William Tyler
WWII: The Homefront
William Tyler - WWII: The Homefront
- I call this talk the home front, the German home front in World War II. There is a blog which I put up. Just a couple of, two or three paragraphs. I’ve also put up a very small book list of some of the books that I’m mentioning today. It’s not chance, but planning on my side that I’ve chosen to speak about World War II on the German home front before I talk about the war itself. Normally, historians will talk about war first and then the home front second. But in tackling Second World War Nazi Germany and taking the home front first, it allows us to ask those troubling questions as to why an educated and civilised people could be marshalled by someone like Hitler into a war for the second time in 20 years. 1918 plus 1938 gives you 20 years. And continue to be difficult to choose the right word to explain this. The word I’m choosing is quiescent. The German people were quiescent, really right to the end until Hitler’s suicide in 1945. One of the books I’m using tonight is a book called, it’s on my list on the blog, it’s called “Nazism”. This is Volume four of “Nazism”. Now, this is largely contemporary documents, largely German documents translated into English, a documentary reader on Nazism. Volume four talks about the German home front in World War II. This is a fantastic resource for historians, and I’ve got my first reference here, and this is not from a German document, but from the editor of this book. The editor’s name is Jeremy Noakes. And Noakes writes, “The mood of the German people on the outbreak of war has been summed up by German historians, one of whom had personally witnessed it, as reluctant loyalty.
The great foreign policy successes of the preceding years for Germany, the Rhineland, the entente with Austria, Munich, Prague, et cetera, had been extremely popular. But the most popular thing about them had been that they had been achieved without war. Only a few fanatical Nazis and naive Hitler youth members actually wanted a major war.” This had represented a significant failure of Nazi indoctrination. One of the whole problems of looking at Nazi Germany is of our odd assumption in the West that everything the Germans did was in their eyes, perfect, that they were the ultimate administrators, the ultimate planners, and so on. And the truth is they weren’t. And as Noakes says here, “However, although the German peoples entered the war reluctantly, their loyalty to the regime was not in question, for by 1939, the Nazi regime had acquired a very large reservoir of support, which it could draw on when the going got tough. The overcoming of the crisis of the early 1930s, the restoration of German’s international prestige, and the fact that these achievements were associated with an individual, Adolf Hitler, who had come to embody not only the regime, but as far as many Germans were concerned, Germany itself, these provided a great reservoir of strength. By 1939, most people trusted the fuhrer to know and to do what was best for Germany, even if it might not seem so.” And that’s an extraordinary paragraph. So he, they are, he’s saying here that Germans were reluctantly loyal and were quiescent.
They saw the good things and covered their eyes to the bad things. Well, what is most extraordinary is that no revolution broke out at home as it did in at the end of the First World War. And indeed in 1945, no revolution at home. And moreover than that, there was a sense of loyalty right to the bitter end. And that is difficult for us to get our heads around. This question about acquiescence in the Nazi regime intrigues us. Wherever you are listening to this talk from, it intrigues us because it challenges the off repeated phrase, “It could never happen here.” But it did in France and other parts of German occupied Europe. And you say, “Well, it didn’t happen in Britain.” And you might say that if you were an American or a Canadian. It didn’t happen in Britain. But it did. It happened on our very doorstep in the channel islands of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark. And how did they cope? Did they die to the last man, woman, and child? No. They were acquiescent, to use that word again. They accepted, they even, some even handed Jewish friends over to the Nazis. They were totally complicit in the Nazi regime. The policemen, British policemen, British police uniforms, saluted German officers as they got out of their car to go to work in St. Helio or Peter Port, the two big capitals of Jersey and Gurnsey. It could never happen here is not true. And that’s one of the big and huge and worrying lessons from Nazism. A civilised and educated people acquiesced in Hitler’s role. So did many of the French and so did Jersey and Gurnsey.
Of course, the answer is that Nazi Germany was a highly regulated surveillance society and thus it was impossible for an individual or even a group of friends to put the heads above the parapet because they will be seen, arrested, most likely shot, and there would be reparations against their families too. So you kept your head down and acquiesced. And the argument goes, well, wouldn’t you? That’s the big question about the home front in Germany itself. Germans went along with Nazism. Not just in 1933 when they voted for it, remember? The majority, they went along with it to the bitter end, to 1945. Now we’ve chosen on Lockdown to take the Holocaust separately, and that will be dealt with next week and not by me. Now, I wanted to explain why I’m not doing it. I’ve always had a belief that the Holocaust, particularly to a Jewish audience, should be taught by Jewish historians and not by somebody like me. Don’t think I’m shirking from it. I’ve taught it before. But when I’ve taught it before, I’ve tended to teach it to Jewish friends rather than people like many here. I know you’re friends, but I don’t know you in that same way. I can’t see you. I have very limited contact and I’m always frightened if I’m doing it that inadvertently I should say something that would be upsetting to an individual. After all, it is a live issue for so many of you. And I’ve felt that if I was to do it on Lockdown, it would be presumptuous of me. And moreover, it would be like interfering in private mourning. A very close friend of mine, Jewish friend who worked with me at my college in London always said, “Well, you should do it. You shouldn’t be so sort finicky about it.” But I felt I couldn’t.
And it was quite interesting. We were going to visit Auschwitz with the family. My children were relatively small. And I said to my Jewish friend, “Do you object to me going? Do you think I shouldn’t go?” And he said, “No, you should go. But when you go, can you say for me a prayer? Because I can’t go. I just can’t go.” So I understand all these issues around talking about it. You will get your opportunity to listen next week and an opportunity to ask questions next week. And I will see you the following week when we look at not the home front, but the actual front, the war front. This week then I’m going to concentrate firstly on those Germans who continue to live in the Third Reich, and secondly, those individual Germans or groups of Germans who sought to raise their heads above the parapet in an attempt to speak the truth and hopefully in many cases destroy the Nazi regime. There are lots of books on lots of attempts, and I’m going to talk about one attempt at the end of my talk today. That is the plot that got nearest to success, the July plot of 1944, sometimes known as the von Stauffenberg plot, and I shall talk about that at the end this afternoon. But first I’m going to talk about morale and those of you who’ve read the blog in advance, and thank you for doing so, will recognise that I’m going to read parts of the blog and put a little bit extra in. I wanted to say that morale is the key problem for wartime government. They’ve got to deal with the issue of morale.
