General von Seydlitz emphasized the necessity of toppling Hitler and his regime, once again on the basis of what the Sixth Army had experienced at Stalingrad. Their ‘bitter realization’ of what had happened there should become a springboard for an ‘act of salvation’. Von Seydlitz made an emotional plea to the people and the army:
We’re talking primarily about the commanders, the generals and other officers of the Wehrmacht. You are facing a huge decision. Germany expects you to have the courage to see the truth and on the strength of that to act boldly and swiftly. Do all that is necessary. […] The National Socialist regime will never be prepared to take the only path that leads to peace. This insight demands that you declare war on this corrupting regime and take up arms to install a government supported by the trust of the people. Only such an administration can create the conditions for our Fatherland to make an honourable exit from the war […] Do not refuse this historical mission; take the initiative […] and demand the immediate resignation of Hitler and his government. Fight side by side with the people to get rid of Hitler and his regime and save Germany from chaos and collapse.
To the applause of those present, General von Seydlitz ended his speech with the rousing slogan: ‘Long live a free, peaceful and independent Germany!’ Von Seydlitz was elected president of the BDO, with colonels Van Hooven and Steidle as vice-presidents. Generals Martin Lattmann, Dr Otto Korfes and Alexander Edler von Daniels were appointed to the executive committee. As we have seen, by dint of his place on the working party Heinrich Gerlach was also among the leading lights of the BDO.
The events surrounding the founding of the league, of which Gerlach gave a lively account more than twenty years later in his book Odyssey in Red: My Time in the Wilderness, became the subject of a documentary entitled The House at Lunyovo, directed for German television by Franz Peter Wirth in January 1970, four years after publication of the author’s memoirs. Gerlach’s book formed the basis of the script, which was written by Peter Adler. This was the first time that the ‘renegade officers’, who, according to the commentary, ‘realized after the defeat at Stalingrad that Hitler was leading the German people to disaster’, were not – in the words of a review of the programme in Der Spiegel – portrayed as ‘simple Soviet stooges … but rather as true German patriots’.
The activities of the BDO and the National Committee, in both of which organizations Heinrich Gerlach played an active part until their disbandment in 1945, were the subject of much controversy right up to the 1990s. A fairer evaluation of the BDO only became possible after the opening of the archives in 1989 enabled new research into the organization. In common with other publications, Bodo Scheurig, in the introduction to his edition of Walther von Seydlitz’s memoirs, highlights the military and political situation in the Soviet Union after Stalingrad. In 1943 Stalin found himself in a complicated position. His Western allies had still not launched a ‘Second Front’ against the Nazis, which left the Red Army bearing the brunt of the fighting. The only operation that the Allies had thus far undertaken – the landings in North Africa – brought no military relief to the Soviet Union. For this reason, too, Stalin secretly began to sound out the possibility of opening negotiations with the Third Reich. The National Committee and the League of German Officers were charged with the task of airing certain negotiating positions in public, including the assurance that the peace could be concluded provided Hitler’s troops withdrew to within Germany’s borders. In summary, Scheurig conjectures that 1943 had presented a very real opportunity to ‘save Germany from the worst’ and pointedly notes:
The Wehrmacht, a force numbering in the millions, was still deep within Russian territory. The Red Army was still facing a long campaign that would cost untold numbers of lives before final victory was – possibly – secured. No final decisions had yet been taken regarding the future of the Reich […] Stalin shunned any talk of ‘unconditional surrender’. But the feelers he put out in Stockholm showed that he did not discount doing a deal, even with Hitler.
These suppositions continue to be disputed among historians even nowadays. They are, however, relatively unanimous regarding the situation facing the Soviet leadership in the summer of 1943. Despite the defeat of German forces at Stalingrad and Kursk, militarily the Soviet Union had still not achieved anything more than a stalemate with the Third Reich. Accordingly, the Germans still had a brief window in which to act. The circle of officers around Seydlitz in the BDO recognized that there was still a chance of averting total defeat for Germany, with all the consequences that would entail. In this respect, the contributions by the officers regarding Germany’s situation at the inaugural meeting of the BDO are very acute, sounding out the existing possibilities, making concrete suggestions, and anticipating what might happen if the war could not be brought to an end. Yet the calls to the army’s commanders, generals and other officers to act got no response. This had to do with the fact that the leadership of the Wehrmacht, though fully aware of the hopelessness of the war, was neither prepared nor in a position to think in political terms and banked on a diplomatic solution being found. The time window for action closed again with the Tehran Conference and the meeting of the Allied leaders from November to December 1943. Stalin was reassured by the imminent prospect of the Normandy invasions and the opening of a ‘Second Front’, while Churchill and Roosevelt accepted his plans for the postwar redrawing of borders. Henceforth, the sole aim was Germany’s unconditional capitulation, a decision that had major implications for the National Committee and the BDO. The proposed withdrawal to the borders of the Reich and the conclusion of a peace treaty was now supplanted by the defensive solution of ‘joining forces with the “Free Germany” movement’.
Von Seydlitz and the officers of the BDO fought tooth and nail against this new strategy, since at root it meant accepting precisely what they had tried to prevent by founding the BDO in the first place: namely the destruction and surrender of the Wehrmacht! But even when the situation of the German forces became even more hopeless, attempts by the National Committee and the League of Officers to persuade troops on the Ukrainian front who, at the beginning of February 1944, found themselves trapped in the Cherkassy Pocket to surrender likewise met with no success. The Soviet leadership had brought General von Seydlitz, General Korfes and Major Lewerenz right up to the front on this occasion. Yet their appeals via propaganda pamphlets, personal letters and tannoy announcements all fell on deaf ears. Instead, so great was their fear of Russian captivity that the encircled German troops tried on several occasions to break out, sustaining heavy losses in the process.
The ultimate failure of the BDO’s activities – in which, as a member of the editorial staff of the paper Free Germany, Heinrich Gerlach was also involved – did nothing to alter the fact that its founding had been an honourable attempt, in view of the worsening military situation, to save the German people from the worst losses and complete destruction of their country. In Scheurig’s estimation, ‘Seydlitz acted according to the same clear, irrefutable logic to which the German High Command was also party. He only acted “wrongly” insofar as the army and the people did nothing to liberate themselves from their corrupters.’ What was true of General von Seydlitz could also be said of most of the officers in the BDO and the National Committee. In the opinion of military historian Gerd R. Ueberschär: ‘The ranks of those who resisted National Socialism also included those members, officers and men alike, of the National Committee for a Free Germany and the League of German Officers. Despite being behind the barbed wire of POW camps and finding themselves in an extreme situation – not least in having to make common cause with Germany’s arch-enemy – they felt driven by a moral imperative, a sense of humanity and a love for their country and its people to join the fight against Hitler’s rule.’