Finally, after long hesitation, worn out by his exertions and by Hitler’s scornful impatience, Halder decided on the last day of October 1939 that action could no longer be delayed. The mounting concern among the generals, as well as the pressure from Etzdorf, the Foreign Office, and Action Group Zossen, may have helped convince him there was once again hope that a coup would succeed. In any case, he summoned Groscurth on the evening of October 31 and informed the surprised Military Intelligence officer that he, too, had finally concluded that violence was the only solution. Halder mentioned his earlier plan of eliminating at least some of the leading Nazis in a staged accident. He outlined a few details concerning the operation itself and the new regime to take power afterwards and then added, with tears welling up in his eyes, that “for weeks on end he had been going to see Emil [Hitler] with a pistol in his pocket in order to gun him down,” as Groscurth recorded in his coded diary.34
As often happened when a decision was finally made, support arrived from unexpected quarters. Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, the commander of Army Group C, sent Brauchitsch a letter that ended with the comment that he was prepared “personally to stand fully behind you and to support whatever conclusions you reach or actions you deem necessary.” Oster and Erich Kordt had spent the evening of October 31 visiting Ludwig Beck on Goethestrasse in Lichterfelde. After much debate over the attitude of the generals, they arrived at the same desperate conclusion on which all their discussions had foundered for months: the most important condition for a successful coup was to kill Hitler. The next morning, when Kordt arrived al Military Intelligence, Oster half-resignedly summarized their discussion with the comment that no one could be found “who will throw the bomb and liberate our generals from their scruples.” Kordt told Oster simply and calmly that he had come to request permission to do just that. All he lacked was the explosives. After a few more questions, Oster promised to have the necessary materials ready on November 11.35
Everything was now rushing toward a final resolution. The very next day, when Brauchitsch and Halder visited the commanders in the West to canvass their views once again on the impending offensive, Stülpnagel invited Groscurth to come along and assigned him the task of “starting the preparations.” He offered encouragement and concrete information, especially about the position of reliable units and the commanders who could be counted on, and asked that Beck and Goerdeler be informed. Beck himself was discussing with Wilhelm Leuschner, a former trade union leader, the possibility of a general strike. A day later Oster was summoned to Zossen and asked to get out the previous year’s plans and update them if necessary. In his diary Gisevius captured the feeling of hectic excitement that filled him and the other conspirators, who had known nothing until then: “It’s going ahead… . Great activity. One discussion after another. Suddenly it’s just as it was right before Munich, 1938. I rush back and forth between OKW, police headquarters, the Interior Ministry, Beck, Goerdeler, Schacht, Helldorf, Nebe, and many others.”36 Meanwhile, in Zossen, arrangements were made “to secure headquarters.”
Once again everything was ready. Much as the coup a year earlier was to be sparked by the order to attack Czechoslovakia, this time everything would be set in motion by Hitler’s command to attack in the West. Since Hitler had set November 12 as the date of the offensive, the orders would have to be issued by November 5 at the latest. On that date Brauchitsch had an appointment to see Hitler in the Chancellery; he intended to make one final attempt to dissuade the Führer from this “mad attack” by underscoring the unanimous opposition of the generals. Halder’s plans were based on the expectation that when the commander in chief returned from his meeting at the Chancellery, rebuffed and quite possibly humiliated as well, he would not hesitate, as he had in 1938, to issue the marching orders, which only he could sign.
At noon on the appointed day, while Halder waited in the antechamber, Brauchitsch began his presentation to Hitler in the conference room of the Chancellery. Although the commander in chief formulated his concerns more pointedly than originally planned, Hitler listened quietly at first. However, when Brauchitsch began arguing that an offensive was impossible at that time, not only for technical reasons but also because of the failings and lack of discipline that the troops had demonstrated in Poland-particularly while on the attack-Hitler flew into a rage. He hurled accusations at Brauchitsch, demanded to see proof of his allegations, wanted to know what had been done about them and whether death sentences had been imposed on soldiers guilty of cowardice. Hitler loudly summoned Keitel into the room, and as Brauchitsch fumbled for words and became entangled in contradictions, he raged against “the spirit of Zossen,” which he knew all about and would soon destroy. Then he abruptly left the room, “slamming the door” and leaving the commander in chief standing there.37
Brauchitsch, who had turned “chalky-white… his face twisted,” according to one observer, found his way back to Halder.38 Together they set out for Zossen, Brauchitsch exhausted and in a state of collapse, Halder apparently composed. When Brauchitsch casually mentioned Hitler’s threat about the “spirit of Zossen,” however-he had not really made much of it-Halder’s ears pricked up and he, too, was seized by panic. Just a few days earlier, he had been warned by the chief signal officer, General Erich Fellgiebel, that Hitler suspected something, or at any rate was making increasingly suspicious-sounding comments about the army high command. This, coupled with Brauchitsch’s revelation, made Halder fear that the plans for a coup had been betrayed or been uncovered by Hitler in some way. As soon as he was back at headquarters, therefore, Halder ordered all coup-related documents destroyed immediately. Not long afterwards, the order to launch an offensive in the West arrived.
By late afternoon Brauchitsch had regained his composure. Hitler, he said, had simply caught him completely by surprise. Although the order to launch an offensive had once again created precisely the situation that was supposed to spark the coup, Brauchitsch now declared that the attack in the West could no longer be stopped. He added, “I myself won’t do anything, but I won’t stop anyone else from acting.”
Halder, alternating between resignation and apprehension, expressed similar sentiments. He told Groscurth that now that their undertaking had been abandoned, “the forces that were counting on us are no longer bound to us.” Halder felt that there was no one who could succeed Hitler and that the younger officers were not yet ready for a putsch. Groscurth insisted that they act, arguing that the factors cited by Halder had been just as true before the scene in the Chancellery and reminding him that Beck, Goerdeler, and Schacht were still on board, not to mention the determined Canaris. Halder responded angrily, “If they’re so sure at Military Intelligence that they want an assassination, then let the admiral take care of it himself!”39
Groscurth immediately carried this challenge back to Military Intelligence on Tirpitzufer, infuriating Canaris. At this point the opposition forces began falling apart at a pace so rapid it was almost visible. Canaris took Halder’s message, which was possibly exaggerated in the retelling, to mean that the OKH was foisting the assassination attempt off on him because it could no longer do it. One of the questions that remains unanswered to this day is why Oster, who witnessed Canaris’s outburst, failed to point out that an assassin was now available in the person of Erich Kordt, who had relatively easy access to the Chancellery and Hitler, was prepared to put his life on the line, and awaited only the necessary explosives, which a section head named Erwin von Lahousen had promised to procure. Most likely Oster was all too aware of Canaris’s long-standing antipathy toward political assassinations of any kind. But Oster’s silence also highlights how contradictory and uncoordinated the plans of even the innermost core of conspirators remained until the very last moment.