← New Books Network
New Books Network
Danny Orbach, "Plots Against Hitler" (Mariner, 2016)
01:03:20
Orbach offers a profound and complete examination of the plots to assassinate Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler...
Loading summary
Transcript67 lines
- [00:02]
Liberty Mutual Narrator
And Doug, here we have the Limu emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
- [00:18]
Liberty Mutual Advertiser
Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
- [00:21]
Liberty Mutual Narrator
Cut the camera.
- [00:21]
Dr. Danny Orbach
They see us.
- [00:22]
Liberty Mutual Advertiser
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty.
- [00:25]
Liberty Mutual Narrator
Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings vary unwritten by.
- [00:28]
Liberty Mutual Advertiser
Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts. This episode is brought to you by White Claw Search. Great podcast pick, friend. No surprises there. After all, you're all about finding the tastiest flavors out there, just like White Claw Surge. And with big bold flavors to enjoy like blood orange, BlackBerry, cranberry and more, it's time to go all in on taste. Unleash the flavor. Unleash White Claw Surge. Please drink responsibly. Hard seltzer with flavors. 8% alcohol by volume. White Claw Seltzer Works Chicago, Illinois.
- [00:58]
Men's Wearhouse Advertiser
Men need a store that has the right thing for their thing. Like a Kenneth Cole suit made with show flex fabric to keep them cool at their cousin in law's third wedding in the middle of July. Whatever the thing, Men's Wearhouse has the clothes for it. Love the way you look. Men's Wearhouse.
- [01:13]
Liberty Mutual Advertiser
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:17]
Interviewer / Host
Hello everyone and welcome back to New Books in German Studies, part of the New Books Network. Today we'll be talking to Dr. Danny Orbach about his excellent new book, the Plots Against Hitler. Danny, hello and welcome to the show.
- [01:30]
Dr. Danny Orbach
Hello. Thanks for having me.
- [01:32]
Interviewer / Host
Oh, it's a pleasure to have you, Danny. We always like to begin these interviews by having the authors tell us a little bit about their background. So if you would please.
- [01:40]
Dr. Danny Orbach
So I'm now an assistant professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. So I'm teaching in Israel. Throughout my career I studied in several places. I began in Tel Aviv University, then moved to Tokyo. My other field is a modern Japanese history. And from Tokyo I moved to Harvard when I made my PhD on disobedience and rebellion in the Japanese army. And the project we are speaking about now was actually a project I began very, very early. In fact, the ear version was a research I began for high school, believe it or not. And it developed throughout my academic career and actually took almost 15 years to publish in the publishing the final form.
- [02:37]
Interviewer / Host
Oh, wow. And this is your second book, correct?
- [02:41]
Dr. Danny Orbach
This was actually my first.
- [02:44]
Interviewer / Host
This was your first?
- [02:44]
Dr. Danny Orbach
My second book, it was based on my dissertation. It's on rebellions in the Japanese army. So this is my first book. There is a raw version that I published in Hebrew in 2009. But this is my full research published in English in 2015. That is a bit later.
- [03:04]
Interviewer / Host
So tell us, you've obviously been working on this project for a long time. Tell us about what, about this topic, German Resistors was so fascinating to you. Why write this book?
- [03:18]
Dr. Danny Orbach
I think, first of all, I have to admit that I like good stories. Like many historians, not everybody admits it, and I think this was a very interesting story. But it was. There is something more into it than just an interesting story because as we all know, the Second World War is full of very interesting stories. I got the idea to write about this subject when I read general books about the Second World War. And I saw that the interpretation of the German resistance, of the plots to kill Hitler as presented to the general public is very different from the facts as I saw. So I saw a glaring gap between the way the story is usually being told and the raw facts as I understood them. So my notion was that it's not only a very good story, it's a story that is often poorly told. And that gave me an incentive to try to tell it again.
- [04:27]
Interviewer / Host
Can you give the listener some idea of the story that was being told that you're trying to address?
- [04:34]
Dr. Danny Orbach
Everybody, first of all, told the operational story. There was an underground in Germany that tried to kill Hitler from 1938 to 1944. German officers, most of them Wehrmacht officers, they tried to do it at least 12 times. By all sorts of ways. This story was always told. But then many historians, especially popular historians, added something additional. The tendency of many of them, not all many, was to say that the resistors were opportunistic German officers, antisemitic war criminals who tried to jump from the boat to escape the Nazi boat at the last moment. Because we understood the war was lost. And this narrative did not fit the facts that I saw in this popular book and books. And then I thought, I need to delve into the primary sources and reconstruct the picture of the complex motifs of the Resistance which do not fit easily into simple preconceived pictures. So in other words, to tell the story of the Resistance in its human, psychological and moral complexity.
- [06:01]
Interviewer / Host
I noticed in your bibliography you went a great many places to accomplish this. You went to a bunch of archives. There's a lot of languages represented here. Can you give us a flavor of some of the things that you found in the extensive research?
