Proposed assination of Hitler in November'39

[Andy H]

Several high ranking German Generals like Halder & Brauchitsch were against Hitlers proposed offensive in the West and came to the conclusion that a Coup should be set in motion.

A leading exponent was a Colonel Hans Oster in the Abwehr who had hired a would be assassin called Eric Kordt to carry out the assassination using explosives. The attempt was called off when Hitler made a remark about the "Spirit of Zossen", which Halder took to mean that Hitler knew about the assassination attempt, when in fact he was referring to the pesamistic attitude at the OKW HQ at Zossen. All the conspirators destroyed the evidence and off course the rest is history.

Can anyone shed any further light on this episode or the characters of Oster or Kordt

Andy

[Misereor]

November 1939.
One year after planning an attack on the Reichschancellory, which was cancelled, the officer group responsible makes a new plan.

Hans Oster, Colonel in the Abwehr, is in charge of the preparations.

The clique around Franz Halder, General Chief of Staff, want the attack camoflaged as an airraid or a train derailment.

Hans von Dohnányi, Supreme Court Justice, and his clique still want the dictator deposed an placed in front of a court.

Hans Oster makes his own plans.
From his own circle of friends he knows a courageous man named Erich Kordt, who is willing to smuggle a demolition charge into the Reichschancellory and blow up both himself and the dictator.
He has been in the resistance movement from the beginning is a devout catholic.

While the preparations are made, another murder attempt in the Bürgerbräukeller fails, and Gestapo moves in. Hans Oster and his friends again have to cancel their plans.


Source:
Lexicon der Attentate
(Eichborn, Frankfurt am Main, 2001.)

[ajk74]

The initial plan came in 1938 during the Sudeten crisis, where Oster, Beck etc. planned to have Hitler deposed if there was going to be war over Czechia. The British had to render an ultimatum to Hitler, but did not do so, nor were they obliged to. It was only if Hitler planned to go to war, epsecially against Britain and France, that the generals may have supported him. A similar situation developed with the pending invasion of France. but nothing came of it.

[Andy H]

Thanks for the replies so far.

I've found out that Ostner was arrested in 1943 and was hanged a few weeks before the war's end, though on what specific charges I don't know.

Who is this Kordt fellow, surely for him to get close to Hitler there should be some footnote on him somewhere?

Andy

[Misereor]

Try looking his name up on Altavista.
You get a number of hits, including this short summary.

[Andy H]

Conspirator Dr. Erich Kordt, the brother of Theo Kordt who had also plotted to assassinate Hitler, resolves in November 1939 to kill Hitler himself.

November 5, 1939 - Army Commander-in-Chief General Walther von Brauchitsch goes to see Hitler in the Chancellery in a last ditch effort to persuade the fuehrer to cancel his November 12 target date for the start of the western offensive. Hitler explodes in anger at Brauchitsch heaping personal insults upon scorn. Brauchitsch leaves Hitler's study pale with fear and relates Hitler's threat "to destroy the spirit of resistance in Zossen" to Army Chief of Staff General Franz Halder who immediately aborts the second planned coup attempt.

Erich Kordt agrees with co-conspirator General Hans Oster that the German Army High Command will not act against the regime unless it is freed from the fuehrer oath. Kordt does not trust Brauchitsch or Halder to seize the initiative of launching a coup d'etat. Oster promises to have the explosives ready for Kordt by the morning of November 11. In the first week of November, Kordt makes a point of showing up frequently in the Chancellery's large ante-room to Hitler's study.

November 8 - Lone assassin George Elser's time-bomb explodes in Munich's Burgerbraukeller beer hall killing instantly the six people closest to Hitler's podium and injuring more than 60 others but missing Hitler by a mere 13 minutes.

November 11, 1939 - On the day Kordt is scheduled to assassinate Hitler he is informed by Oster that it was impossible to obtain the necessary explosives owing to added security measures in the wake of the Burgerbraukeller bombing.

