Beppo Schmidt wrote:I might not personally agree with Junior Bush's wars, mainly because I think the threat is blown out of proportion, but to plan an assassination attempt as a result of an unpopular war? There is nothing noble about these guys.
General Ludwig Beck, Pastor Dietrich Bonhöffer, and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris had been plotting against Hitler before WWII even started. They were primarily motivated by his treatment of the Jews, not the war which did not even exist yet.
IMHO disagreement with the recent U.S. war against Iraq simply bears no comparison with disagreement with continuation of Germany's war against the Allies, which, in the opinion of many of the military plotters, was hopelessly lost after the 1941-42 Winter, and by virtually all after the Normandy invasion. Scott Smith's analogy in this regard is specious to the nth degree.
On the other hand, I can't agree with Beppo Schmidt's response. As I tried to point out in a previous post on this thread, the German Resistance to Hitler was by no means monolithic in its motivations - they differed from individual to individual, and even, I suspect, varied with time both in substance and intensity in the case of many of the individuals concerned.
As to Colonel-General Beck, I find it impossible to believe that his
primary motive for opposition stemmed from the treatment of the Jews. I know of no evidence that Beck was particularly moved by the Nuremberg laws against the Jews, or by the events of Kristallnacht. Indeed, I suspect that he may well have shared in a form of antisemitism which in my opinion was probably prevalent to some degree in most Germans of his age, class and profession at the time. But being antisemitic does not, of course, necessarily mean that he was unmoved by the Nazis' treatment of the Jews, or that he agreed with it. Yet I think Beck's
primary motivation for opposing Hitler was that he believed Hitler's willingness in 1938 to go to war over the Sudetenland destined Germany to an armed conflict in which she could not possibly prevail. This led to his outspoken opposition as Chief of the General Staff to Hitler's plans for the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, and his resultant resignation. Although Beck's belief in the stiffness of the Anglo-French spine on that occasion was obviously unjustified, he was ultimately proved correct in his belief that Hitler was headed toward a war which Germany could not win.
Scott Smith's notion that:
His [Beck's] opposition to the regime hinged on the political usurpation of the autonomy of the General Staff; he would have had difficulty serving a kaiser loyally if there had been too much interference in military tradition, let alone an Austrian corporal.
has, I believe, a grain of truth (albeit mighty small) in it, but at the time of the great upheaval and reorganization of the German Wehrmacht in the wake of the Blomberg and Fritsch "scandals" in early 1938, Beck refused the urging of Halder and others to call for an assembly of the senior Army officers to denounce Hitler's actions, stating that "Mutiny and revolution are not words to be found in a German officer's dictionary." Six years and a disasterous war later Beck's mind was changed.
As to Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, here too I do not believe that the treatment of the Jews was, at least initially, his
primary motive in opposition to Hitler, although I strongly suspect that it was probably one of several underlying motives, and became stronger as the oppression of the Jews intensified. Bonhoeffer's antipathy toward the Nazis was based on profoundly religious grounds; he felt early on that Hitler was an "antichrist", as I too think he certainly was, in that he took upon himself the title of "Führer" and attempted to denigrate and belittle the Church (both Catholic and Protestant) and particulary its teaching as to the necessary supremacy of Christ and Christ's way for the salvation of mankind. I have read much of Bonhoeffer's writings, and can recall nothing that would suggest that he was specifically concerned with Hitler's treatment of the Jews as such. His
primary concern was with the obligation which God, through Jesus Christ, imposed upon us all: to arise and follow his teachings. See, e. g., Bonhoeffer's
The Cost of Discipleship (MacMillian Paperbacks, 1963).
Was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as Scott Smith would have it, simply a "religious fanatic"? Well, if I recall correctly, Scott has proclaimed his aetheism, or at least agnosticism, on this Forum on several occasions in the past, and so I would suppose that anyone of that persuasion would consider a devout Christian as a "fanatic." In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that I myself am a practicing Christian and so would probably be considered by Scott as a "fanatic". But the appelation of "fanatic" surely bears with it something more than a mere believer, or advocate, or even proselyter. IMHO it has a perjorative sense about it, a connotation of an unpricipled, unthinking, enthusiasm which leaves all considerations of moderation and decency shattered in its wake, and exhaults the ends acheived above any means adopted for that purpose. I would challenge anyone who has carefully read Bonhoeffer's
Equity or
The Cost of Discipleship to demonstate just how he was at all a "fanatic" in that sense. In the latter work, I read his Chapter 15, "The Hidden Righteousness" (op. cit. supra at 172-9) as a direct attack on fanaticism.
What about Admiral Canaris? Frankly, Canaris remains an enigma to me. In my mind, he was perhaps the most complicated individual involved, although always on the periphery, in the German Resistance. But I have come across no evidence that his actions (often ambiguous) in opposition to Hitler's goals were
primarily, or indeed secondarily, motivated by his treatment of the Jews. Both Heinz Höhne's"
Canaris: Hitler's Master Spy (Doubleday & Company, 1979) nor David Kahn's
Hitler's Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II (Macmillan Publishing Company, 1978) presents any evidence suggesting otherwise. My best guess, for what it may be worth, is that Canaris' leanings toward opposition to Hitler commenced at the time of the Sudentenland Crisis of 1938, but that his feelings were ambiguous and that much of the antiNazi activities of the Abwehr were carried on without his direct knowledge or direction - Canaris seemed to be playing the role of the famous three monkeys: hear no evil; speak no evil; see no evil. I think that to the bitter end, Canaris was loyal to Hitler, but believed that the evil lay in his subordinates; Goering, Himmler, Bornman, Goebbels etc. But who really knows?
Sorry, this is untimely, too long, but something I needed to get off my chest.
Regards, Kaschner