- [06:17]
Dr. Danny Orbach
I think multilingual research helped a lot here because the most scholars wrote about the Resistance used extend sources in English and German. I Did it as well. But what I try to do, for example, is to use sources in Russia as well. And I'll give you one example. In the National Archive of the Russian Federation called Garth, there is an interrogation protocol of a relatively unknown resistance fighter who gave very reliable information about plots and conspiracies which are almost unknown in the literature because the evidence are very scarce in the archives, unless you read this Russian testimony. And what this testimony, just like other things, gave me, is an option to do something additional to reconstruct the way the conspiracy really worked. How did they communicate with one another? How did they recruit new people? How were the networks built? So, in other words, there are so many fictional conspiracy stories nowadays. One of my goals was to show how a real conspiracy worked. And the Russian sources helped me a lot. I must add that now there are quantitative studies in German about the network structure of the resistance. But we were published after 2015, so I couldn't take advantage of his studies. And. And in my research on the networks, these additional sources in Russian were a great help.
- [08:01]
Interviewer / Host
Let's start with the beginning of your book, particularly your first chapter. Can you set the stage for our listeners? Explain to them why resistance in the Third Reich was mainly confined to the army. I know there is some lone wolves, and we'll talk about those, but lay out the stage. What's going on in 33, 34? That's sort of laying the groundwork for later resistance.
- [08:29]
Dr. Danny Orbach
What's going on in 1933, I would say to 1935, is that the Nazi police state destroys most forms of opposition, almost all forms of open opposition. There are a series of laws legislated in 1933. There is police action, and one must stress, most Germans at the time supported the regime. And the support of the regime increased, did not increase. Combined with very strong police action by the Gestapo, that was enough to crush organized opposition. And this is the most important point here, opposition in the Third Reich effectiveness. Because there was opposition from all sorts of places, effective opposition, opposition that endangered the regime, could come only from people who were not natural enemies of the Nazi regime. And I must elaborate on this for a while. The Communists, the Social Democrats, all of these people were the natural enemies of the Nazi regime. And that meant that the Gestapo had an eye on them from early on. And when you face the full power of a modern police state and the population does not support you, you cannot organize effective opposition. That was one of my most important findings. That's, by the way, the difference between the German resistance and the Polish resistance. For example, the Polish resistance was resistance against an occupier which enjoyed support from the vast majority of the population. That was not the case in the German resistance. Resisting your own government is way more difficult because you don't enjoy popular support. Therefore, the people who could resist Hitler were only people that the Nazi regime did not expect resistance from them. And this came from the conservative right and it came from the army. And I should caution from tiny fragments of the conservative right and from the army, because most right wing politicians and most army officers were of course loyal to the regime. In other words, resistance that surprised the Gestapo and was therefore less supervised or less watched.
- [10:56]
Interviewer / Host
And give us an indication of any sort of pivotal events that made resistance from known enemies impossible. Because you detail this early on in your book.
- [11:10]
Dr. Danny Orbach
In fact, it was a series of scandals that took place in 1938. In 1938, Hitler makes a reshuffle in the leadership more generally, also in the Foreign Ministry, but notably also in the army. The defense said the war minister is being sacked for sex scandal when the commander in chief of the head of the Land army is being sacked as well, is being framed as a homosexual. This was probably not an intentional plot by Hitler. It had a more complicated dynamics. But the most important thing was that that certain officers in the army wanted to protect their sect commander. They were not anti Nazis at the time, but they came together in order to protect the commander of the Land Army, Werner von Fritsch, from charges of homosexuality. The interesting dynamics that happened is that a handful of true anti Nazis in the army, most important of them Colonel Hans Oster from the Abwehr for Military Intelligence, used this initiative to protect Fritz, which on the beginning was very limited, in order to build the Leos of more organized resistance. So in a way, Oster piggybacked on the term protect fridge. And that's the way the German resistance in the army was initially formed. Then it's crystallized among officers who resisted the war or the warmongering policy of the Nazi regime in the sudeten crisis of 1938.
- [13:07]
Interviewer / Host
We'll get back to the army because we'll be spending the vast majority of our time talking about the army and how the networks worked and who joined and how they were recruited. But let's shift a little bit and talk about the lone wolves first. You make the point in the book that ironically these sort of plots are the closest to being successful. And I imagine it has to do with something you mentioned earlier, that they sort of came to the surprise of the Gestapo and the authorities can you give us some examples of famous lone wolves? Maybe a couple that people may have heard of. Maybe a couple that people may not have heard of. And, and then I'll ask you some follow ups, but we'll start with that.
