Killing Hitler (13 page)

Thus, many within the military welcomed the advent of Adolf Hitler to the German Chancellery in January 1933. Hitler—who had been appointed, of course, by the
Reichspräsident
and former commander in chief of the army, Hindenburg—promised a return of Germany’s preeminent position in Europe, a revision of the Treaty of Versailles, and a restoration of Germany’s military might and martial dash. In him, the army thought it had found an ideal cat’s-paw. Here was a politician, the generals thought, who could guarantee a compliant parliamentary majority and through whom they could perpetuate their domination of politics and pursue their own agenda. All they had to do, in turn, was to rein in Hitler’s wilder ambitions. They firmly believed that Corporal Hitler would be their man: someone who would heed their orders, someone whom they could control.

Hitler’s attitude toward the army, meanwhile, was profoundly contradictory. While he had a deep respect for the military as a whole, and admired its values and way of life, he held the General Staff and officer corps in barely disguised contempt. This had
much to do with his earlier political career, in which “the generals,” as he described them, had by turns patronized, encouraged, and then betrayed him. He knew very well that his appointment as chancellor was but another stage in this process. But this time, he was determined to gain the upper hand. Revenge would have to be postponed, of course. In the meantime, the military was to be courted, seduced, and controlled.

That seduction began almost immediately upon Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. The very next day, Hitler visited the barracks of the Berlin garrison to address the troops on the spirit of the “new Germany.” Some days later, when invited to dine with the chiefs of staff, he did the same for the generals, treating them to a two-hour
tour d’horizon
of his policies, principles, and ambitions. His audience, though initially skeptical, was evidently pleasantly surprised. One guest even left the dinner thoroughly enthused, stating that “no Chancellor has ever expressed himself so warmly in favour of defence.”
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The courtship between Hitler and the Reichswehr continued into 1934, surviving the death of Hindenburg and rumors of a monarchist restoration. It was succored throughout by the ongoing clandestine rearmament program and by Hitler’s gentle but persistent wooing of his generals. A test of the new relationship came with the Röhm Purge of June 1934. Hitler sided firmly with the army against the rebellious SA, but he could not resist settling a few old scores in the process. The murder of his old enemies Generals Schleicher and Bredow that summer by the SS sowed misgivings, even anger, among the military. But most regular soldiers were pleased to see Röhm’s militant rabble humbled and their own status as the nation’s sole bearers of arms reconfirmed. Eighty-three individuals had been murdered, but the minister of war, General Blomberg, saw fit only to praise the “soldierly courage” of the Führer in crushing the “mutineers.”
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The relationship had certainly been strained, but the General Staff still believed that Hitler was their man.

That autumn, the association was cemented a little more. Following Hindenburg’s death, Hitler decreed the amalgamation of the functions of the president of the Reich with those of the
chancellor. As Führer and chancellor, he then received the revised oath of allegiance of the army. Across Germany all officers and men of the Reichswehr paraded in the presence of their superiors and recited the new oath:

I swear by almighty God…I will render unconditional obedience to the Führer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, and, as a brave soldier, I will be ready at any time to stake my life for this oath.
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Whether the soldiers realized it or not, a seismic shift had taken place. They had previously been required to swear allegiance to their “people and country.” Their new oath, however, called for them to swear allegiance not to the Republic, the flag, the constitution, or even the office of the head of state. Rather, they were to swear obedience to Adolf Hitler personally. From that moment on, the Reichswehr became, in effect, Hitler’s private army.

Yet the removal of its rival and the revision of its oath did little to secure the military’s position. Its generals were still blinded to political realities. They still believed that they pulled the strings and that they could unmake “their” chancellor, just as (they believed) they had made him. But another rival was already on the scene. The primary beneficiary of the removal of the SA had not been the Reichswehr; rather, it had been Himmler’s SS. Having eliminated the SA, Himmler was already in charge of the burgeoning concentration camp empire and was strengthening his grip on the German police network. He would soon be turning his porcine gaze on the Reichswehr. Spies were dispatched, and damaging rumors were spread. In time, another crisis was in the offing.

