Activities
The members of Schwarze Kapelle included many in the higher echelons of the Wehrmacht (the "regular" German army) and Abwehr (military intelligence). Drawn heavily from the aristocracy, they feared Hitler's policies would ruin their country and hoped overthrowing the Nazi Party would preserve their vision of Germany. Members utilized the Abwehr, headed by top-ranking conspirator Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, to regularly communicate with their counterparts in Britain, other Allied nations, and various neutrals.
Elements of the Schwarze Kapelle began making overtures to Britain before war broke out and Hitler could have been easily ousted or killed. British officials asserted they would not interfere with German internal affairs at that time. Many hard feelings remained among them from the First World War, exacerbated by Hitler's occupation of the Germanic Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia six months after the Munich Agreement. Moreover, Britain's covert apparatus had been burned in the Venlo Incident, losing two SIS (MI6) officers—including Sigismund Payne Best, who had extensive knowledge of British espionage on the continent—to supposed "discontented conservatives" who were actually German SD counterintelligence operatives.
Although Hitler had built Germany into the world's most dominant power, the conspirators were afraid his hubris would eventually bring harm to their Fatherland. Allied officials shied from any suggestions of a negotiated peace, refusing to recognize German wartime gains. Many were also reluctant to accept the credibility of the Schwarze Kapelle, believing it to be a front for the Gestapo. Thus the Allies encouraged its members to act but were not willing to promise anything in return. This reticence was to significantly hamper the German opposition to Hitler throughout the entire war.
By September 1938 the Schwarze Kapelle had devised plans for a coup to take place whenever the Munich Agreement was abrogated, as they anticipated Hitler would. The plotters believed Britain would deny Germany the Sudetenland, Germany would start a war it was sure to lose, which they sought to avoid. [3] When Chamberlain stalled for time so that Britain could rearm, [4] Germany had a free hand, there was no invasion, and the coup plans evaporated. Had the coup succeeded, Hitler was to have been shot "resisting arrest." [5] With a successful annexation of the Sudetenland Hitler instead rose to his highest esteem yet; under the circumstances, no coup could possibly win the support of the German military, let alone the German people. The conspirator in charge of the plot, Chief of Staff of the Army High Command (OKH) Franz Halder, called it off.
The Schwarz Kapelle's plans for a provisional government were reconsidered a year later, in October–November 1939, when Hitler planned a November 12 autumn attack through the neutral Low Countries into France. Many on the General Staff thought it would be a military disaster at that time of year. Other high-ranking officers had been outraged at the barbarities being reported out of Poland. Once again Halder was in charge. After a meeting between Commander-in-Chief Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch and Hitler at the very time of the planned coup, 13:30 on November 5, 1939, Halder misunderstood a reference Hitler made to the OKH headquarters as the "spirit of Zossen" and feared the conspirators had been found out. He called off the plan and had all documents burned. [6]
There had been enough support from high-level military commanders during both the 1938 and 1939 plots that the chief conspirator, Abwehr head Admiral Canaris, was able to propose preventing the war to Britain as an outcome of the first, and surrender in the second. The British, however, were never really on board either time, undermining the conspirators' confidence in pursuing treason each time. Further, the plotters were never confident that Germany would be treated fairly by Britain in any successful coup, as opposed to 1919 and Versailles. High ranking conspirators in the Wehrmacht, who were central to any coup attempt, also feared they would be seen as traitors if Germany did not receive favorable terms after replacing Hitler.
Following the spectacular success of Hitler's invasion plan for France, both German public opinion and support of and in the German military solidified behind the Fuhrer. Still, the Schwarz Kapelle maintained its efforts to overthrow Hitler and seek a negotiated peace with its enemies. The disastrous September 1941 stall and subsequent total failure of Hitler's plan to invade and conquer the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, renewed the conspirator's hopes. Fallow times, however, dominated their dealings until 1943.
When Roosevelt announced at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943 that the Allies would accept nothing less than unconditional surrender, an approving Churchill and others realized this would force the Germans to fight "like rats." [7] Canaris also grasped this demand would probably doom his efforts to recruit supporters among the German generals. [8]
On March 13, 1943, Colonel Henning von Tresckow had his adjutant, Fabian von Schlabrendorff, placed a time bomb aboard Hitler's plane on March 13, 1943, right after the disaster of Stalingrad, but it failed to go off, despite their testing and retesting the fuses. [9]
Throughout the rest of 1943 and into the first half of 1944 the Allies continued their gains in the Mediterranean Theatre and massed men and materiel for a European invasion along the French channel coastline. The conspirators began to organize for another attempt to assassinate Hitler and take over both German civil government and its military.
