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Isolated acts of public resistance to such policies as the deportation of the sick to killing centers
in Germany, or the deportation of Jewish partners of mixed marriages to killing centers in occupied Poland, might slow or even halt such specific actions. There was, however, no massive public opposition to the regime of the sort that toppled the East European Communist governments in 1989, including that in East Germany, once it became clear that the Red Army would not intervene to save Moscow’s puppets. The few valiant attempts to arouse the public highlight by their total failure both the bravery of those trying and the futility of that approach. In the 1930S such attempts came from workers, primarily Communists and Socialists; during the war the most famous such attempt was the February 1943 appeal of the “White Rose,” a small student group in Munich.
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If the mass support of the regime made a coup very difficult, the precautions taken by the regime added to the problems faced by those opposed to it. They came to realize that only by killing Hitler could they disrupt the system, seize power, and explain to the public their reasons for such a step against their own government in the middle of a war. But killing Hitler was not a simple matter; he was increasingly careful, surrounded by loyal and adoring military and civilian guards and associates, very sensitive to the personal loyalty to himself of those he met, and very lucky. He had narrowly escaped Elser’s attempt of November 1939, as recounted in
Chapter 2
. The first time opponents among the military tried to kill him by placing a bomb on his plane in March, 1943, the detonator failed to work.
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Several other projects for killing Hitler also failed; that of July 20, 1944, being the most likely to succeed because it had been prepared with some care and included provision for a procedure to take over power in Germany and the occupied territories she still held at that time. By a narrow margin, the bomb itself went off but did not kill Hitler. It is an indication of the overwhelming support Hitler still had that as the orders from the conspirators in Berlin and those from his headquarters in East Prussia landed on the desks of military commanders in German-controlled Europe, all but a brave few sided with him in this, the last “election” of the Third Reich. Most of those in positions of any significance who had been opposed to the regime were uncovered as a result of this attempted coup and killed; some committed suicide lest they reveal too much when tortured; a tiny number survived.

The failure of this attempt underlines the fact that most in the German military hierarchy continued in support of a regime which by July 1944 was obviously not doing very well. Three arguments sometimes advanced to explain this fact ought, in my judgement, to be dismissed. The assertion that most felt bound by their oath of loyalty to Hitler should be seen in the context of prior oaths and subsequent oaths taken and broken
by the same individuals, especially those at the highest ranks. They had sworn to uphold the Weimar constitution, and many had sworn to uphold its laws–which included the Versailles Treaty. It was considered desirable, even honorable, to break this oath as often as possible, and anyone who wanted to keep it was despised.
^c
After World War II, a substantial number of the military leaders were called on to testify under oath. Anyone who has studied their sworn testimony carefully will have noticed that many took this oath very lightly indeed. If of all the oaths generals and field marshals took, only the one to Hitler is so often cited, that may reveal more about their attitude toward Hitler than toward oaths.

A second explanation sometimes put forward is to the effect that the Allied demand for unconditional surrender inhibited opposition. This is difficult to square with the fact that in the decade from Hitler’s becoming Chancellor until the Casablanca Conference the opponents never moved to remove him (except for Elser’s bomb of November 1939); all the real efforts to topple the regime came after the call for unconditional surrender. Certainly if the Allies had spelled out in detail their plans for Germany’s future, insofar as they could agree on them, that would hardly have provided much new incentive for a revolt in the eyes of those who believed they needed one.

There is finally the argument that the Allies should have encouraged the opposition with assurances about Germany’s future. For most of the war, this meant assurances that Germany could keep the territories seized in the 1930S and even some taken during the war; this was never a possibility and reflects more on the nationalistic provincialism of some in the opposition than on the options before the Allies. The constant role of those who were to overthrow the regime in planning and executing the invasion of one neutral after another in the first part of the war and their involvement in the atrocities known to be committed in the occupied territories during the second part made the British and Americans very doubtful.
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There was always worry about a breakup of the Allied coalition. Above all, there was the belief that if the opponents were really serious, it was
they
who needed to act; thereafter the Allies would see what the situation allowed. Since one of the major war aims of the United Nations was the disarmament of Germany, there was no way that they could give to the periodic emissaries of the opposition assurances which the latter could take to German generals in the hope of getting them to take action. The ones who were willing to act had enough insight and courage to do so without assurances; the others could not
be persuaded anyway. Perhaps the fact that most of them were secretly accepting huge bribes from Hitler ought to be recalled in this context.