Morale is an issue not only for the military forces fighting on the line, but also for the civilian population back at home. And Churchill in Britain was very anxious to do that because he remembered that in the first World War, the elite of society, we just call them the elite of society, were still eating and drinking and going to clubs and restaurants as though there was no war, whereas ordinary folks were on the point of, if not starvation, at least living off things like nettle soup that they collected in the hedgerows in the countryside. And in the Second world War, he insisted that everyone should be treated the same. I might add he still managed to get plenty of drink into Number 10 because he had a chef who knew someone and it came and, oh God, we won’t go there. But seriously, they made a real attempt of it. Strange enough, Hitler followed the same approach as that Kaiser had followed in the first war, and the same approach as Britain followed in the first war, allowing the elite to live high on the hog, whilst famine was gripping the working classes. Now, the first thing to say about the home front in Germany and the Second World war is that the attitudes of 1938 to 1941 were not the same attitudes as existed between 1942 to 45. Now, the reason is obvious. In the first period, Germany is having success. In fact, up until 1939, basically without war. The Axis, for example. And after 39 and into 40, it looked as though, and 41, it looked as though Germany would win. Britain was on its knees, France had fallen, and they looked as though the German army marching towards Moscow in the middle of 1941 would succeed where Napoleon had failed.
But 1942 and 45 were a series of defeats all over the globe. In Africa, in Asia, in Russia, and in Western Europe and on the high seas for Germany. And so attitudes towards the war changed. Now morale changed, but it didn’t dip to such a point as there was internal revolution or revolt. That is what is perhaps surprising, given the German temperament at the end of the First World War. The Germans acquiesced. They went on acquiescing even when things began to go wrong. The first serious defeat was their repulsion from Moscow by the Russians, and then the long siege of Leningrad, which in the end they also lost. Now, if I return to our fantastic book on the Nazis, wherever I put it. I’ll put it down here. I want to read this if I may. “It took some time for the home front to become fully aware of the significance of the German reverse before Moscow in the first week of December, 1941.” All Americans listening, December, 1941, the Germans were forced back from Moscow. Now the news was censored strongly, and so truth was something that was not printed, whereas in the States and in Britain, Canada, Australia, we got real true stories. I’m not saying there wasn’t propaganda. But the Germans had difficulty. But you can’t explain the number of bodies and wounded returning from the Eastern Front. People notice the trains coming back. People notice the wounded in the streets. And people are aware that their neighbor’s son or husband has been killed.
“It took some time for the home front to become fully aware of the significance of the German reverse before Moscow in the first week of December, 1941. Indeed, before that happened, they were confronted by two other major developments. The entry of Japan into the war, the attack Pearl Harbour, and the German Declaration of War on the United States, announced by Hitler on the 11th of December, 1941 in a speech in the Reichstag.” The official reports on the population’s reaction to theses events comes from the 15th of December, 1942. “The fuhrer speech was met with a great response and has left everywhere a sense of security and an awareness of a strength of the Reich. The declaration of war on the USA came as no surprise and was considered by many to be simply official confirmation situation, which in reality already existed. Only among the peasantry where there are a few who reacted with surprise and with a certain anxiety about the addition of another opponent. The creation of clear battle lines, as one section of the population described the new situation, has according to the majority of the reports, had the effect of releasing tension”, says this official German report. “Particularly after the surprising successes of our Japanese allies, many people express satisfaction that in contrast to the Great War, Germany has seized the initiative this time and has therefore convincingly proved to the outside world its strength and confidence in victory.” It’s the spinning of the truth. Yes, it is true that Japan was making enormous initial gains in the Far East, but it was also true that Japan was unlikely to influence the war in Europe or indeed in Russia. But more than that, the entry of the United States in the war provided the war material as well as, for all intents and purposes, unlimited supplies and men and women who could and did come to Europe and to other theatres of war like North Africa.
And the Germans should really have realised that, should they not, from the entry of the United States into the war in the First World War when they entered after the collapse of the Soviet, sorry, of the Tsarist regime. And in 1941, 42, Russia was still very much in the war. So again, there’s no uprising in Germany. And the best way of describing it is they acquiesced. Life was still relatively good. This is a book called “Travellers in the Third Reich”. I’m sure lots of you have got a copy or seen it in the bookshops. This is a paperback copy by, and again, it’s on my list by Julia Boyd. And she talks about how the war was reported by American journalists who of course up to the Pearl Harbour were allowed to live and report directly from Germany. And here, she’s quoting the American journalist, Howard K. Smith. And she writes this. “From January, 1940, when Smith arrived in Berlin up to till the 6th of December 41, when he boarded the last train to Switzerland before the United States entered the war, he made a point of monitoring public morale. The invasion of Russia in June 41 was a turning point. Until then, people’s hopes for swift peace had swung wildly from one extreme to another. Any observed piece of propaganda or the flimsiest rumour could spark joy or despair. But when the promised Eastern conquest consistently failed to materialise, it began to dawn on the average German that he had been juked. There would be no quick peace, no final victory.”