The von Stauffenberg bomb attempt and aftermath
By the summer of 1944 unrest in the German military and diplomatic ranks was widespread. The Allied landing at Normandy in June and failed German response raised the specter of doom among the upper ranks even of German field marshals. The Schwarze Kapelle responded by organizing a deadly attempt on Hitler's life at his Wolf's Lair compound in East Prussia. Undertaken by an aristocratic member of a hereditarily military family, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the July 20 Plot nearly succeeded. Although surrounded by fatalities from the bomb Hitler escaped with a concussion and various injuries.
In the aftermath he was determined to get vengeance upon the plotters. The Gestapo rounded up the members of the Schwarze Kapelle and many, many more it believed were either implicated in or sympathetic to it; according to its records it put 7,000 of them to death. [10] Stauffenberg and three others were summarily shot that night. Most of the conspirators were put on trial in the Volksgerichtshof (People's Court) between August 1944 to February 1945. [11] Many were executed the day after their convictions by hanging from meat hooks at Plötzensee Prison. [8] Architect of the 1943 bomb plot on Hitler's plane Fabian von Schlabrendorff only escaped death because an Allied bomb fell on the court as he was being led in, killing presiding officer Roland Freisler and destroying most of the court and investigation records.
So widespread was the terror and prosecution that even some of the highest ranking generals of the German military who had not been direct members of the Schwarze Kapelle but merely knew of the coup attempt in advance through them and supported it - such as Field Marshalls Erwin Rommel and Gunther von Kluge - were swept to their deaths. Von Kluge, Supreme Commander of German forces in the West, was deposed by Hitler on August 16, 1944, a day after he was suspected of seeking a surrender to the Allies, and took cyanide en route to Berlin to avoid hanging via the People's Court; Rommel, hero of the Desert Campaign, architect of Atlantic Wall, and the popular choice to replace Hitler, was forced to take cyanide by him to prevent retributions being taken against his family.
Admiral Canaris and his deputy, Hans Oster, the top two figures in German military intelligence, were not tried until February 1945, and not executed until April 9, 1945, when Germany's defeat was already certain. Their deaths were particularly grisly, by slow strangulation. [12]
Claus von Stauffenberg was a German army officer who is best known for his failed attempt on 20 July 1944 to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Wolf's Lair.
The 20 July plot was a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, the chancellor and leader of Nazi Germany, and to subsequently overthrow the Nazi regime on 20 July 1944. The plotters were part of the German resistance, mainly composed of Wehrmacht officers. The leader of the conspiracy, Claus von Stauffenberg, planned to kill Hitler by detonating an explosive hidden in a briefcase. However, due to the location of the bomb at the time of detonation, the blast only dealt Hitler minor injuries. The planners' subsequent coup attempt also failed and resulted in a purge of the Wehrmacht.
Job Wilhelm Georg Erdmann Erwin von Witzleben was a German Generalfeldmarschall in the Wehrmacht during the Second World War. A leading conspirator in the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, he was designated to become Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht in a post-Nazi regime had the plot succeeded.
Operation Valkyrie was a German World War II emergency continuity-of-government operations plan issued to the Territorial Reserve Army of Germany to implement in the event of a general breakdown in national civil order due to Allied bombing of German cities, or an uprising of the millions of foreign forced labourers working in German factories.
Hans Paul Oster was a general in the Wehrmacht and a leading figure of the anti-Nazi German resistance from 1938 to 1943. As deputy head of the counter-espionage bureau in the Abwehr, Oster was in a good position to conduct resistance operations under the guise of intelligence work.
Henning Hermann Karl Robert von Tresckow was a German military officer with the rank of major general in the German Army who helped organize German resistance against Adolf Hitler. He attempted to assassinate Hitler on 13 March 1943 and drafted the Valkyrie plan for a coup against the German government. He was described by the Gestapo as the "prime mover" behind the plot of 20 July 1944 to assassinate Hitler. He committed suicide at Królowy Most on the Eastern Front upon learning of the plot's failure.
Generalmajor Erwin Heinrich René Lahousen, Edler von Vivremont was a high-ranking Abwehr official during the Second World War, as well as a member of the German Resistance and a key player in attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler on 13 March 1943 and 20 July 1944.