The failure of the July 20 attempt worked to strengthen the hold of the Nazis on what was left of their empire. Their opponents had come into the open and been crushed. The National Socialist revolution, a process as much as an event, now moved forward more rapidly and more ruthlessly. The SS gained vast additional powers as Himmler consolidated his hold on Germany’s various intelligence services and took over the Replacement Army from the military. The Nazi Party increased its power by gaining a major role in the new Volkssturm or people’s army, the last great mobilization of manpower. And the population, combining fear and apathy with devotion and hope, continued to support the regime until the last days of the war. Only as Allied troops appeared in Germany itself did substantial numbers turn their backs on the system they had served.

As the last illusions disappeared, relief over the end of bombing and fighting mingled with fear of the Russians and the future, anxiety over food and the fate of loved ones, but above all the daily struggle for survival. As for the National Socialist Party, even before its leaders had fled, committed suicide, or been arrested, it quickly lost the hold it had once held on the faith of millions. On January 27, 1942, Hitler had said that if the German people would not fight, they might as well disappear.
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But it was not the German people who disappeared. It was the Nazi Party which evaporated from the scene once Hitler was dead about as rapidly as the Fascist Party in Italy had vanished in July 1943.

Italy’s population generally entered the war with an attitude not unlike that of countries invaded by the Axis. They had not wanted to enter the conflict, might be pleased by the appearance of quick triumph followed by an even quicker end to the war in 1940, but were basically as a people in a position worse than any other. The Poles and Norwegians, the British and French, the Belgians and Dutch, the Greeks and Yugoslavs, the Russians and Americans, to say nothing of the Chinese, would all have greatly preferred not to be drawn into war or attacked at all, but as long as they had been, at least most of them believed they were on the right side and fighting alongside the right allies. For most Italians it was the other way around: they disliked–if they did not hate–the Germans and generally would have been more comfortable fighting alongside their “enemies” if they had to fight at all.

Mussolini and a minute number of others were enthusiastic about attacking France, Greece, and Yugoslavia, but finding anyone in the
country who genuinely believed Italy’s future would be served by sending thousands of soldiers to fight on the southern part of the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union, or by Italy’s declaration of war on the United States, would have been a Herculean task. No analysis of Italy’s role and her home front in World War II can overlook the basic fact that, in the eyes of much of the population, the country’s entry into the war was a bad idea and that it had picked the wrong side. There remained a residual resentment at the way the Allies had treated Italy at the end of World War I, and there was additional resentment over what looked to some like British blocking of Italian aspirations in the Mediterranean; but these grievances did not translate into a desire for war. Such bizarre episodes as the abortive project to sell the Italian navy to Great Britain in the winter of 1940–41 can be understood only in the context of a society which found itself on the wrong side of a war.
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As that war went from a short time of early success for Germany to a string of defeats for Italy, popular attitudes and morale fell. The German rescue operation in early 1941 may have saved the regime at home as it saved the remnants of Italy’s empire in North Africa and Albania, but it did nothing for the regime’s reputation–quite the reverse. Occupation zones in France, Yugoslavia and Greece, allotted to Italy by the Germans, brought troubles rather than advantages. These troubles were as much or more with the Germans as with the occupied peoples. The Italian zones in all three countries produced endless friction with the Germans over the reluctance of the Italian occupation authorities to hand over the Jews there to be murdered. Most Italian officers simply could not comprehend the German insistence on killing Jews and saw it as merely one more indication of their ally’s barbaric inclinations. When the Italian zone in occupied France became a refuge for Jews fleeing from the German occupation of Vichy France in November 1942, the conflict escalated.
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In occupied Yugoslavia, there was additional controversy with the Germans about the Italian policy of aiding the Cetniks, while in Greece there were disputes about responsibility and remedies for the run–away inflation and misery in that country. In all these areas, the 1943 surrender of Italy followed by German occupation would bring death to the Jews and increased misery to everyone else, but in the preceding years, the symbols of Italy’s share in Axis victories, which the occupation zones represented, had provided no glories to off-set the dissatisfaction with war on the Italian home front.