- [13:53]
Dr. Danny Orbach
The lone wolf whom I studied and that's the one I want to talk about because about others I know a little bit less is. George was a carpenter, actually was a manual worker who did many things. He was also a watchmaker who resisted the war in 1939. He was not a communist, but he was, I would say, a leftist with a very strong class conscience. As a member of the working class, he thought the working class will pay the price of the war. He wanted to stop the war. And as he was a very talented watchmaker, he actually was able to build all by himself a highly sophisticated bomb. So sophisticated that after he was arrested, actually the Gestapo was very eager to learn these techniques. And he almost killed Hitler. He installed the bomb in the beer hole where Hitler spoke and the bomb exploded almost on time, just Hitler left the bureau earlier. The point I make in the book is that there is an inverse proportion between the security of a plot and your ability to control it and its effectiveness. If you want an effective network of conspiracy, you need to build a very large network. But when it's less secure and it's harder to control. What happens with lone plotters with lone wolves is that their security and control is maximum because it's one person. And if he does not speak, then nobody will know about the conspiracy. The Gestapo has very little chance to know about it. The problem is that when you don't have a large network, when you don't have a network at all, you are very dependent on luck because you don't have intelligence of the target. Elser virtually had to guess whether Hitler will speak at the ceremony or not and you can never try again. Elser had a lot of luck. He was almost able to kill Hitler. But when his luck ran out, when things went not according to plan, he could not try again. So what I'm trying to say, being a lone wolf is advantageous, but also has strong disadvantages in conspiracy. It's always a trade off.
- [16:27]
Interviewer / Host
And I know this is definitely the most famous example of a lone wolf. Do you have any indication of how many lone wolf plots there were? Just, I mean, not, certainly not an exact number, but sort of a ballpark figure. How did, in your research, did you uncover lots of these kinds of plots that went nowhere or no, or just this is sort of more isolated Incident, There are several.
- [16:53]
Dr. Danny Orbach
The other famous plot was a. Hatched by a theology student, actually Swiss theology student, I think Roger Morehouse, in his famous book on. He tried to enumerate or to analyze all the plots to kill Hitler, mentioned some other plots, some by lone wolves, other by British agents who were kind of rogue agents, were, did what they wanted. But I think the one which was really serious was Ezra's plot. And of course there are many plots which are rumored, but in the Third Reich there are so many rumors that you really need solid evidence in order to decide that it was actually a plot. Because if you read the Gestapo reports and you believe every rumor that the Gestapo is reproducing about a kind of a failed conspiracy to kill Hitler, a conspiracy which failed in the planning, then you will have several, dozens of attempts. But my belief is that most of them are fictional. Just rumors in Nazi German.
- [17:59]
Interviewer / Host
Just rumors. Maybe neighbors, you know, reporting neighbors, things like that.
- [18:04]
Dr. Danny Orbach
I'll give you one example. In 19, beginning of 1944, end of 1943, beginning of 1944, there was an attempt of an officer from the German resistance. Of course, this was not a lone wolf plot to kill Hitler with a pistol in a meeting. Actually, this officer was junior, his name was Breitenbuch, was not allowed to get into the meeting. And the reason he was not allowed to get into the meeting is that there were heightened security procedures at the time. Just security was tightened. One of the reasons that security was tightened is that the Gestapo spread rumors at the time that an Austrian officer with Jewish connections is planning to assassinate a fear. This had nothing to do with the actual plot. The rumors were completely false, but they were enough to tighten security and a lot of rumors were going around.
- [19:06]
Interviewer / Host
Can you give our listeners just a little bit of a flavor of how tight security normally was around Hitler?
- [19:14]
Dr. Danny Orbach
Hitler's security, first of all, was very tight in the physical sense. He was always protected. He was always surrounded by guards. Of course he had some, especially during the war, he wore some protective equipment. When he was in the famous Wolf's Lair after Operation Barbarossa in 44. Then he was also surrounded by several belts of security guards, dogs, minefields. It was very, very difficult to get in. Almost impossible if you didn't have the right permissions, of course, Klaus von Stauffenberg, as you know, the assassin, and this rare permission to participate in meetings with Hitler. But I would say that Hitler's real security was not the guards and was not the minefields and was not the gates and was not the dogs. And not the fortifications. It was his habits of changing his plans all the time. Think about it like that. There are two main options to kill a dictator. One option is to shoot him when you see him. Actually, many later historians blame the German resistance. Why they didn't take a gun and shoot this guy. Some even said because they didn't do it, they probably didn't want to succeed. But that's not true. As Hitler was so protected, shooting him was very dangerous. Virtually, at the best of luck, you had only one shot, and then the guards will shoot and neutralize you. And everything depends on one shot shot in great psychological pressure. And if you are caught, of course, you can compromise the entire conspiracy. That's the reason the conspirators usually, with one exception, two exceptions ruled out this option of shooting. Second option, which the conspirators chose, was to use a bomb or a suicide bomber. But then Hitler's habit to change plans works against such plans, because a bomb plot should be meticulously planned and should be meticulously tied to a certain time when Hitler is there. And somebody with permission may install a bomb or blow himself up on Hitler. But it's enough to change your plans, to change your schedule all the time in order to foil such plans. And there was a very famous example, of course, In Spring in 1943, one of the conspirators, Colonel Rudolf Reicher von Gelsdorf, tried to blow himself up on Hitler during a museum exhibition. He was Hitler's guide in an exhibition of captured Soviet war banners. And Hitler, instead of listening to the explanation, just went out of the museum immediately. And it took the bomb 10 minutes to detonate. So the assassin had to get rid of the bomb. I would say security changing your habits is the most. The strongest form of security that Hitler had, and it was very effective. Later dictators such as Saddam Hussein actually made this method even better and more sophisticated.