And that is the turning point, the turning point of the invasion of Russia, followed by the Japanese support for Germany, which was more neutralised by bringing America into the war, something that Churchill had been desperately trying for for a long time and Roosevelt felt unable to do so, except of course that Roosevelt was providing enormous amount of war material to Churchill and frankly support, morale support to Churchill, which was very important. So there is a change, but the change doesn’t lead to action. They went on acquiescing. Some believed in ultimate victory. Some still believe that the fuhrer could pull a rabbit from the hat. They went on believing. Remember when the V2 bombs hit London, they thought this is the secret weapon that will win the war. And, of course, if the Germans had developed the atom bomb before the Americans and had dropped it on London and on Moscow, then the war would’ve been a very different, a very different conclusion. But that wasn’t to happen. And defeat follows defeat for the Wehrmacht, and yet the German population are increasingly aware but still acquiescent. It’s an extraordinary position to be in. Towards the end of 1941, Howard Smith, the American journalist, wrote this back to the States. “All the little things that make life pleasant have disappeared. All the things which are necessary to make physical life continue have deteriorated and in some cases fallen below the level of fitness for human consumption.” He’s writing the ungilded truth. Now he’s anti-Nazi. This is another problem that you have to face in war time, that even journalists reporting what they believe to be the truth are coloured in their reports by what they want to be happening.
And that’s a problem all the ways around. I don’t doubt that Smith was entirely genuine, but what is he talking about? He’s talking about food shortages. That’s what he’s talking about. And yet, at the same time that he was writing this, there was an English woman married to a German aristocrat and she was called Bridget, Bridget von Bernoff. And she led into the war, well into the war, a gilded life, the life of the old Weimar. And this is how Julia Boyd describes her experiences. “In June 8th, 1940, Bridget wrote to her husband, isn’t it wonderful that the war in the West is over?” She’s thinking that the Germans have beaten Britain. But they hadn’t. “Just when the old man in Mecklenburg,” which was her and her husband’s code name for Hitler, he was an officer in the Wehrmacht and was serving in Norway, “and it would be, and said it would be just as the old man in Mecklenburg said it would be. The war might have been going well,” but says Julia Boyd, “There were plenty of other problems.” And Bridget wrote, “We still haven’t got a house made, which is dreadful. By July, the strain was beginning to tell.” She wrote her husband, “Please darling do come home at once. All these air raids are now beyond a joke. I’m so miserable. Bomb crashing all around us and now they say that the troops in Norway will go to England. I’m so bored with this silly war. An elderly retainer of theirs was particularly incensed that the British had bombed Bismark’s monument in Hamburg.
A few weeks later, momentary forgetting British’s nationality, he announced to her, he thought it a great pity that the German bombers had missed King George the Sixth and his queen in their crane going up to Scotland the other day. A disastrous potato harvest and a huge tax bill did little to improve Bridget’s own morale.” She had been living high on the hog when the war began, and now is seeing the reality of that war strike home. She was still living well beyond her means with maids and butlers and all the rest of it. It’s a particularly galling extract from an English woman who was so pro-Nazi. But if you are British and listening to it, you know that many upper class Englishmen and women before the war, at the very least, before the war, had been very pro-Nazi, not least King Edward the Eighth. And don’t be smug, the Americans listening because of course his wife was also extremely pro-Nazi, the ex-wife, the woman whose name I prefer not to say. Never mind. It’s Wallace, of course. So there’s no uprising when things begin to be tough. There’s an acquiescence. There are those like Bridget who were firmly supporting Hitler to the bitter end. She herself lived to decades after the war. But she’s committed to Hitler. She never comes home to Britain. She stays in Germany. There were those who owed a lot to the regime. It had given them a purpose in life. It had given them money and prestige, of course. But we’re talking about ordinary Germans on the civilian home front. However tough it got, acquiesced. Maybe an attitude, “Well, we can’t do anything, so we’ve got to make the most of what we’ve got” sort of attitude.
And that was also an important lesson to learn in terms of those countries like Britain and Europe, which were not conquered. And we believe we would’ve been different had we been conquered. There’s no evidence to suggest that at all. There’s every evidence that Britain would have simply acquiesced in Hitler’s conquest. And they’d already worked out that if George the Sixth wouldn’t comply, Edward the Eighth would be put on the throne. Everything would be made to look the same. It’s a terrible, it’s a terrible story, it’s the Nazi story for liberal democracy that the Weimar Republic was not overtaken, was not overthrown by revolution, by a coup d'etat, but overthrown by ordinary Germans casting their vote for the Nazi party in a ballot box. And when the war came and the defeat came, we had no idea of course how many Germans opposed the war, but we have to suppose that quite a number did. They had family who’d been killed in the First World War. And we know from Britain that going to war again was felt, although it felt absolutely necessary, was also felt to be a horror that we had to go through it twice, twice in the first half of the 20th century. And the Germans acquiesced. And you just have to ask yourself a question, if liberal democracy is under attack in Britain, in Israel, in the United States, we have to be, which I’ve said before, we have to be so strong in the defence of democracy and not we nearly delivered because I’m not saying that the government in Israel or the government in Britain or a potential Trump second term is going to turn out to be like Hitler. What I am saying is if we don’t control the situation, we may find ourselves slipping into a position where people say, “I’m not going to vote for any party. It’s just the same whoever you vote for.”
How often have you heard that? And if we take that attitude, it can allow a Hitler in Britain, in America, in Israel, in Australia, in Canada, to arise again. These are important lessons. This isn’t history. This is why it’s important for all the countries that you represent listening to this that we should teach democracy to our children and the value of democracy and the horrors of the alternative. We must preserve the rule of law. Without that, we are all on a very slippery slope indeed. This is an Irishman in Germany during the war called Francis Stewart. And he wrote this. I’m going forward a little bit in time. He wrote this in in 1943, and again, Julia Boyd tells Francis Stewart’s story, and she writes this, “On the 1st of March, 1943, the worst raid, air raid that had yet been on Berlin began. Afterwards, Francis walked home.” Quote, this is him from his diary, “Through smoking streets past many blazing houses”, unquote. “Next morning, these were still smouldering. Along the Kaiser Alley, furniture, pictures, pots, pans and books were all piled up in the misty rain. None of this also Stewart claimed stirred him. He wrote, in the midst of our destruction, one remains emotionally untouched.” And that’s a funny phrase, emotionally untouched. I don’t care, in this case, how many Germans die, how many Germans have their houses destroyed, their businesses destroyed because of the greater truth of Nazism. Emotionally untouched.
