An Honourable Defeat: A History of German Resistance to Hitler, 1933-1945 by Anton Gill

Author:Anton Gill [Gill, Anton]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2014-12-22T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight – Holding On

As soon as he had the news, Sas communicated it to his own authorities and to Colonel Goethals. At midnight he received a lightly coded message from The Hague to enquire if there really were to be no change in the arrangements for ‘the operation on your wife’. Sas told them it would take place in under six hours. But the Dutch did not take the warning seriously, and even the Belgians did not mobilise until 3a.m. The German forces swept over them, driving the British Expeditionary Force, severely depleted, back across the Channel, and decimating the French units which had fought alongside it. General Hoth raced along the north coast of France, while Generals Guderian and Kleist (the latter a cousin of Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin) headed south and east, smashing through the Ardennes. Paris fell on 14 June, the French capitulated on 22, and hostilities ceased on 25. Hitler ordered that church bells be rung throughout the Reich for a week in celebration. He also created twelve new field marshals — ironically, among them were Leeb and Witzleben — nineteen colonel-generals, and seven generals. Göring now became the first and only ‘Reichsmarschall’ of the Greater German Empire.

The Resistance now entered a long period of abeyance. The phoney war was over, and the new conditions that ensued made it much more difficult to meet, to plan and to carry out any attempt at a coup. Quite apart from anything else, many conspirators were simply kept too busy with their regular duties to contribute; others were posted far away, or to the Front; others decided that now they had to make Germany their priority, and fight for their country rather than against its leaders. Gisevius expresses the dilemma well:

The opposition had to consider its stand in the new situation. A man might have fought bitterly against Hitler’s insane war policy, but now the war was there. How was he to react towards it? As an oppositionist? As a patriot? As a European? Or as none of these, but quite simply as a soldier whose business it was to obey orders?

Let us not forget that totalitarianism and opposition are mutually exclusive political ideas. In a democracy it is possible to practise opposition, but dictatorship permits no antagonists...Opposition is a struggle against an existing regime; it is an attempt to bring about a shift in course or a change in personnel, without directly overthrowing a system...The people of a nation [subjected to evil dictatorship] must take upon their conscience the tremendous burden of devoting all their imagination and zeal to the purely destructive activities of underground work...

As far as peace negotiations were concerned, it soon became clear that any hope of temporising with Britain was gone too (that is, for the Nazis, though the Resistance continued — vainly — to try to talk terms at least). Early in May 1940 the belligerent and ambitious Winston Churchill, leader of a rebel faction within the Conservative Party, staged a coup of his own and forced the waning Chamberlain out of office.

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