- [22:37]
Interviewer / Host
Okay, so let's turn now to your chronology. You basically focus on the period between 1938 and 1944. Can you just orient us as to why you chose those? I think the 44 is obvious, but why you started really in 38.
- [22:55]
Dr. Danny Orbach
My goal in this book was not to tell the story of all opposition to Hitler in the Third Reich. I don't think that one book can do it, though some people try to do it. My goal was to tell the story of the underground that perpetrated the attempt in 20 July 1944, and this specific underground began in 1938. We spoke before about the Fried scandal and the war scare of 1938, 1939. This group crystallized at the time. It was somewhat large, but still small in 1938. Of course, it grew much smaller after Hitler's victories in the beginning of the war, grew a bit larger in 42, 43, and again become relatively large. Actually the largest that he was in 1944. But the leaders, the political leaders especially, were the same. And I saw this organizational continuity from 1938 to 1944. That's why I chose this chronology.
- [24:05]
Interviewer / Host
How did this network function? How did they meet, how did they organize themselves and how did they recruit? And what were the just the general characteristics of the people who led the movement? I'll ask some other follow ups as well.
- [24:24]
Dr. Danny Orbach
Actually, the people who led the movements were the Die Hards were the people who resisted Hitler continuously from 1938 to 1944. These were Colonel Hans Oster for Military Intelligence, whom we mentioned. This was General Ludwig Beck, the overall leader of the movement, who resigned because he resisted Hitler's warplane, and Dr. Karl Friedrich Godeler, the Oberburgmeister of Leipzig, who resigned because of his resistance to the persecution of the Jews and to Nazi policies in general. The people who joined along the way joined from many other motives. But I would say that the resistance to Hitler's war crimes and the patriotic imperative to save Germany were usually the most important one. We can speak about it later, but for your other question, you asked about the communication methods. And here I think it's very important to differentiate between three different periods under three different military leaders. I said before, when the political leaders were the same people throughout the period. The military leaders, however, changed. Under the first military leader, Col. Anz Oster, the German resistance was still a small group of friends. So everybody knew everybody. People recruited people they knew. It was all very tight. Therefore it was easiest to meet and communicate and recruit because the people were really densely tied to one another. Think of a group of friends which just mutates into a resistance group. After 1943, Austria at the time it was, quote, trying to save Jews and was a sect. He was put under house arrest and the military leadership changed. The second military leader, General Helink, Colombian Later, General Heling von Tresckow led a very different mode of conspiracy, very different mode of operation. Under Tresco, it was a structure I call connected cliques. Think that the Nazi empire at the time really expanded, was not only in Germany, Austria, the Sudetenland. Now it was already in parts of European Russia and all over Western Europe. And Tresco's Organization operates as a collection of cliques which are loosely connected to one another through people who always go back and forth, I call them in the book brokers and connectors. And the groups have to coordinate. The group in Russia has to assassinate Hitler. The group in Berlin and the group in France have to assist in the military revolt. This was very effective mode of communication because groups specialized one in assassinations, one in coup planning. But coordination was very difficult. Everything depended on the brokers of the connectors, which were under immense pressure. The groups always fought and struggled with one another. There was a lot of internal politics and security wise it was very dangerous, because it was enough that the regime will put a hand on one of the brokers and the connectors and the entire network would have been unraveled. And it almost happened several times in 1943. The last mode of communication was in 44, under the more famous Klaus von Stauffenberg. And that's the mode of communication they call a real conspiracy. This is actually a police terminology. Real conspiracy is a conspiracy. We centered on an individual, Stauffenberg in this case and closest advisors, who holds all the threads of the conspiracy in his hands. And this leadership is very charismatic. Stauffenberg is trying to enlarge and control the organization through his charisma in a very, very centralized way. And recruitment is done like that. You know, somebody is going to the fronts looking for anti Nazi officers. In one famous case, it's an officer who weakness a massacre of Jews in Dubno, Ukraine. Somebody spots him. He is being glad to meet Stauffenberg. Stauffenberg gives him a talk. He's very charismatic. I would compare his charisma to Hitler's charisma, almost really hypnotizing. And by this charismatic leadership, he's enlarging the network continuously with his feelers, which go around the fronts and and looking for volunteers. And in the book I show the big power, the great power of his mode and also the great weaknesses. Because when the center fails, like in 20th July 1944, the conspiracy will unravel. So again, in conspiracies, everything is a trade off. All of the three modes I described advantages and disadvantages. And it was always a trade of trading one for the other.