Hitler opted to nip this new controversy in the bud. On 3 January 1935, he delivered a speech at the Prussian State Opera House in Berlin before the massed ranks of the party, the SS, and the military. In it, he denied all rumors of dissension and declared the Reichswehr to be an integral part of his vision for Germany. He stressed his “absolute and unshakeable faith” in its loyalty.
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Despite his misgivings and his natural preference for the SS, Hitler realized that if his foreign policy goals were to be achieved, he needed an army that was well trained, well armed, and above all compliant. He could not allow his seduction to falter.

Hitler’s overarching aim throughout the 1930s was the piecemeal revision of the Treaty of Versailles. That “shameful document,” forced on a defeated Germany in the aftermath of World War One, was designed to serve as a punishment for Germany’s past aggressions and an effective emasculation to prevent aggression in the future. Versailles became the symbol of Germany’s humiliation. Most interwar German governments, of whatever hue, agreed on the desirability of its revision. Many secretly circumvented its proscriptions. Some surreptitiously plotted its dismantling.

But Hitler was more blatant. Right from the outset, he proclaimed his fundamental opposition to Versailles. His “25 Point Program,” formulated for the nascent Nazi Party in 1920, stated unequivocally: “[W]e demand…the revocation of the peace treaty of Versailles.”
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In his speeches and electioneering, he was no less strident. A tirade from 1939 was typical. In it, he stated that every one of the 440 articles of the treaty was “an insult and a violation of a great nation.”
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In spite of the numerous accommodations and concessions that he made in the transition from a rabble-rouser of the radical right to a would-be chancellor, on one point Hitler never wavered. He wanted to smash Versailles, remove its stipulations, and expunge its memory.

Prior to 1938, Hitler sought to reverse only those parts of the treaty that applied to domestic German affairs. Thus, in 1935, he reintroduced conscription to the German army, forbidden under article 173 of Versailles. The following year, he ordered the remilitarization of the Rhineland, forbidden under article 43. Hitler was achieving what no previous Weimar chancellor had managed. Gradually, and most important peacefully, he was removing the most onerous clauses of Versailles. The army was being restored to its rightful place as the defender of the nation. Its writ now ran unhindered throughout the land; its right to conscript troops had been restored; its size was no longer limited
by foreign powers. For this reason, its ranks were slow to develop opposition to the Nazi regime. The army was once again being raised to its former exalted status. It was being supplied with generous funding, able personnel, and up-to-date equipment. Revolt was simply inconceivable.

Nonetheless, 1938 would prove to be a critical year. The previous autumn, Hitler had gathered his most senior generals for a secret discussion, whose minutes were recorded in the famous Hossbach Memorandum.
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He had given forth, at some length, on Germany’s strategic and economic position and had discussed the circumstances under which Germany might go to war in the coming three or four years. His generals were alarmed—not by the ultimate goal of expansion, but by the prospect that Germany might again be embroiled in a conflict with France and Britain. They raised objections and criticized the analysis; some even demanded reassurances that there were no immediate plans for war.
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But they failed to realize that Hitler was testing them, watching their reactions to his radical ideas. It would soon become apparent that their timidity had singularly failed to impress.

By the early spring of 1938, therefore, Hitler’s long-feigned affection for his General Staff was turning to contempt. He was tiring of having to force his generals to plan for war, tiring of having, as he put it, to “goad the butcher’s dog.”
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No longer did he flatter and cajole, as he once had. Rather, he blustered and threatened. One outburst from the spring of that year was typical. During an inspection visit to a barracks, he was asked his opinion of the purges then raging in the Soviet Union, which had cost the lives of numerous prominent generals. He replied bluntly: “I, too, would not recoil from destroying ten thousand officers, if they opposed themselves to my will. What is that in a nation of eighty millions? I do not want men of intelligence,” he concluded, “I want men of brutality.”
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In the event, no show trials or public purges would be necessary. Hitler’s uncanny ability to exploit events as they developed would ensure the army’s seamless subjugation.