And that is another clue to ordinary German thinking. Remember, after the allied victory, German civilians were taken by American and British soldiers through the death camps. So as they were forced to look upon and accept the horrors that had been perpetrated in their name, only thus did Germans begin to acknowledge and emerge from their political and moral desert. Only when presented with the reality of those death camps. And we’ve all heard the reports of American and British soldiers and American and British journalists who went into those camps who speak of the, to use the word horror, is so weak a word really, to use the word in a biblical sense, the hell that they entered. It isn’t that the German civilians were ignorant. It is that they chose not to hear. They chose not to internalise what they knew. They pretended that it didn’t happen. And that’s why the Allies forced them through those death camps. In a report, a German report from a German local government official in 1942, 43, I wanted to read you a piece here again from the book on Nazism. This is a genuine report. “By the Autumn of 1942, a district officer, he noted the longing for the war to come to an end at last manifested itself recently, in particular in the eagerness with which people seized on the rumours of armistice negotiations with the Russians. The fact that for a long time the Eastern Front has been at a standstill, that Stalingrad has still not being taken, the news of deaths at the front never stopped coming in, that the cancellations of the reserve status position of young farmers are increasing at an alarming rate, and that the youngest cohorts and that the youngest cohorts already being called up are interpreted as signs of exhaustion.
Speeches by the fuhrer, the Reich Marshal, the Foreign Minister, the Reich Propaganda Minister and other propaganda measures and local propaganda campaigns no longer have a lasting effect. Tiredness with the war is already so strong that all appeals to do more have no effect.” And yet, and yet that’s 42, 43 winter. Yet the war was to continue for another two years. This is what’s so difficult to grasp for many of us that the Germans so civilised, so educated should have been in terror of the Gestapo, a knock on the door, that they do nothing. They acquiesce. Now interestingly, there is an alternative view to explain the German’s attitudes, an alternative view that even contemporary German historians are beginning to talk about. And it opened up in the 1990s. And this argument goes along the lines that ordinary Germans, not only acquiesced, but many actively supported the regime by what, a phrase coined by the Canadian historian Robert Gellateley, and Robert said, “It’s self surveillance.” Now, he was the first historian to challenge the view that people didn’t act because they were frightened of the consequences of acting in a autocratic terrorist surveillance state. And he said, “No, no, no. Hang on.” And what he argues is there weren’t enough Nazis around in the Gestapo in particular to be able to control people. The argument is that people control themselves.
That is not much different than Stasi in East Germany after the war employing, well, it seems to me almost everybody in East Germany to spy on everybody else. Now, those regimes are truly shocking when husbands denounce wives, mothers denounce children, children denounce parents, neighbours denounce other neighbours. This is the British historian first of all that I want to quote. This is Richard Evans and Richard Evans wrote, “For a long time after the Second World War, historian talks of Nazi Germany as the ultimate police state, a political system in which terror and coercion were all policed. Freedom of action and expression have been completely suppressed. And the concentration camp torture and death awaited anyone who failed to tow the line. They painted a dramatic picture of an entire population caught in a totalitarian net of surveillance and control that forced everyone to conform or face the consequences.” Now, after the war, that’s a rather, what shall I say, a rather comfort blanket for Germans. Many of you, I think I’ve said this before, but many of you who visited Germany shortly after the war and even longer than that after the war, will have looked at Germans, perhaps say on buses or on trams or at railway stations or in restaurants, and look to them and think, “What age was he in 1940? What did he do? What did he do? Was he a guard at Auschwitz? Are his hands covered in blood who’s now chatting up some girl over an expensive dinner?”
Those questions went through many of our minds, whatever nationality we might be, who suffered during World War II. The French of course had major problems cuz they looked at themselves. “Did that person, that person not only acquiesce, but helped the Germans? Did that French woman over there denounce her Jewish neighbours or were they a member of the resistance?” I don’t know is the answer to those questions. You could hardly go up and ask someone. So this argument was a comfort blanket. Now, the Canadian historian, Robert Gellateley, took a different view. I hope I pronounce his name right. Now if there are Canadian listening, so you can tell me if I’ve got it wrong. It’s G-E-L-L-A-T-E-L-Y. I would pronounce it Gellateley, but I may be wrong and you’ll tell me if I am. I’m sure he’ll tell me if I am. And this is what Evans write, “From the Canadian historian Robert Gellateley’s powerful and original work on the Gestapo, it became particularly clear, not just that the secret police was a small institution with relatively few officers, most of whom seldom ventured outside their offices, but also that it relied heavily for information about deviance and dissent on denunciations from ordinary citizens.” Germany, in Gellateley’s words, “became a society where conformity was built on a system, not a surveillance by the Gestapo, but of self surveillance.”
And that’s a new phrase to be added in to the pots of discussion of how could a civilised educated people do what they did do. Self surveillance. Evans goes on to write, “The great majority of Germans, argued a historian Gellateley, not only had nothing to fear from the regime, but actually supported it by voting for it in elections and plebiscite or more sinisterly, through denouncing non-conformists to the Gestapo. Far from being secret places and nameless fear, the concentration camps were widely publicised. And the mass of Germans not only knew of their existence, but approved of their use to stamp out deviant and marginal groups. Gellateley’s arguments have more recently been substantiated, taken further by the American historian Eric Johnson, who studied Gestapo Court case files in the Rhineland, has argued that the population under the Nazis largely policed itself.” That alternative explanation is clearly no comfort blanket for Germans. But that generation of Germans is pretty well now dead and younger Germans are facing up to what historians like Johnson and Gellateley would say is the truth. But there’s going to be arguments for decades to come over that central question of how could a civilised educated nation descend down into the depths of hell?