- [29:56]
Interviewer / Host
You mentioned that particularly in the second unit, that they almost unraveled because it got so big and the regime could get a hold of these connectors and brokers. Is there any one instance, maybe one example, where it was real, real close and sort of worth noting?
- [30:16]
Dr. Danny Orbach
Yeah, definitely. Actually 1943. Just spring 1943 just, just when General Francesco's attempt to kill Hitler Feld Fritz Hitler von der Schulenburg was arrested. Hermann Kaiser another connector was close to be discovered. When these connectors were arrested or almost arrested. You know, it could be a matter of hours before the military police and then the Gestapo was will unravel the entire conspiracy. And it was very close. People were arrested and you know, they were just released for lack of evidence, for lack of interest. But a more attentive stop officer or a more attentive officer of the military police could have really destroyed the entire conspiracy already. 1943 It's a lot of dangers, many dangers and a lot of chancellor luck.
- [31:17]
Shopify Advertiser
Running a business comes with a lot of what ifs. But luckily there's a simple answer to Shopify. It's the commerce platform behind millions of businesses including Thrive Cosmetics and Momofuku. And it'll help you with everything you need. From website design and marketing to boosting sales and expanding operations. Shopify can get the job done and make your dream a reality. Turn those what ifs into Sign up for your $1 per month trial at.
- [31:43]
Interviewer / Host
Shopify.Com specialoffer an issue Hitler potential Hitler assassination plots. Was this a primary concern of the Gestapo? Did they spend a lot of their man hours on finding and foiling these plots or did they just respond to them as they arose or through rumors? As you mentioned earlier, there are several issues here.
- [32:08]
Dr. Danny Orbach
There are a lot of conspiracy theories after the war on the Gestapo's failure to destroy the plot on time. Some people even said that Himmler actually wanted Hitler Kiel to take over power himself. I do not believe in these theories. I think they are not really found in the evidence. But you know, people usually cannot understand or cannot accept that people may fail and sometimes fail in a very foolish way. So there to be something sinister behind it. I think that the Gestapo did not discover the proton type for several reasons which are all very interesting. First of all, the Nazi regime looked down on the right, the left, the colonists, the socialists were the most dangerous. And so the eye of the regime it has one, the right eye was half blind at least while the left eye was very attentive. Second thing, and actually the Gestapo officials write it very explicitly in their interrogation reports of the conspirators. After 20th of July 1944, the German army was tied in very dense networks of loyalty, especially the officer corps. And the internal culture dictated norms of behavior. And one of the norms was that you don't inform on your military comrades to Outsiders doesn't mean that people did not inform. People did inform on the army, but there was less chance that it would happen. There are several cases where the conspirators made a mistake and tried to win over officers who were Nazi or supporters of Hitler. And his officers angrily rejected the overture but didn't inform because it was considered shameful. You don't do such things. And for that reason, conspiracy was possible in the German army, but it was not possible, in my opinion, in the Soviet army, for example, because the Soviet army had much stronger central control by the party and didn't have this culture of internal cohesion that the Wehrmacht had. So this is a very important precondition for successful conspiracy. Last but not least, while the civilian conspirators were very uncurful and they were actually followed by the Gestapo all the time, the military conspirators kept compartmentalization. They kind of, you know, there were compartments. People usually did not speak when they didn't have to. Stauffenberg and Tresco both kept secrecy in the center. So while the Gestapo knew very well about the CIV civilian conspirators, their knowledge on the military conspirators was lacking. And that's another failing of the Gestapo, I guess, that had the Gestapo, if the Gestapo invested the same efforts in investigating the right and the army as they did the left, they may have found Stauffenberg on time. But that was always a second priority until July 20, 1944.
- [35:44]
Interviewer / Host
You've talked a little bit about recruitment, that, you know, Stauffenberg would approach an officer and win him over with his charisma. Was there any famous examples of people seeking out the conspirators to join them? Or was this something that the conspirators themselves would have been very leery of because they weren't sure about this person's true motives?
