Posted on 04/22/2007 7:56:23 PM PDT by aculeus
DER Führer Adolf Hitler ist tot. These six words, announcing the death of the Nazi leader, should have brought the Second World War to an end in November 1943.
The sentence was part of a press release drafted by disaffected German officers who hatched an audacious plot to kill Hitler and then use a secret army to seize control of key sites before suing for peace with the Allies.
The full story - which surpasses any Hollywood war movie for drama, farce and ironic twists - has been uncovered by a German academic who closely examined detailed records left behind by the plotters.
Major General Henning von Tresckow created a new force of around 20,000 troops based in German-controlled territory in the east, telling High Command it was needed to protect against a potential revolt by slave labourers.
Tresckow then organised a 'fashion parade' at which Hitler was to inspect new uniforms, little suspecting one of the models was a suicide bomber. Once the Führer was dead, Tresckow planned to blame the killing on rogue SS elements, use his secret army to take command, and end the war.
But the putsch was foiled days before it was due to be launched, thanks to the RAF. The uniforms were among the casualties from two nights of bombing raids on Berlin, so the plot was abandoned.
Documents minutely detailing every moment of the overthrow of Nazi Germany and its aftermath were immediately buried by the panicked plotters. They were uncovered by the victorious Soviets in 1945 and lay in Moscow archives until a recent study by Professor Peter Hoffmann of the McGill University, Montreal.
Hoffman, a world authority on wartime resistance to Hitler within the German army, believes another of the plotters was Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the man who earned his place in history by almost killing the Führer with a briefcase bomb in 1944.
Interest in the subject of anti-Hitler plotting is likely to reach new heights later this year when Hollywood actor Tom Cruise begins shooting a major movie in which he plays Stauffenberg.
The new research shows Tresckow was an equal, if not greater, threat to Hitler. Among a close-knit group of conspirators, he worked on the demise of a man he called "the enemy of the world" and a "dancing dervish".
At least two earlier plots have been uncovered, both involving cognac bottles packed with explosives. After they failed, Tresckow began work, in the summer of 1943, on a far more ambitious scheme.
Trescow's plan was to kill Hitler at his war HQ, dubbed the 'Wolf's Lair', in East Prussia, now part of the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Hitler would be shown new German army winter uniforms, one of them modelled by Axel von dem Bussche, a decorated war hero who had vowed to kill the Führer after witnessing a massacre of Soviet Jews. Bussche would pose in the new uniform while holding two hand grenades, fully aware he too would die.
Meanwhile, Tresckow and his colleagues used their power to assign divisions to a new internal security force. The cover story for creating the army was to put down any attempts to rebel by enemies of the Reich such as slave workers.
It was planned that the army would begin an exercise 12 hours before the assassination and move in on Hitler's East Prussian HQ, with other troops deploying near government offices in Berlin.
Seven hours before the assassination, commanders would establish the exact location of SS troops and two hours after that be fully prepared for combat against them.
Within 10 minutes of Hitler's death, the code-words for a successful operation would be given, and the next phase of the plan would begin.
At "X plus 25 minutes" Tresckow's army would occupy the Wolf's Lair, along with the East Prussian HQs of Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, and Nazi foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop.
After 30 minutes, a news statement was to be read on German radio, saying that Hitler was dead and accusing a "a traitorous clique" of SS and party leaders for trying to take personal advantage of the dismal situation on the Eastern Front. The statement would reassure the nation that a group of army officers had taken control and would bring stability.
But then disaster struck. On the nights of November 22 and 23, a series of bombing raids destroyed the trains containing the fashion show uniforms.
Hoffmann told Scotland on Sunday: "The plans demonstrate, and give details of, a thorough and promising preparation of a coup to seize control of Germany that was to accompany the assassination. This would have been followed by immediate armistice talks, or surrender. The plans show that the preparations of autumn 1943 were more thorough and promising of success than any other plans."
He added: "The plans demonstrate Tresckow's central role in these preparations, and his role as the driving force and leader of the movement to remove Hitler and his regime."
Professor David Stafford, of Edinburgh University's Centre for Second World War Studies, said: "The timing is very significant. It was after the great defeats of 1943 and the German Army knew the writing was on the wall. It is fascinating that we are still learning new things about the Second World War."
Stauffenberg was executed for his role in the July 1944 attempt to kill Hitler, and Tresckow killed himself with a grenade because he feared being tracked down. Bussche - the only one of the three who was meant to die in the plots - survived the war and died in 1993.
My understanding is the suing for peace with UK and US and continuing the war against the Soviet Union was exactly the plan by the Stauffenberg group in 1944. And I believe that plan had the backing of UK intelligence and was signed off by Churchill.
“Uh, yes they were. North Africa and Sicily were already lost, and the allies had invaded Italy. We were bombing Germany nightly, and the U-boat fleet was under very heavy pressure. On the Eastern Front, Stalingrad had been lost completely in January of ‘43, and Kursk’s massive loss was the prior summer. If that’s not losing, what is?”
Invading two sovereign nations, establishing bases, supporting the formation of a new governments constitutions, overseeing the formation and training of new national armies while fighting off daily attacks from the fifth column in Congress at the cost of 3000 lives over 5 years.
Hitler's guards were elite professionals with what seemed a sixth sense. Albert Speers once thought of gassing Hitler's bunker. The next day the air vents were extended fourty feet above the ground, surrounded by wire, and guarded. You can bet that nobody could bring any sort of weapon close to Hitler.
Well, I'm sure we can trust the plotters to be accurate in describing their own intentions, right? After all, history can best be told by those that lived it. German military officers can tell us better than anyone what they were thinking during World War II.
Let's see what else this German has uncovered. In his History of the German Resistance, Professor Hoffman writes:
"Viewed from Washington, however, The United States was not merely fighting the Nazi regime but a people permeated by an illiberal ideology who had learnt nothing from a fearful defeat in another similarly imperialist war. In face of Hitler's claim to total power a total victory must be won. Looked at in this light, the American government, as Lochner was informed, could only be embarrassed if it learnt and was forced to acknowledge that an anti-Hitler opposition existed in Germany, capable of taking over the government." - Page 215
In other words, the German resistance wasn't to blame for failing to kill Hitler, we are, for not helping them. They are trying to say that the Normandy invasion was unnecessary because we could have ended the war in 1943, but instead we served Soviet interests by giving Stalin his second front. In fact, the D-day invasion saved western Europe from the Soviets.
The truth is that the German resistance shares in the guilt of the Nazi regime. Henning von Tresckow fought in World War I and after the war he helped the FreiKorps fight the communists. When the Nazis came to power, he supported them! What really upset him and other German officers was when Hitler removed General von Blomberg from his office as minister of war and weakened the Army High Command by subordinating it to the OKW, a kind of Joint Chiefs of Staff. Von Tresckow didn't seem to mind though, when the man in charge was General von Blomberg, a fanatical nazi and one of Hitler's most ardent supporters! Finally, if von Tresckow was so against the war, then why did he fight in it!? He participated in the very atrocity he condemned! That makes him a hypocrite!
In Stauffenbergs's later plot against Hitler they planned to place General Rommel in charge. Do you really think Rommel led German troops in battle in World War II because he didn't want Germany to win? Because he wanted to surrender because he wanted "peace?" It's absurd! This plot cost Rommel his life, but he refused to take part in it! In the end Rommel was loyal to his nation, and to his Fuhrer.
The uniforms were among the casualties from two nights of bombing raids on Berlin, so the plot was abandoned.IOW, the headline is a ridiculous lie.
I’m not claiming to know what the plotter’s actual intentions were, just what this article said.
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