At this time, many of the resistance connections that had been severed in the wake of the Munich agreement were reestablished, though only hesitantly and as the opportunity arose. Schulenburg paid a visit to Witzleben in Frankfurt, as did Gisevius. Most important, Oster arranged for Carl Goerdeler to meet Witzleben. Goerdeler immediately began pressuring Witzleben to carry through his plan and promised lo establish contacts with Christian and socialist trade unionists, thereby broadening support for the conspiracy beyond what had existed at the time of the September plot, especially in the political realm. Thus, through Witzleben’s efforts, new links between military and civilian opposition groups were forged and old ties were restored.
Witzleben’s initiative never amounted to much, however, because he did not plan to have his network of conspirators completed until the following year. The next day, when Gisevius returned to Berlin to see if Beck, Canaris, and Oster were interested in a meeting with Witzleben, all military commanders, including Witzleben, were summoned to a meeting to be held the following day, August 22, 1939, at Obersalzberg. In an unusually harsh address lasting several hours, Hitler informed them that he had decided to strike immediately because all considerations argued in favor of rapid action. As if attempting to screw up his courage, he hinted to the hushed audience of generals sitting “icily” before him that a pact would soon be signed with Stalin-a pact that Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop was in fact negotiating in Moscow at that very moment. “Poland is now right where I wanted to have it,” he said, predicting that Britain and France would once again shrink from war. “Our opponents,” he told the generals, “are little worms. I saw them in Munich.” His only concern was that “at the last minute, some bastard will produce a mediation plan.”9 Hitler even named the prospective time of attack: the morning of Saturday, August 26.
But once again, his schedule was disrupted. Britain reacted to the German war preparations with stoical equanimity and, after months of negotiations, transformed its provisional support for Poland into a formal pact. Amid the blizzard of entreaties, bulletins, and miscommunications, Halder told the British ambassador, Nevile Henderson, “You have to strike the man’s hand with an ax.” Great Britain now moved to dispel any lingering doubts about its determination to fight. On the afternoon of August 25 a message arrived from Mussolini reminding Hitler that their agreements stated that a war would not be launched until later and informing him that Italy was regrettably not prepared to open hostilities at this time. Again Hitler hesitated; after brooding nervously for a short spell, he came to a decision that left everyone agape: the order to attack was rescinded. “Führer rather shaken,” Halder noted in his diary.10
As the order to attack was being canceled, Schacht, Gisevius, and General Georg Thomas were on their way to the Military Intelligence building on Tirpitzufer to pick up Canaris, with whom they intended to drive to general staff headquarters in Zossen, east of Berlin. There, in a final, desperate act, they planned to force Brauchitsch and Halder to choose between arresting the three of them or arresting Hitler and the government. Determined to stop at nothing, they had agreed to exert extraordinary pressure on the commanders: if Brauchitsch and Halder chose to arrest them, they would deem themselves released at that moment from their pledge of loyalty to their fellow officers and would reveal the army chiefs’ involvement in the resistance.
When the three arrived at Tirpitzufer, they encountered Oster. “Shaking his head” and “laughing heartily,” he told them that the order to attack had been rescinded. Gisevius, the eternal man of action, argued yet again that this provided a unique opportunity to eliminate Hitler. The others, however, could scarcely believe that he wanted to carry on. The normally implacable Oster maintained that a “war lord who can rescind within a few hours as far-reaching an order as that for war or peace is done for.” In any case, Oster felt, the generals would no longer back Hitler. Only days earlier he had instructed the members of Friedrich Heinz’s special task force to prepare themselves once again for the storming of the Chancellery. Now any such action would be superfluous, he thought, in view of the dramatically changed circumstances. Canaris, too, was in an exuberant mood and declared that peace was assured “for twenty years.” Everything would unfold as desired if just allowed to develop, and there was no need in the meantime to raise the generals’ hackles by making rash demands.11
Despite all that can be and has been said about Oster’s surprise about-face, there is no minimizing the enormous sense of relief that must have been felt by all after so many months of continuous pressure. Not only Oster but Canaris, Hassell, and many others were so jubilant that peace had been preserved that their judgment was dulled. Even in the Chancellery it was “clear to everyone,” as an officer on duty there noted, “that Hitler had suffered a major diplomatic defeat.”12
But anyone who understood the Führer’s obsession with prestige over the years should have realized that he would quickly go to whatever lengths necessary to repair the damage. “Führer still hopes to sock it to Poland,” wrote Colonel Eduard Wagner, a general staff departmental head, in his diary.13 The belief that war had been avoided was totally misguided, and Gisevius was clearly right. Indeed, the ensuing days brought the very situation the conspirators had always dreamed of. In their exhaustive debates, they had always come to the depressing conclusion that Hitler’s victories were psychologically as disarming as his defeats. What they had therefore always hoped for (in various scenarios) but what never seemed to occur was a serious setback that could be blamed on Hitler alone and that exposed to all the world his unwavering determination to go to war.
During their debates, they also concluded that the time that elapsed between Hitler’s order for an invasion and the actual onset of hostilities was of decisive importance. They worried that the interval might not be long enough for them to decide on a coup and carry it out. In the days before the Munich agreement, Halder had already sought to allay such fears, assuring his fellow conspirators that Hitler could never deceive him on this score: the order would have to be given at least three days before an attack. Now the conspirators had the luxury of an even longer time span. But nothing had been prepared, and nothing was done. Of course, the abortive September plot of the previous year had had a devastating effect on the conspirators’ resolve. The written plans for a coup had gone up Witzleben’s chimney in smoke, and another draft was at best in the early planning stages. Nevertheless the impression remains that for most of the conspirators waiting had itself become a kind of strategy. Commingled with their immense relief that the peace had been saved was a sense of deliverance from actually having to do anything.
After such misguided elation, the descent to reality was all the more devastating when, on August 31, Hitler reissued the invasion order for the following morning. That afternoon Gisevius ran into Canaris on a back staircase at army headquarters on Bendlerstrasse. “So what do you think now?” asked the admiral. When Gisevius failed to find the appropriate words, Canaris added in a flat voice: “This means the end of Germany.”14