And it says something fundamental about humankind, at which point you need an ethics sector, you need a religious view, and you don’t need a historical view. There is something deeply unpleasant and there’s something deeply divine in each one of us. We’re all capable, given certain circumstances, of acting heroically, giving our life for others. There’s also occasions, given the right circumstances, in which we would do dreadful things as they did in occupied Jersey and Gurnsey, and so on. So it’s not easy, but to labour a point, this is why we need to remember it. This is why we need to teach it. This is why we need to argue about it. And this is why we have to be defensive of our own democracies and why we have to think strongly about how we teach. Now, oddly enough, of course, or perhaps not obvious, but to a British point of view, ironic, such things are taught in German schools. Why? Because the British had a large role in setting up the post-war German curriculum and system. But did we do it here? Oh, no. Of course we didn’t. Because we thought ourselves so superior, we didn’t need to do that. And we now have generations of children who have little understanding of the rule of law, of habeas corpus, of Magna Carta, or indeed of what made Germany such a horrific lesson for all of us. Oh, they do Hitler. Oh yes, they do battles. They do the causes of the war. They do the consequences of the war. But it’s this, and that’s why I chose to do this before I talked about the war itself. This is to me, important. Now I have the luxury in adult education of doing what I want to do. You have the luxury of not having to take what I say at all.
But what we are trying to do as adults is to engage in an argument, to engage in looking at things in different ways of reading new books because all of us change our views by hearing other people’s views of reading books. And so it goes on. That’s why I’m doing it. Now, I’ve got to move on. I kept saying that there was no revolution. In fact, there wasn’t. There were numerous plots and numerous individuals, from socialists to Protestants to all sorts of people who stood up. And if I say Protestants, please note if you’re Jewish, this is because the Jews were in the camps or dead. The Protestant theologian, Bonhoeffer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whom I learned at my school when he was a big hero, was actually caught and shot by the Nazis only a few months before the war ended. But I want to talk about the July, 1944 plot. The plot was to assassinate Hitler and to seize power in Berlin and to declare a democracy. The July plot is also as the von Stauffenberg plot, largely because he was the brains behind it. But this isn’t the only plot. It was the last in a long series of individuals and in many cases, groups of people, who sought to overthrow Hitler and the regime. The plot itself in July 44 was to kill Hitler with a planted bomb at a conference that he was holding at his headquarters, which he called the Wolf’s Lair, which then was in East Russia and now is in Poland. Think of that Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, and it’s southeast of Kaliningrad in Poland. Or think of Gdańsk in Poland Volk-Danzy and come inland. That is where the Wolf’s Lair is. If any of you’ve been there, you might like to share your views afterwards.
I’m, I haven’t been, and I would like to go. Well, like is the wrong word. I think it would be important to go. They were going to kill Hitler with a planted bomb and then they were going to seize control of the government in Berlin. I’m going to short circuit the story by reading from “the Penguin Dictionary of the Third Reich”, which has an excellent piece on the July plot or else I’m going to run out of time. “In early 1944, the German opposition was in disarray. If Hitler were to be deposed or killed, a new driving force was necessary. It came in the person of Claus von Stauffenberg that this driving force was newly discovered. A South German born in 1907 whose father had been chamberlain to the last King of Württemberg, von Stauffenberg had joined the 17th Bamberg Calvary in 1926. Fearing a communist seizure in the Weimar Republic, he had inclined, like many thousands of officers, to a measure of support for Hitler as the lesser two evils. Meanwhile, his army career progressed rapidly and in 1938, he’d been invited to become one of the 187 members of the elite general staff. Thus, he was in an ideal position to place a bomb. Only in the second half of 1943 did von Stauffenberg appear to have assumed a leading role in a new plot against Hitler’s life.
It was now recognised that there were two immediate stages for the operation, the assassination of Hitler, and the quite separate seizure of the German state in the face of SS forces, which they guessed would remain loyal to Himmler or to Göring or whoever attempted to take command once Hitler had been assassinated. It was called Operation Valkyrie. They had a cover story for what was going on in Berlin and a plan for the seizure of Berlin. Von Stauffenberg was perfectly open about it because he was Chief of Staff to General Ulbrich of the German Army office in Berlin. Stauffenberg prepared a contingency plan for the troops of the Berlin garrisons to seize key government buildings, telephone and signal centres, and radio stations in the event of a revolt of hundreds of foreign slave labourers working in the Berlin region.” So he sets up a group that’s going to take command once Hitler’s been assassinated, and he’s able to do so because he said, “Look, this is my job. I think we’ve got to prepare for an uprising by the slave labourers.” And that’s what was accepted. And so the plot has been, as it were, launched. “He himself is at the conference at the Wolf’s Lair. The conference had been put forward half an hour from one o'clock because Mussolini was to arrive for a meeting with Hitler early in the afternoon. Stauffenberg entered the Lair with Field Marshal Keitel at 12:37, having minutes before broken the capsule, which activated the time bomb in his briefcase.
The timing gave von Stauffenberg five minutes to plant the bomb. The closest he could get to where Hitler was studying the latest reports was about 12 feet away, next to a staff officer named Grant. He placed his briefcase to rest against a strongly built oak table. The bomb exploded at 12:42 PM. The light roof from windows of the conference hut were destroyed immediately. In the chaos, someone remembered seeing Hitler’s hair burning. Von Stauffenberg himself was already clear of the hut, certain that everybody at the conference was dead. Only when he arrived in Berlin just after four o'clock did he realise to his astonishment that Hitler had not been killed. Conspiracy now fell apart. Goebbels in Berlin actively resolution, demonstrating to the Berlin command, Guard Commander Riemar that Hitler was still alive by linking them by telephone. General Fromm, as much to allay suspicion of his own involvement as many loyalty to Hitler, had Stauffenberg shot at midnight in the courtyard of the War Ministry.” But they got very close. Nearly did it. And they would’ve asked for peace immediately. Now, behind me somewhat is a picture of a very interesting German aristocrat. His name is Adam von Trott. Adam had been educated at University of Oxford. He had been educated as Clinton was on a Rhodes Fellowship. He had been a Rhode scholarship.