The first crisis to develop was that surrounding the war minister, Field Marshal von Blomberg. Blomberg, who had initially
been installed as a brake on Hitler’s ambitions, had in fact become an early enthusiast for the Nazi program.
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In 1938, however, he made the mistake not only of marrying a former prostitute but also of inviting Hitler to be a witness at the wedding. With the integrity of the army and Hitler’s own especially prudish sense of honor so spectacularly sullied, Blomberg had no alternative but to resign.

Thus forced to divest himself of his war minister, Hitler was less than enthusiastic about the designated successor, the supreme commander of the army, General von Fritsch. Fritsch was a rather different character from Blomberg. An instinctive anti-Nazi, he had often made unflattering remarks about Hitler and his followers, yet was still in line to succeed Blomberg as war minister in the spring of 1938.
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When spurious allegations of homosexuality against him had crossed Hitler’s desk that winter, they had initially been dismissed out of hand. However, following a theatrical intrigue engineered by Göring, involving a notorious con man and former rent boy, the Führer’s confidence in his general was severely dented. Ultimately, though exonerated by a court of honor, Fritsch was forced into retirement. He would die an infantryman’s death the following year during the Polish campaign.

Though the Blomberg and Fritsch crises had not been of his own making, Hitler was determined to benefit from the serendipitous departure of two of his perceived opponents. He decided to take over the leadership of the military himself. “From henceforth,” went the decree, “I exercise personally the immediate command over the whole armed forces.”
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His first act was to relieve sixteen senior generals of their posts; a further forty-four high-ranking officers were transferred to other duties. Not only would his new deputies be subservient to his orders, but they would also be men who thought very much as he did.

Hitler had outwitted, outmaneuvered, and humiliated his generals. In 1933, he had inherited an institution that was intended to serve as a check on his more ambitious designs. In five short years, he had seduced it, suborned it, and finally bent it to his will. By 1938, he was in immediate command of a powerful military machine that had sworn allegiance to his very person.

The German army had sustained a grievous defeat. Its independence, long guarded and for some time illusory, had now finally been destroyed. Its role as the “state within the state,” the final arbiter of German politics, had been brought to an ignominious end. At best, the army was now but one pillar of the Nazi state, alongside the party and the government, but, like the other two, totally subordinate to the will of the Führer. For those in the German military who still had eyes to see, the developments of the spring of 1938 were to prove a watershed.

One of those whose “vision” was unimpaired was the chief of the Abwehr, Wilhelm Canaris. The Abwehr (the name means “defense”) was the military intelligence department of the Ministry of Defense. Its remit was the collection, evaluation, and presentation of intelligence material for its military and political masters. Directly responsible to the chief of staff, it had officers in each branch of the military as well as a network of agents and informants in other fields. By the time of Canaris’s appointment in 1935, however, the Abwehr had spent a number of years in the doldrums, underfunded, understaffed, and largely ignored.
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Canaris was widely thought to be the man who would change all that. Already involved in supervising the clandestine submarine building program, he also possessed numerous foreign contacts and a glorious war record. These qualities, allied to a reputation as a pro-Nazi, made Canaris the ideal man to forge the Abwehr into the foremost intelligence agency of the Third Reich. Under his command, the Abwehr did indeed grow in stature and influence. This was, of course, partly due to the resumption of conscription and the expansion of the military, which was announced in the spring of 1935. But it was also undoubtedly a result of Canaris’s ability to placate his rivals, the Gestapo and SD.
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Though the SD and SS continued to spy on the Abwehr and often worked to undermine its operations, a form of modus vivendi was eventually reached, and a number of successes were scored.
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Besides establishing an extensive network of agents in the Soviet Union and the United States, the Abwehr also secured
blueprints of the top-secret American Norden bombsight—reputedly the most accurate then available.
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