- [36:07]
Dr. Danny Orbach
Actually, we have many such instances in the literature. Our knowledge of them is not always perfect. I think maybe the most famous and the story which is best to tell is the story of Axel von den Boucher, which I actually mentioned in brief beforehand. Axel von den Bosche was an officer which had no strong political views. In 1943, he witnessed a massacre of the Jews in Dobno, Ukraine, and one of the victims actually pleaded for help, and he did nothing. And he was shocked and ashamed. In the beginning, he thought that he just should die at the front in order to solve his dilemma. But then he was sought by the agents, the feelers of the conspiracy. It's unclear whether he reached out or they reached out. The sources are a bit ambiguous. In any case, he found Fritz von der Schulenburg was Stauffenberg's feeler at the time, and he volunteered to assassinate Hitler in order to atone for his failure in the Dubno incident. So often there was some very strong motive which made you a potential recruit. Then you were spotted by a feeler of the resistance who tried to kind of feel the way, see if there is potential. And if it was especially the last round, in the last two stages of the conspiracy, he brought you for to a personal meeting with either Tresco or Stauffenberg or another one of the leaders. Communication was usually innate with code names, not with real names. And that's how people were recruited. I would like to add that very often family and friendship ties were very important here. It's not a chance that very many conspirators came from specific regiments. For example, for example, in these regiments you had ties of friendship, ties of family, ties of marriage. And people usually try to recruit through these ties. If your father was in the conspiracy, if your uncle was in the conspiracy, if your brother in law was in the conspiracy, then it was easier to recruit. In the book I call it the law of revolutionary mutation. This builds on social network theory. When there is a legitimate legal tie, legal social tie between two people, there are feelings of trust. It's much easier to mutate this type into an illegal conspiratorial tie. And that's how conspiracy networks are usually being built, and not only in Germany. What's unique in Germany is the density of these ties. Because the German elites, the German nobility, had very, very strong mutual ties of family, friendship, military service, which made this process of military mutation easier. And yet I really have to emphasize it, the mutation happened only in very tiny parts of the networks of German officer corps, German nobility. Most people were loyal to Hitler throughout. So this is a small phenomena, but it still happens.
- [39:48]
Interviewer / Host
You mentioned this, the particular individual of the story, he was horrified by the massacre of these Jews. Talk a little bit about the conspirators views on Jews and Nazi policy towards Jews more generally. What were their. General, I know it's impossible to say that pinpoint each one's very specific, you know, feelings on the matter. But just generally, how did they view Nazi this, this policy of extermination?
- [40:19]
Dr. Danny Orbach
Generally the officers, this conspirators, both civilian and military, were very much opposed to the Holocaust, to the mass, to the mass massacres, to the violence against Jews, very often also to the Kristalda in 1938. Of course, there are exceptions to that as well, because unfortunately there were conspirators like SS General Arthur Nebe, who actually took part in the Holocaust. But largely speaking, the conspirators were horrified by mass massacres. About the attitude to the Jews more general, generally, there were strong disagreements. Some believed that antisemitism was wrong to begin with and all racial legislation has to be abolished. Others believe that some sort of legal, nonviolent discrimination was either legitimate or has to persist in some way. But it. The majority of, I would say, draft constitutions and proposals for a new government that the conspirators made usually included a abolishment of most of all anti Jewish laws.
- [41:44]
Interviewer / Host
Okay.
- [41:45]
Dr. Danny Orbach
Doesn't mean that some didn't have feelings against Jews or prejudices against Jews. Many.
- [41:50]
Interviewer / Host
Yeah. No. Thank you for making that clear. I think something that you do a nice job of in the book, explaining, but I think it's important for the listeners to understand this as well. Let's move closer to the July 20th plot, but let's begin by talking. You've mentioned Stauffenberg a couple of times, but can you give the listeners a little bit of background on who he is, where he comes from, sort of, you know, what strata of society does he belong to? And I'll let you go.
- [42:25]
Dr. Danny Orbach
Stauffenberg is a nobleman. He comes from the traditional aristocracy of southern Germany. Usually in some post world counts. People speak about Stauffenberg and the Prussian spirit, but he was actually never a Prussian. He was usually in the area, grew up in the area of either Bavaria or Schweben. And in his days as a young man in the 1920s, he was very influenced by the circle around the poet Stefan George. It was very romantic. He believed in sort of manifest destiny of himself as an aristocrat to do great things. It was not clear, of course, what in the 1920s, but he was very ambitious. He wanted to be successful, he wanted to be famous, he wanted to do great things for the German fatherland. And in the 1930s he was, I would say, a lukewarm supporter of the Nazima, of the Nazi regime. Was never an enthusiastic Nazi, but more or less he supported Hitler at least part of the time, especially after the victories in 1939, 1940. Then you can see that it starts to change already in 1941, in 1941, early 1942, he still rules out conspiracy, but it turns internally more and more against the regime. Verri says after we win the war, it will be the right time to get rid of the Brown disease. Then he has another sea. There is another sea change. And that happens in 1942. And it is very important to emphasize that it happened in 1942. Because in 1942 Stauffenberg believed that the war is still winnable. So at the time he did not believe the war was lost. And yet he tells his friends time and again they are shooting Jews. It cannot continue like that. In summer 1942, he tells his friend Joachim Kun, we actually have Soviet documents about it, that the treatment of the Jews, the lack of political guidance to the local population relations, the treatment of the local populations in the occupied territories more generally, prove that Hitler lied to us when he said that he hopes to initiate a new order in Europe, and therefore this war is monstrous. And then started to speak about shooting Hitler. It was a long time, though, until he was actually recruited by the conspirators. That was only after it was transferred to Africa and wounded in 1943.
- [45:34]
Interviewer / Host
Okay, so let's talk about the July 20th plot. I think a lot of people who are listening are familiar with what it is, but give us sort of a breakdown of how it is organized. Obviously we know their objective is to kill Hitler, but give us the anatomy of the plot, the big points.