He’d been to Baylor College, and then he went to Mansfield College, which was a religious college. He was a strongly committed Christian. He was strong aristocrat. He was deeply pro-British. He was deeply anti-Nazi. But he decided to stay in the Foreign Office. He was allowed in the Foreign Office to move to neutral countries, to Switzerland, Sweden, or on official business. That gave him an opportunity to pass on information to the British, which he did. The appalling, appalling truth that a friend of mine who wrote a biography, again on my blog, who wrote a biography of von Trott and knew the family well and intimately, my late friend Kenneth Sears, discovered in his dive into the archives here in Britain that a member of the intelligence services did not pass them on. A man who later became a well-known Labour politician and member of the government. He simply didn’t pass the information on, believing that von Trott was sending dodgy information. He was a Nazi. If he wasn’t, he would’ve left. He had opportunities to leave, but he chose to fight Nazism from within. And he was part of the von Stauffenberg plot and my friend Kenneth Sears, it’s a very short book. It’s not so easy to get hold of, but it really is, it was a work of a lifetime for him. And he managed to produce it before Von Trott’s wife died and indeed before he died. It was only a few years afterwards that Kenneth died. Then a few years afterwards that Adam von Trott’s wife died. But Kenneth writes this, which I wanted to share. “By the 20th of July, 1944, the date of the plot, Adam’s mission in life was in a sense complete. For many years, he’d walked with destiny, knowing the dangers in what he was doing, but convinced that it was the only course for him to follow.
He had said himself that he’d done all he set out to do. If the plot succeeded, he would be there to serve his country and the wider community of nations in a new and hopefully peaceful world. If it failed, he and his friends would at least have shown the world that there were many Germans who wanted to purge their country of the evil forces that had taken control of it. He was a man of outstanding intellectual gifts, but at the same time, a man of humility who mixed easily with people of all walks of life. Adam’s life was a comparatively short one. After the plot, he was shot. He was 35 years of age. Adam’s life was a comparably short one, but encompassed some of the most momentous events in the 20th century. Having resolved to oppose the Nazi regime from its earliest days, he never waver from his chosen path, although he knew that if he and his friends failed in their final objective, one certain fate awaited them. When they pleaded for some kind of recognition” This is before the plot. This is in the early years of the war. “Some kind of recognition, some small encouragement from the allies,” basically Britain, “their pleas were met with silence, derision, and even hostility.” He was shot on the 26th of August 44, age just 45, 30, sorry, at age just 35. “His wife, Clarissa, was also arrested. For a number of months, kept in jail, then released. They had two children, two little girls, one two and a half, and one nine months. They were taken away from their mother and they were given to Nazi party families for adoption.
After the end of the war, Clarissa, the wife, managed to get her two children back.” Pretty grim. I’m going to finish the whole talk today with the two final paragraphs on my friend’s book, Kenneth’s book. First is a quotation from Tenessan poem, and the second paragraph is Kenneth. The first one reads like this. This is Tenessan. “That which we are, we are. One equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will. To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.” And Kenneth writes, “The events of the 20th of July, 1944, often referred to as the failed plot. To the extent that Hitler survive, the description is true. But failure does not always deny success. And Adam von Trott had succeeded, along with his many friends, in showing the world that purity of motive, loyalty to conscience, and the willingness to sacrifice one’s own life for the greater good of mankind are virtues which ultimately triumph over the tragedy of the moment.” And if you go to Oxford, please go to Bayler College chapel, where you will find that he is remembered amongst the war dead.
Go to Mansfield College and you’ll see the same. Because Kenneth said, who knew the wife so well in after years, that his stay in Britain, and particularly at Oxford, he himself said, was the guiding light of his life. That’s why keeping our liberal democracy flame alive is so important. And it’s horrendous to think of all the deaths of World War II at the hands of Germany on the home front in the death camps and on the front line. And sometimes if you tell a simple story about one person, it makes you, it makes, when I was preparing this, I got very sad reading again by this extraordinary man who was so clever and had tried so hard to alert the British to many things the Germans were doing and who was totally ignored. At the end joined a plot, which he hoped was succeed. He was going to be one of the administrators in Berlin in the new state. And instead of which he was kept for 11 weeks in prison, then taken out and shot and not knowing what was going to happen to his wife and not knowing where his children were. So thank you ever so much for listening. I can’t say I hope you enjoyed it, but I hope it opened some new windows for you in looking at this horrendous period in German history, in European and world history. And I guess I probably got some comments. I think I have. I seem to have got a lot, actually.
Q&A and Comments:
Marilyn says, “If Weimar has succeeded in established economic growth, a stable currency, and low employment, things might have turned out differently.” Yes, they might well have done. In fact, I think almost certainly would’ve done. Just remember Clinton all the time. “It’s the economy stupid.” And it is. But sometimes it’s out of control of governments. And that was out of control.
Thank you very much for your nice comment, Rita.
Q: What about the ones who didn’t acquiesce?
A: Well, as I said, they were imprisoned in the camps. Often died or were shot without going to the camps or were murdered in the camps. Time and again, did that happen. And I mentioned Bon Hopper. I could have mentioned lots more. I simply didn’t have time and that’s why I wanted to concentrate on the July plot, because then hopefully it makes it real for people.
I read a book who says, Arlene, “I read a book that was written before Hitler took power. It was called, "It Can’t Happen Here”. Suggests that the next country to begin a pogrom would be Germany or England or the United States. The book was not popular, but it turned out to be true.“ Yeah.
