Casablanca therefore posed another serious setback for the resistance and was particularly troubling to those who still hesitated or had not quite made up their minds. The policy of unconditional surrender led many to feel that to oppose Hitler would be to betray their own country, and only a very few were prepared to go that far, especially in wartime. It was only with great difficulty that Helmuth von Moltke managed to carry on in the aftermath of Casablanca. On the other hand, like many of his friends, Trott never got over his bitterness and accused the Allies of indulging in “bourgeois prejudice and hypocritical theorizing.” When he surfaced again in Stockholm in early 1944, still searching for influential intermediaries, he had developed, according to one of his Swedish friends, a look of “desperation.”14
The lesson of Casablanca, as of all the vain attempts of these years to communicate with the Allies, whether through Spain, Portugal, Turkey, or the Vatican, was that the resistance was on its own. The conspirators grew accustomed to “staring into the void” when they contemplated the prospects for a coup-both the void within Germany and, as was now plain, the one beyond. This strengthened their resolve not to predicate their enterprise on any national, political, or even material interest. They carried on not in the hope of success but solely as an act of self-purification.
There are many reasons for the impending failure of the German resistance: errors, inhibitions, clumsiness, indecision, and the vastly superior power of the opponent. Any fair-minded assessment must, however, also take into account the brusque dismissal the resistance received from those with whom it believed-mistakenly, as it turned out-that it was safely in league.
After the near exposure of Oster, Canaris barely managed to slip out of the tightening noose. Roeder may have been a skillful, experienced investigator, but he never succeeded in penetrating the clouds of deception created by the masters of that art at Military Intelligence. Where he expected to find a massive political conspiracy with elements of high treason, he could only uncover evidence of questionable dealings in foreign currencies, bogus exemptions from military service, and lax handling of money. When a few unguarded comments escaped his lips, Military Intelligence counterattacked with a fog of accusations, complaints about the investigation, and counterinquiries. They finally prompted Keitel, the most highly placed official in the department’s chain of command, to turn to Himmler. In the end, as the entire affair became hopelessly clouded and obscure, Dohnanyi and Bonhoeffer were merely indicted for a few nonpolitical offenses and Oster for being an accomplice.
Canaris sensed, however, that the fate of Military Intelligence was sealed, and that the bureau, with the maze of dark corridors that had been his fiefdom, could not long withstand the kind of scrutiny to which it would now be subjected by suspicious officials. In an early sign of what lay in store for it, Military Intelligence was ordered to relocate to Zossen. The official explanation was the disruption and destruction caused by the bombing of Berlin, but Keitel ordered simultaneously that the agency be reorganized and almost all its department heads replaced.
Only now did the severity of the blow suffered by the resistance on April 5 become clear. Along with its “managing director” it had lost its very core and with it went much of its internal cohesion. Months would be needed to repair the damage, but time was already short. There were further setbacks during that spring of 1943. Beck fell seriously ill and was incapacitated for several weeks. In addition, the opposition’s troubled relations with the Allies became generally known, undermining its attempts to influence the generals, though there were a few individual successes. Once again, profound pessimism began to spread among the conspirators. The certainty that an indomitable fate was at work and would follow its predestined course regardless of what they might say or do gave rise to bouts of resignation. As General Fritsch had written years earlier, Hitler was “Germany’s destiny for better or worse, and this destiny will run its course. If he tumbles into the abyss, he will take us all with him. Nothing can be done.” Erich von Manstein, too, explained his refusal to join the conspirators with the fatalistic comment that it was impossible to resist Hitler. General Edgar Röhricht remarked to Tresckow that one could not escape one’s fate, and even Canaris occasionally described Hitler as a “scourge of God” that must be endured to the end. General Adolf Heusinger, the chief of army operations, responded to invitations to join the conspiracy by claiming that an uprising would not change anything but only delay the inevitable and that Germans should simply resign themselves to the idea that there would be no rescue.15
The resistance experienced so many disappointments and anxieties, it saw so many valiant efforts turn to dust, that few of its members could help but be overcome by feelings of despair. Jens Peter Jessen, for instance, fell increasingly prey to such emotions and at times withdrew from society altogether. Tresckow, Olbricht, Hassell, and Johannes Popitz, by contrast, were less affected, while the irrepressible Goerdeler even began dreaming of what he called a “partial action,” by which he meant the assassination of a more accessible Nazi of secondary rank or some other spectacular deed that, if accomplished at just the right moment, would bring “the whole house of cards crashing down.” He was persuaded not to press ahead with his plans at a dinner in the home of former state secretary Erwin Planck, where the attorney Carl Langbehn, Hassell, General Thomas, and others argued that “Hitler’s prestige is still solid enough that if he’s left standing he’ll be able to launch a counterattack that will end in at least chaos or civil war.”16
At the fronts, the tides of war had now begun to turn. In early July Hitler attempted to regain the upper hand in the East through Operation Citadel, a massive panzer offensive against a Russian salient near Kursk; it ended in failure. A few days later the Allies landed in Sicily, creating a second front, and on July 25 Mussolini was overthrown. Tresckow, just released from his position on the staff of Army Group Center, canceled a vacation he had planned to take for health reasons and went to Berlin. Shortly after arriving he told Rüdiger von der Goltz, a cousin of Christine von Dohnanyi, that the war was lost and that “everything therefore must be done to end it soon.” That meant “the leadership would have to go.”17
At about the same time, Tresckow finally succeeded in convincing Colonel Helmuth Stieff, the only conspirator who had access to Hitler in the regular course of his duties, to keep his pledge to participate in an assassination attempt. This was a promising turn of events. Warned by Schlabrendorff that Kluge seemed to be backsliding in his absence, Tresckow then managed to persuade the field marshal to come to Berlin, where Tresckow sought to keep him in the conspiracy. He also arranged for Kluge to meet with Olbricht and Goerdeler, as well as with Beck, who had recently been released from the hospital. At the end of a long conversation about foreign affairs and the policy of the government to be formed after the coup, Kluge stated with surprising firmness that since Hitler would not make the necessary decisions to end the war and was unacceptable to the Allies as a negotiating partner he had to be overthrown by force. But now it was Goerdeler who voiced his adamant opposition, once again swept away by his optimism and his belief in the power of reason. He reminded the conspirators of the duty of the army commanders and the chief of general staff “to speak frankly with the Führer.” After that, he said, everything else would fall into place: “Anybody can be won over to a good cause.” Kluge and Beck could no longer be dissuaded, however, and shortly thereafter Goerdeler, suddenly fired with new enthusiasm, informed the Swedish banker Jakob Wallenberg that a putsch was planned for September. Schlabrendorff would then be sent to Stockholm to initiate peace negotiations.18