The above is from the link as posted by Misereor
http://www.joric.com/Conspiracy/November-11-1939.htm

Thanks for the step up the ladder

Andy

[Karl da Kraut]

The Halder-Witzleben-plot of September 1938 was probably the most promising attempt to overthrow Nazi rule in Germany. Hitler was preparing for an invasion of Czechoslovakia, and of course Halder and Witzleben knew about it. Both had thought about a coup d'etat earlier already, but now they decided it was time to act. When Hitler would give the order for the attack on the CSR, Halder would trigger the coup. A shock troop of carefully selected officers and ranks, commanded by maj. Heinz, a Pour le Merite decorated WWI veteran, should accompany col.gen. Witzleben to the Reichskanzlei and overpower the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. Witzleben would then arrest Hitler on the charge of being a war criminal. Halder and Witzleben rejected killing Hitler for moral reasons and, after all, the head of the German state couldn't simply be gunned down. Moreover, they thought it would require a public trial to convince the German people of the criminal character of the nazi regime. However, there was a conspiracy within the conspiracy, so to speak. Heinz deemed the position of his superiors naive and contemplated to provoke a scuffle with Hitler...

The Conference of Munich fouled Halder's plans. Hitler was now more popular than ever and it would have been hard to legitimate a coup d'etat. Halder continued to prepare for an military revolt until 1940, but the plans never came nearly as close to a realization as in 1938.

The most importat conspirators of 9/38:

- Gen. Halder: chief of staff of the German army
- Gen v. Witzleben: supreme commander of III. corps (Berlin)
- Gen.maj. Count Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt: commander of the Potsdam garrison. Brockdorff set up the plans for the occupation of Berlin by Witzleben's III. corps and would supervise all military actions for the time Witlzeben was occupied in the Reichskanzlei.
- Gen. Hoepner: commander of a Pz.Div. in Thuringia, officially conducting autumn maneuvres, but really moving in preparation positions for the attack on the CSR. Hoepner was to stop possible relief attempts of SS-LSAH elements in Southern Germany.
- Count Helldorf: police president of Berlin
- Count F.-D. v. d. Schulenburg: vice police president of Berlin. Helldorf and Schulenburg guaranteed the neutrality of the police of Berlin. This was important as possible stand-offs between Witzlebens soldiers and uniformed cops would certainly make the legitimacy of the coup look doubtful.
- Reichskriminaldirektor Nebe: Nebe was to organize KriPo men to take over GeStaPo offices (sometimes Kripo and Gestapo offices were located in the same buildings).
- Col. Oster and his Abwehr group: Oster's group was not to take part in the process of the coup itself but provided valuable informations (for example the - secret - locations of the SS-LSAH garrisons and Gestapo offices).

[Bill Baar]

I just barrowed a new book on the Oster Conspiracy: http://www.osterconspiracy.com .

[Andy H]

Thanks for that Bill, I'll lend a copy from the Library

Andy

[valkyrie]

The best book I've read on this subject is Harold Deutsch's "Conspiracy Against Hitler," University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis 1968 (OOP).

Deutsch divides the German resistance movement into 4 phases as noted below (with dates and centres of opposition)

1.- July - Sept. 1938 (OKH)
2. - Sept 1939 - May 1940 (Abwehr)
3. - 1942 1943 (Comand of Army Group Centre Russia)
4. - March - July 1944 (Home Army Command Staff)

Its a terrific book covering the whole second phase of the Widerstand. Its very scholarly with great footnotes and minute detail. Very well written. A real pearl!

Colin

[dmitry11]

Here Erich Kordt is standing behind Ribbentrop
He has insignia of Legationsrat 1 Klasse
with three stars.

[George L Gregory]

Here Erich Kordt is standing behind Ribbentrop
He has insignia of Legationsrat 1 Klasse
with three stars.

19 years later.

Are you for real?