Yana says, and Alfred says, "The underlying continuous thread for acquiescence is the ongoing sense drilled into them of humiliation. Germans never accepted the idea that they may have been at fault for World War I, Feeling put upon continuous throughout World War II and after.” Yes, absolutely true.
Thank you, Irene. Oh, Irene. Yeah, no, thank you. But I, you know, I’ve talked about it in other places, but I am sensitive here.
Ronnie. Yeah, I know many of you think that a non-Jew should speak. I just feel I’m intruding if I do. I know, and I have spoken at it, for example, at the Jewish college in London with people that I’ve worked with for many years, and who I knew would not, if I said something inadvertently would get upset. And in face to face like that, I was able to ask one or two people whom I knew and had agreed beforehand to tell their own family’s story. And I can’t do that on Lockdown.
Who’s this? Well said. A young non-Jewish German girl mentioned that her grandfather did not agree with what’s happening and he and others in her family were sent to Dachau a labour camp at the time. Absolutely. I know lots of you will now say, “Yes, you should be talking about the asha”, but I, well, I’m not, and you’ll have a change of face voice and everything else, which is a good thing as well. But I will be back, like the Bad Berry, in two weeks time.
“A very good book about a couple of resistance and Nazi is "Alone in Berlin” by Hansville Luda. It is a novel, but I think based on a true story.“
Andrea, and I think that’s based on a true story as well. And Rita, thank you for the reference.
Q: Jacqueline, "Was there anything in Germany similar to the British Mass Observation?”
A: No. No, there was nothing like that. No. The British Mass Observation Project was a very academic project, and it was, and funnily enough, the records of the British Mass Observation Project are housed not very far from where I live, down in Brinich, held by the University of Sussex.
Q: Why was Japan in the war at all?
A: Because Japan wanted to create a, what they called an East, an empire for the East, but they didn’t really care about anybody but Japan. They wanted their moment in the sun in the Far East and with Germany at war, it gave them the opportunity, and Russia, it gave them the opportunity to strike. They had begun before the war in Europe in Manchuria, and then they spread across. They got to the borders of India itself, which would’ve been a great prize. So they wanted to carve out an empire in the East. And that’s basically the answer to the question. And by bombing the Americans, this is exactly what they had done in the Russia-Japanese war. In 1905, they attacked the Russian Pacific fleet in harbour in the east, in Vladivostok without giving any warning. An American and British commentator said, “How clever of them not to give a warning?” And then of course, when they attack at Pearl Harbour, the British and the America said, “How grateful. How ungentlemanly that they didn’t give us warning.”
Well, that’s an interesting question, but it plays into American history. This is quite a different area than I’m talking about today. Very briefly, America always been interested in the Far East with trade. You think that modern Japan was developed through contact with America originally. Remember Commander Perry. Then America is involved and has always been involved. Hence the problems with Taiwan today. And America at this very moment as we speak has sent, I dunno what it is, I assume an aircraft carrier to stand off Taiwan as the Chinese sabre rattle. They were far more interested in the East than they were in the West. In fact, Churchill had a issue with Roosevelt to make sure that the Americans did come into the North African campaign rather than to put all their resources to the Eastern campaign. That’s another story for another day. But America’s isolationism is an isolationism from Europe, not an isolationism from the Far East. At the moment, they’re caught in a bind in both Europe because of Ukraine, and they’re caught in the East because of China. Hitler declared war on America because America had declared war on Japan. And Japan was America’s ally. I was, sorry, Japan was German’s ally. Because the Japanese launched Pearl Harbour, the Americans declared war on Japan. They did not declare war on Germany because Roosevelt felt there would not be sufficient majority, and it would undermine the war effort. So he didn’t. And simply waited for Germany as an ally of Japan to declare war on America. That’s how it went.
And yes, of course they were stupid to do so, but, and they could have broken their word with, but they simply, it went back to the question of the Germans are so bright and clever and they do everything by the book. No, they don’t. They act with emotion. And here, they acted with emotion. They didn’t like Americans, World War I. And so they have an opportunity, so they go to war. I don’t, they simply didn’t think it through carefully enough. A comment.
Oh, Valerie, I like comments. “A comment rather than the question, if I may. The Nazis were not elected by a majority Germans. Hitler initially headed a coalition until he subsequently eliminated the opposition by other means.” No, he was the largest party in the Reichstag. That’s all.
Q: “Do you think the German population continued to be acquiescent even in the final year because they trust their leaders role?”
A: No, I don’t.
Q: “Do you think that the German population continued to be acquiescent even in the final year because they trust their leaders who spoke so persuasively?”
A: That last year, the war is very difficult to analyse. In the end, the Germans were having to make a decision whether they wanted to be in an American occupied Germany or a Russian. And you all know the answer to that. So there were other things. They were also dying of hunger. They were starving. They just wanted the war to end. I don’t think many expected that Hitler would go on, not just to the bitter end, but beyond the bitter end in 45.
“Our American friend should remember,” says Irene, “that President Kennedy’s father, US Ambassador to UK was so pro-German he had to be recalled.” Yes, absolutely. He was terribly unpopular in Britain.
Q: “Has any of the upper British aristocracy sought to be openly questioned and reprimanded after the end of the war about their pro-Nazi sentiments?”
A: No. No. Oh, no, no, no. Don’t think so. Of course, those who were imprisoned in the war like Mosley who come out afterwards. No, there’s no prosecution in that sense.
“The Gestapo had an iron grip on the German population. Described well by Hansville in the book "Alone in Berlin”, which we’ve mentioned already.
“And I think Hitler was a super salesman and PR genius. He sold the Germans the Third Reich, and in Goebbels, he had a brilliant propagandist.” Absolutely right. God help us if Goebbels and Hitler were here today, using the internet as the Russians do. It doesn’t bear thinking about, except that that’s how a liberal democracy could form. Mind you, after the July 44 plot, it’s quite clear that Hitler was not, if I put it in Latin, you all know what I mean. He was not compos mentis. He was not of sound mind.