- [45:58]
Dr. Danny Orbach
The idea of the July plot was not only to kill Hitler. The idea was to kill Hitler and then take power in Germany. The plan was as follows. Stauffenberg would kill Hitler in Wolf's Lair with the bomb. Then he will call the conspirators in Berlin and tell them that Hitler is killed. General Felgibel was an agent of the conspirators in the communication center of Wolf's Lair. He should cut the communications, cut Hitler's aids from the war. Von Stauffenberg will fly to Berlin, lead the coup d', etat, send orders to units throughout the Nazi empire to arrest all Nazi officials free or occupy the concentration and extermination camps and take over Germany. Then in the beginning the conspirators will lie. They will tell the officer that somebody killed Hitler, or the SS killed Hitler, or some traitor skilled Hitler, and therefore the army has to take control over important facilities throughout Germany. That was the essence of the Valkyrie plan, was the plan of the conspirators. Originally it was the plan to cope with an uprising of slave workers in Germany. Because if slave workers in Germany will have to stage an uprising, then of course the army have to safeguard the important facilities.
- [47:31]
Interviewer / Host
Why did the plot not succeed?
- [47:36]
Dr. Danny Orbach
The plot didn't succeed first of all because Hitler didn't die. And it didn't die because somebody moved bomb to the other side of the table. But more importantly, or as importantly, the plot failed because too much was dependent on Stauffenberg personal and this is a really a point which I think is worth emphasizing. Stauffenberg made a mistake when he didn't bring two bombs into the briefing room. That was done under immense mental pressure. Again, too much was dependent on him and even worse yet to fly to Berlin and stage the uprising. People actually were not ready to act before he came. So it took the conspirators lost precious hours while Stauffenberg was flying from Wolfsner to Berlin. But final point is that when the generals throughout the Nazi empire discovered that Hitler is alive, they virtually had to choose. A North scholar once said that 20th July 1944 were the last elections in Nazi Germany. The electorate was the generals and they had to choose between the conspirators and Hitler. And when they discovered that Hitler is alive, almost all of them voted Adolf. And in a way that was the main reason that the conspiracy failed.
- [49:13]
Interviewer / Host
I mean obviously it failed and Stauffenberg and other conspirators were executed. Well, what is the aftermath of this plot? What was the broader, broader aftermath?
- [49:25]
Dr. Danny Orbach
Aside from executions, the broader aftermath was that there was virtually no chance for another organized uprising in Nazi Germany. But I think deeper than that. The failure of the plot negated all possibility of a new Dors legend. That is a stabbing in the back legend that means that people will say we lost the war not because of Hitler or the Nazi regime or the unrealistic plans of the Nazi elite more generally, but because of his vicious traitors who stabbed the army and the nation in the back. The conspirators were actually really afraid of such an outcome. In ironically, the failure of the plot made this possibility null and void. So because Hitler himself led Germany to unconditional surrender after his suicide and complete destruction, he led Germany to virtually defeat, which was unquestionable and there was nobody else to blame. Maybe it affected in a way that democratic transformation of Germany after 1945. And it's and prevented the Nazi resurgence. And this is a dilemma. I don't intend to say like some people said after the war, that it's good that the plot failed because it prevented a stab in the back. Legend really want to emphasize that the number of people killed for from July 1944 to the end of the war is immense. And the success, the success of the plot certainly in 1943, but also in 1944 could really save many, many people. Really more than a million certainly. So I just want to say that everything in history is a trade off. And that was the trade off of July 20, 1944. Because the plot failed, many more people died needlessly. But there was no stab in the back legend which was good for German democracy on the long run.
- [51:57]
Interviewer / Host
How is the July 20 plot remembered in Germany? Sort of throughout the decades. They certainly think about it very differently today than they did in the 1950s. So you give us some flavor of that.
