Home from work for the day last week I vegged out in front of the Military Channel, and ended up watching a documentary on Claus von Stauffenberg and the assassination plot against Hitler. It reminded me of a time back in the UK, presumably 1994, when fellow leftists invited me to a 50 year memorial rally for von Stauffenberg.
I was torn about going, and still have the same mixed feelings. Claus and the other plotters were trying to kill Hitler, which is a good thing, and, apparently, to stop the Holocaust, which again is a good thing (though by 1944, much of the killing had happened). But my dilemma is based on the fact that the German Army opposition seemed more than happy with Hitler as long as they were winning - it was only when the tides turned that they decided to rebel. These people were also hard core nationalists, apparently anti-semitic too (though not to the eliminationist extent of the Nazis), and don’t strike me as classic poster children for us lefties to commemorate.
Well, they weren’t lefties by any means. They were right wingers, old school conservative nationalists, and they had ties to the Kreisau Circle, which was largely also old school conservative nationalists.
But I’d say they were heroes. They tried to kill Hitler…several times. The fact that they failed at it, and lost their lives as a result, doesn’t diminish their heroism in making the attempt.
That part I can agree with - and it wasn’t really their conservative-authoritarian-aristocratic bent that was my problem with them. It is, however, their absence of a problem with the Nazis as long as they were winning. The Wehrmacht was fully aware of the atrocities committed by the Germans in the drive into Russia, and didn’t give a crap about it; it is only when they started to be driven back out of Russia that the idea developed that it was necessary to kill Hitler, and end the atrocities.
I don’t know what I’d do if my beloved country went as far down the road that Germany went. Run, or stay and try to mitigate things, and then try to end the madness at the likely cost of my life? I think the latter is heroic.
Well, the army tried to overthrow Hitler in 1938, 1939, 1942, 1943, and 1944. But in all those cases, they either lost their nerve or the plan failed.
But more generally, sure. As long as Germany was winning, it was hard to oppose the regime. If Hitler’s defeating enemy armies and taking territory, then it becomes harder to convince people that Hitler’s hurting Germany.
Possibly, and I can’t answer for the motivations of Claus von Stauffenberg, but there were others, in higher places, who did their best in terrible circumstances. What would you have done in the position of Admiral Canaris?
Claus von Stauffenberg is a complicated figure. On one hand, he was very much in favor of a strong Germany and a Germany that was the most powerful force in Europe. If not outright dominator of most of Europe. That isn’t enough, for me at least, to dismiss the man. Most military leaders from the period ~1600-1945 probably had similar opinions, especially old-line aristocrats (who tended to overwhelmingly be the people at the highest levels of military leadership in the old European armies.)
Stauffenberg never joined the Nazi party, and remained a devout Catholic through it all. My understanding is he disagreed with a lot of Hitler’s policies, and the treatment of the Jews always offended his sense of right and wrong. At the same time, he put aside those misgivings because he felt Hitler was a military genius and that Stauffenberg as an officer in the Wehrmacht had a responsibility to Germany itself first and foremost. These aren’t totally unreasonable stances, and I think good men in the same situation might find themselves doing the same thing.
It’s also understandable how Stauffenberg viewed Hitler as a military genius, his early successes were unprecedented and sometimes Hitler’s decision to go with less orthodox strategies and tactics had the effect of making Hitler seem militarily adept. Of course, in truth Hitler was just lucky that he was picking the right plans from the right subordinates.
My understanding was that the extermination of the Jews always offended his sense of right and wrong, but he was a supporter of earlier actions “reducing the influence” of Jews in Germany.
I don’t expect a hero to be exemplary in all particulars, so yes, von Stauffenberg was a hero. He did what I consider to be the defining action of a hero: sticking his head up and doing the right thing when most people would have kept their heads low and gone with the flow.
Of course, I also do not think heroes should be idolized, but only their heroic actions. Highlight what they did, not who they were.
If only one German with access to Hitler had been willing to pay with his own life to make sure of taking Hitler down (suicide bomber anyone?) the course of history could have been altered. None were.
It’s hard to blame von Stauffenberg, who had a wife and children. But you’d think someone would have been agreeable to sacrificing his life to save Germany.
Von Breitenbuch had planned to shoot Hitler in the head in a planned meeting with Hitler, after considering detonating a grenade in his pocket, but he wasn’t allowed in the meeting.
Von dem Bussche and von Kleist-Schmenzin both planned to to jump on Hitler with active grenades, blowing him up but that failed for various reasons.
Another consideration that discouraged people after the attack on the Soviet Union began was that the plotters were afraid that if Hitler was successfully killed and Germany surrendered, there would be nothing to keep the Soviets and Communists from taking over Europe.
Von Gersdorff’s attempt to stage a suicide bombing in Hitler’s presence can also be mentioned. He’d started the timer and was only foiled because Hitler failed to linger.
Was anybody ever allowed to bear arms when meeting Hitler? I assume a senior officer would be allowed a pistol-offing Hitler should have been easy, for a dedicated assassin:confused:
Well, it wouldn’t have been very sure. Not many people got to casually see Hitler - he was just very important and busy. Ansd then, gunshot wounds aren’t very certain to kill, even at close range./ Pistol rounds are especialy random - and nobody, but NOBODY, wanted to try to kill him and fail. It wasn’t just your own life on the line, but everyone you were friends with and maybe your family.
Isn’t why they did it also important. And that’s my question about Stauffenberg. How much of what he did was because he didn’t want Germany to lose the war?
But this is difficult, isn’t it. On the one hand we have the heroic actions, which few would question the good of. On the other we have the man, the instrument that makes the act possible. I don’t think that we ever allow a heroic act to define the man in toto, but we agree to let the man enjoy the imprimatur because of his heroic act, regardless of the rest of the way he might have lived his life. By concentrating on the person we kind of reinforce the idea that any of us is capable of heroism, regardless of how flawed our life up to that point.
It’s worth noting that Hitler did not invent the linkage between radical German nationalism and radical antisemitism. It dated at least from the mid-19th Century (see Wagner’s pamphlet “Judaism in Music,” originally published in 1850), and was something already “in the air” when Hitler came along, even in respectable academic circles.
But the idea that all Europe and all the world must be purged once and for all of the Jewish “race poison,” and that this must take the form of genocide, was a Nazi innovation.