Oster clearly saw no way out of this dilemma without breaking free of traditional values and thought patterns. He was enough of an officer to understand how seriously his peers took their responsibility for the well-being of their troops. But the question was how that responsibility compared to the one they would bear for the millions of lives that would be lost in a world war unleashed by Hitler and whether it was even possible to address the real issues from the standpoint of individual nations and their legal systems, which protected each nation’s self-interests and made “high treason” a heinous crime. Traditional values provided inadequate tools for understanding or combating Hitler’s rule. Moreover, they failed to address the moral grounds on which, more than anything else, Oster’s fierce opposition was predicated. Some doubt may still remain, but when all the philosophical arguments have been exhausted, one point stands beyond challenge in Osier’s thinking. He himself alluded to it when he told Franz Liedig that he had made a decision on moral grounds, for which he alone was responsible and for which, if things turned out badly, he alone would pay.
Like all previous designs of the German resistance, Oster’s action failed, even doubly so. Hitler did not suffer the expected setback, since the date of the western offensive was postponed twenty-nine times in total between the autumn of 1939 and May 1940, when Wehrmacht units that had recovered their strength and were well prepared and better equipped finally smashed across the borders. Furthermore, the never-ending series of new starting dates for the attack that Oster relayed to the West made his warnings seem unreliable. The Dutch high command never placed much stock in them in any case, as the original November date struck them as too foolish and irrational to be believed, even of Hitler. They soon wrote Sas off, suspecting that he was either being deliberately misled by his secretive informer or that he had become hysterical and hoped to appear more important than he really was. As a result, all his messages were simply filed away. When Oster warned the Norwegian ambassador in Berlin of Hitler’s decision to seize Norway and Denmark the ambassador, concluding that it was a deliberate attempt to mislead him, did not even forward the information to Oslo. By the time Norway eventually mobilized, it was too late. Similarly, the British fleet, which set sail on April 7 to beat the Germans to the punch in Norway (Hitler invaded on April 9) had no idea it was in a race against time. As if to remind Oster that he had risked his life, honor, and reputation in vain, the Dutch commander in chief, General Winkelmann, told Sas that the German officer who was feeding him information must be “a pitiful fellow.”6
On the evening of May 9, 1940, Oster gave Sas the code word for the imminent German attack in the West: “Danzig.” Sas hastened to the embassy to forward this information. The Ministry of War in The Hague hesitated, however, calling the embassy back to express its doubts, and ultimately seemed unwilling, out of fear of the Germans, to give orders for the mobilization of troops. The reaction in Belgium was no different. Consequently, when the invasion finally began in the early hours of May 10, the German units took their opponents so much by surprise that “Fortress Holland” fell within five days and Belgium soon thereafter. German units poured into France, using what Churchill called a “scythe cut”—a strategy developed by Erich von Manstein in the face of opposition from the OKH and substituted by Hitler at the last minute for the traditional strategic plan, which the Führer disparaged as “that old Schlieffen thing” (a reference to the attack on France in World War I). Within just a few weeks, the Germans overwhelmed the still slightly superior Allied forces, and on June 14 they marched through the Porte Maillot into the heart of Paris. On the same day, Guderian’s panzer units reached the Swiss border and broke into the Maginot Line from the rear. This line had not only dominated French strategic thinking but also had misled France into the deceptive, self-absorbed sense of contentment that now proved so fatal.
On June 17 the French government made its “melancholy decision” to capitulate. Four days later Hitler reached the apex of his career: In the forest of Compiègne, where the terms of the armistice had been dictated to the Germans on November 11, 1918, a French delegation now signed the surrender. With his sense for high drama, the Führer invested the occasion with all the signs of symbolic reparation. The railroad car in which the historic ceremony had been held Twenty-two years earlier was retrieved from the museum in which it had been displayed. In the little clearing, a German flag was draped over the granite monument, whose inscription stated that at this place “the criminal pride of the German empire” had finally been broken. Hitler had sworn in countless speeches never to rest until the humiliation of November 11, 1918, had been erased. Finally his goal had been achieved. The “deepest disgrace of all times,” according to the text of the truce, was expunged.
The outburst of joy that this triumph prompted in Germany far surpassed that surrounding any of Hitler’s other successes, despite the fact that the decision to launch the western war had seemed senseless and obstinate to many when it started. Many lingering reservations, as well as new doubts about the Nazis, were allayed that day-or even transmuted into respect and admiration. The victorious generals, having gorged on titles, Knight’s Crosses, and grants for distinguished service to the state,” as Gisevius remarked bitterly, had little desire to recall their dire predictions about the offensive and felt forced to acknowledge that Hitler had perceived the weaknesses of the Western powers much better than they.7 In the years that followed, it was these brilliant successes, much more than opportunism or personal weakness (although they also existed), that generated the mysterious confidence in Hitler’s genius that always seemed to resurface despite setbacks.
For the German opponents of Nazism, the victory in France brought profound discouragement. Their only, albeit paradoxical, consolation lay in the fact that Hitler did not crown his triumph with serious peace initiatives; he savored it greedily but only for a short time before turning to new ventures. At some point, they thought, even Hitler’s luck must turn and Germany’s strength be exhausted. As if taking his leave from the cause that had so consumed him over the years, Canaris said that the resistance had “shrunk to fewer than the five fingers on one hand.”8
The Security Service (SD) reports on the mood of the general population in the second half of June 1940 speak of unprecedented social consensus. According to them, church groups were still making “defeatist” statements, but even the Communists had ceased their oppositional activities, thanks in large part to the Hitler-Stalin pact. The surviving remnants of the Social Democratic Party had disintegrated into nothing more than apolitical circles of friends who met to reminisce about the days when their cause had seemed to be the wave of the future. Occasionally they produced leaflets to stir fading memories. Those party leaders who had remained in Germany had withdrawn into their private lives or joined the various civilian resistance groups, which offered at least intellectual opposition to the regime.
Recognizing that it was nearly impossible to mount a broad-based coup, the plotters resorted to assassination attempts. In May 1940 Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg resigned as regional commissioner in Silesia and joined his reserve regiment, because he believed that he could serve the resistance more effectively from within the army. Together with Eugen Gerstenmaier, a theologian and member of the Kreisau Circle, he attempted to form a commando unit to undertake Hitler’s assassination. They failed, however, to assemble the nearly one hundred people required, and their plans were frustrated by transfers, orders to travel on official business at inopportune times, and Hitler’s unpredictable changes of location.