- [52:15]
Dr. Danny Orbach
In the 1950s, many Germans still saw the 20 July conspirators as traitors, especially the army veterans, most of the army veterans. There was a widespread belief even in the German secret service at the time at Gehle and or that the veterans of the resistance, even the military and conservative existence were actually communist agents in disguise. Absurd as it sounds now, things start to change only in 1954 when Bundes President Theodor Royce gives a speech and is praising the conservative resistance. And then for a while, gradually the conservative resistance becomes, I would say members of the conservative resistance become heroes of. For the establishment and the conservative center in Germany. It happens very gradually. The 1950s, 1960s. I say the conservative resistance because the socialist resistance or the communist resistance was more controversial. The dynamics is usually that people in Germany tend to sympathize with resistance fighters, offer on political strife. And what happens in the 1960s after this Neo Nazi or kind of Wehrmacht veteran voice that say that the resistance members are traitors. These voices die out. Gradually the resistance starts to be attacked from different quarters. And this is the left in the 1960s. Germany is undergoing the same waves of student demonstrations, of progressive resurgence like many other countries in the West. And now the members of the German resistance are being attacked from the other direction. They are rightists, they are reactionaries, they are anti democrats. They are not progressive scholars who kind of start right at the time, emphasize the anti democratic sides of the resistance. The antisemitic sides of the resistance and the zeal to demonize the resistance was so strong at the time that some scholars, I would say gently relied on sources that never existed. So the even scholarship was intensely political at the time. Today, I would say the resistance is still controversial. Of course it is hated by the neo Nazi right. But the neo Nazi right in Germany is still marginal. People from the far left still see the members of the resistance as a reactionary antisemites and war criminals. And just like in 54, the resistance is still supported by the center, the government, the conservative establishment and the People and journalists or makers of public opinion who are associated with the establishment center or the conservative center. I would add one more thing. You asked about Germany. I have to say that now there is a new trend to attack the German resistance, actually in Poland. In Poland there is a wave of anti German feelings at the moment. And certain Polish journalists try to revive the thesis of leftist scholars in Germany from the 1960s in order to portray the conspirators as criminals as part of the current struggle between Poland and Germany. Or politicians in Poland and Germany.
- [56:07]
Interviewer / Host
That's fascinating as we're coming up on about an hour. So, as a way to close discussion of your book, what are one or two major things you would like the listeners of this interview and the readers of your book to take away from it?
- [56:25]
Dr. Danny Orbach
I would emphasize two points. First of all, a very strong point I make in my book is that military officers are not necessarily good conspirators. Conspiracy is not a military operation. It operates by different rules. For example, a state speed is much more important than planning and secrecy. And I explain many of the failures of the resistance in their insistence to think like officers and not like revolutionaries or conspirators. And as I show, they always try to shift their mode of conspiracy, their mode of organization, but it was always a trade off. They improved the conspiracy from a certain aspect, and then it suffers from a different aspect. I would also say, as I write in my conclusion, that it is wrong to demonize the conspirators as opportunistic criminals, as some did, but it is equally wrong to lionize them as spotless Europes. Nobody who served in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern front at the time, and I speak about it at length in the book, could be free of responsibility for war crimes. The system was criminal. The war was criminal. And the conspirators, even if they hated it, were implicated, especially when they wanted to carry out their military duty to the best of their ability. And they wanted. They were caught up in a criminal system while trying to rebel against this criminal system. And what I'm saying is, within the real world, heroes, and I'm not ashamed to use the term, are not knights in a shining armor. They are knights in a tarnished armor. People who do such things do it with limitations, do it with human failings. And I think that's what makes them important. Because if heroes are people which are angels, perfect, spotless, then we can learn nothing because we are humans. I think that the real historical lesson is how you rise up from such a criminal system, from such a hopeless situation and still do the best you can. And with all of the human failings of the conspirators, I think that this moral ambiguity makes their story much more interesting. And I also think it's wrong to debate whether their motives were moral, universalistic, that is, or patriotic. They were both. For these people, it was a moral imperative to save Germany. At the same time, saving the victims of the Nazi regime, like Joss, was seen as a patriotic dis. Duty toward Germany. So I'm also trying to show how the conspiracy, morality, universal morality and patriotism were so intertwined that you cannot really differentiate or put a line between the two. And finally, just one final sentence. I think the difficulties and the moral ambiguity of the resistance shows is historian Peter Hoffman said that the best time to resist regimes such as Nazi Germany is before they come to power, not after.
- [59:58]
Interviewer / Host
Well said. I want to tell all the listeners that this is an excellent book and they should definitely pick it up and read it. But, Danny, before I let you go, now that this project is done, the book is on the shelves. What are you working on now?
- [60:18]
Dr. Danny Orbach
Now I'm working on a book called Fugitives. It's a history of Nazi spies in the Cold War. I'm tracing veterans of the Nazi espionage and security apparatus, especially the ss, who served as spies in the Cold wars, in the Cold War, for East Germany, for West Germany, for the kgb, for the Arabs, for Israel. I focus a lot on the Middle east and the way these people, many of them were double agents or intelligence freelancers as Nazis, became an intermediary between east and west in the secret struggles of the Cold War. Kind of a middle ground for which information flowed in distorted wings between the Soviets and the Western powers. And I'm very interested in the ways double agents work and their influence and the ways in which groups of people, these former Nazis were not so important in and of themselves, provoke states into unproportional reactions which actually have a strong effect on history.
- [61:35]
Interviewer / Host
Well, it sounds fascinating. I don't want to put any pressure on you, but when you're done and it comes out, I would love to have you back on the show to talk about it.
- [61:44]
Dr. Danny Orbach
Thank you.
- [61:45]
Interviewer / Host
I want to thank Danny one more time for agreeing to be on the show again. The book is called the Plots against Hitler by Dr. Danny Orbach. I would encourage all our listeners to go out and get it and read it. And I want to thank you all for listening today. And I want to thank Danny again for being on the show. And we will see you all next time.