Q: “If Hitler did not attack Britain, would Britain have declared war against Germany?”
A: Yes, absolutely, Barry. Because British policy is always, if the channel ports are in the hands of the enemy, Britain is next. We could not allow France to fall. And if you remember, Churchill offered union with France on an equal basis until the end of hostilities. The French surrendered before that could be pushed any further.
Hannah says, “I for one, was evacuated to Wales for a family none of us knew, but it worked very well. My father was a soldier in the war. My mother coped. They just did.” That’s true. But many English children who were evacuated were evacuated into horrible circumstances. Yours is a good story, Hannah. But there were other stories which were less good.
Q: Why do I keep stating that liberal democracy is threatened in Britain, James?
A: Well, because there’s an attack on the rule of law, on habeas corpus. Simply, for an example, in relation to sending those seeking refuge here to Rwanda. We have a Home Secretary who is the most right wing Home Secretary we have ever experienced in Britain. And our liberal democracy is under threat. Remember that Johnson did not follow proper procedure in, and when he wrongly and knowingly ill advise the late queen. There’s all sorts of reasons for why we feel, many people feel in Britain, and I’m not a socialist, that many people in Britain feel that liberal democracy is under threat. They don’t, they by illegal means have fallen their, if so, what do you suggest we should do? We’ve failed asylum seekers. We should do what we used to do. That is every asylum seeker coming to Britain should be processed in the British embassies where they are. That’s what we did. And we cease to do it. It’s quite straightforward. They’re not illegal immigrants. There’s no such thing legally in British laws as an illegal immigrant. We’ve got plenty of room anyhow.
No, it wouldn’t open the floodgates, but we we should deal with it in a proper way. And we’re not, and sending them to a country like Rwanda is more than disgraceful. It’s unethical. It’s immoral. But don’t get me started on that. You’re welcome to have a different opinion. I’ll see you on the picket line.
Stephen, “Not very likely under the Tory government, the press of Jewish in the NHS.” Well, Stephen, that’s my view. James, “I’m not persuaded by the argument on house government in any way undermining independent freedom of the media in this country.
What subversion of the judiciary, what case are you,” oh, well, I could answer all of that, but I haven’t. I’m not talking about Britain. I’ll talk about Britain sometime and ignore absolutely every one of you. “What about all the unmarried German girls had illegitimate babies for Hitler?” Oh, no. That’s appalling. Some of you have heard my story before. I went on an adult education conference to Austria and we went to a beautiful country house, which was owned by the Austrian government and used for international goodwill things. And it was used for adult education annually. And I went to a conference there. It was near Bad Ischl, where Kaiser Franz Joseph kept his mistress, as an aside. It was a beautiful house, a beautiful grounds. And I said to my opposite number from Vienna, I said, “This is a love place to hold a conference. This is fantastic.” And he said, “Well, I hate coming.” “What do you mean, you hate coming?” He said, “Has no one told you the story?” And I said, “Well, no.” He said, “Well, before the war, this belonged to a Hungarian Jewish family, remember the Austria-Hungarian empire, belonged to a Hungarian Jewish family who fled as war came. And when the war ended, they gave the property to the Austrian government on the understanding it will be used for, to encourage peace across Europe. And that’s why adult education is there holding international conferences.” So I said, “Well, that’s a very interesting story.” So he said, “No, no. That isn’t really the story. The story is that when the Nazis took over in Austria, they used this as a place for breeding the master race. This is where the women were taken. This is where the women gave birth.” I must say, it gave you a completely different view about staying there.
Bejab says, “Teaching children and adults no good from evil should underpin teaching the preservation of democracy. Germans actively embraced the discriminatory laws, banning Jews from their towns with clearly stated signs at their entrances.” That is absolutely true. When I was talking about education in Germany, I was talking about post 1945. You are talking about pre 1945. And I was saying, when I said civilised and educated, yes, of course, and of course, that education was flawed for that very reason that you give.
Absolutely. David says, “I’m not sure that acquiesce is in fact an appropriate word. Perhaps you could comment. There was violent, brutal consequence for anyone who did not acquiesce. Those who did not were liable for” Well, I think I answered that in the talk. And you’ve got to choose between the two explanations the historians have come up with. And you can easily disagree with me. And there’s truth in both of course.
“Begim would not shake hands with any German of a certain age before knowing what and where they were during the war,” says Bernice. Very interesting, Bernice.
“Philip Roth in "The War against America” described American behaviour. The US had not entered the war against Hitler. The Nazis had lists of Jewish citizens in the UK just as they had in Vichy France for the deportations. They also had lists in neutral Ireland.“ And if you are Irish and think they would never have come, they would. I saw the actual list when I visited Auschwitz. It was open at that page and it listed how many Jews were in Dublin, how many Jews were outside of Dublin. Don’t think for one moment they would not have taken Ireland. "The immense Japanese fleet was trained by Britain. A German spy against Hitler stationed, told the Russians that the Japanese would not attack Russia, freeing Russian from Japan.” Sharon, that’s an interesting point. The fleet was trained by Britain up to 1905. After the war, after the first war, it began to ease off. We retreated from that position. But you are absolutely right. We did originally train the modern Japanese navy.
Who’s this? Mary. “In the mid sixties, my sister went into railing in mainland Europe. She met a young German that said he should call if he came to England. He called at my parents’ home. My sister was out and the young man politely bowed and his clicked his heels. When my mother opened the door, she turned white with fear. And I think that the young man was very upset. It must have been the first time that he realised how people reacted.”
Okay. Thank you everyone for joining in. It’s been lovely. Have questions and challenges. All of that is great fun. Thank you ever so much. I’m now off to watch my football team on tele.