Operation Spark was the code name for the planned assassination of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler by the anti-Nazi conspiracy of German Army officers and political conservatives, known as the Schwarze Kapelle during World War II. The name was coined by Major General Henning von Tresckow in 1941. He believed that because of Hitler's many successes up to that time, his personal charisma, and the oath of personal loyalty to him sworn by all German army officers, it would be impossible to overthrow Hitler and the Nazis with Hitler still alive. Hitler's death, however, would be a "spark"—a signal that it was time to launch an internal coup d'état to overthrow the Nazi regime and end the war.
Adolf Bruno Heinrich Ernst Heusinger was a German military officer whose career spanned the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany and West Germany. He joined the German Army as a volunteer in 1915 and later became a professional soldier. He served as the Operations Chief within the general staff of the High Command of the German Army in the Wehrmacht from 1938 to 1944. He was then appointed acting Chief of the General Staff for two weeks in 1944 following Kurt Zeitzler's resignation. That year, Heusinger was accused of involvement in the 20 July plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, but was cleared by the People's Court.
Fabian Ludwig Georg Adolf Kurt von Schlabrendorff was a German jurist, soldier, and member of the German resistance against Adolf Hitler. From 1967 to 1975 he was a judge of the German Federal Constitutional Court.
The Bendlerblock is a building complex in the Tiergarten district of Berlin, Germany, located on Stauffenbergstraße. Erected in 1914 as headquarters of several Imperial German Navy offices, it served the Ministry of the Reichswehr after World War I. Significantly enlarged under Nazi rule, it was used by several departments of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW) from 1938, especially the Oberkommando des Heeres and the Abwehr intelligence agency.
Hellmuth Stieff was a German general and a member of the OKH during World War II. He took part in attempts by the German resistance to assassinate Adolf Hitler on 7 and 20 July 1944.
Georg von Boeselager was a German nobleman and an officer in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany, who led the Nazi security warfare operations in the Army Group Centre Rear Area on the Eastern Front, calling for extreme measures, including deporting all males in "gang-infested areas" and shooting those who remained.
Many individuals and groups in Germany that were opposed to the Nazi regime engaged in resistance, including assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler or by overthrowing his regime.
Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff was an officer in the German Army. He attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler by suicide bombing on 21 March 1943; the plan failed when Hitler left early, but Gersdorff was undetected. That same month, soldiers from his unit discovered the mass graves of the Soviet-perpetrated Katyn massacre.
The Oster Conspiracy of 1938 was a proposed plan to overthrow German Führer Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime if Germany went to war with Czechoslovakia over the Sudetenland. It was led by Generalmajor Hans Oster, deputy head of the Abwehr and other high-ranking conservatives within the Wehrmacht who opposed the regime for behavior that was threatening to bring Germany into a war that they believed it was not ready to fight. They planned to overthrow Hitler and the Nazi regime through a storming of the Reich Chancellery by forces loyal to the plot to take control of the government, who would either arrest or assassinate Hitler, and restore the Monarchy under Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, the grandson of Wilhelm II.
The Abwehr was the German military-intelligence service for the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht from 1920 to 1945. Although the 1919 Treaty of Versailles prohibited the Weimar Republic from establishing an intelligence organization of their own, they formed an espionage group in 1920 within the Ministry of Defence, calling it the Abwehr. The initial purpose of the Abwehr was defense against foreign espionage: an organizational role that later evolved considerably. Under General Kurt von Schleicher the individual military services' intelligence units were combined and, in 1929, centralized under Schleicher's Ministeramt within the Ministry of Defence, forming the foundation for the more commonly understood manifestation of the Abwehr.
Colonel Georg Alexander Hansen was an Oberst (Colonel) in the Generalstab and one of the participants in the German Resistance against the Nazi Regime of Adolf Hitler.
During the Second World War, Pope Pius XII maintained links to the German resistance to Nazism against Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime. Although remaining publicly neutral, Pius advised the British in 1940 of the readiness of certain German generals to overthrow Hitler if they could be assured of an honourable peace, offered assistance to the German resistance in the event of a coup, and warned the Allies of the planned German invasion of the Low Countries in 1940. The Nazis considered that the Pope had engaged in acts equivalent to espionage.
Helmuth Groscurth was a German staff and Abwehr officer in the Wehrmacht and a member of the German resistance. As an intelligence officer he was an early proponent of the Brandenburgers, commanded unconventional warfare operations in the Sudetenland, and was an active conspirator against Hitler's agenda. He was later reassigned to the regular army following his criticism of war crimes committed by German forces in Poland. After commanding an infantry battalion in the invasion of France he assumed a variety of staff roles. He was involved in the events of the Bila Tserkva massacre where he attempted to avert the killing of Jewish children.
