BREALK-UP IN GERMANY
Villard, Oswald Garrison
Break-Up In Germany By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD THE best news from Europe since England declared war on Germany is the attempt to assassinate Hitler. It was no surprise to anyone who has followed...
...To which my reply is that if they had been in Germany as I was when the war came, they would be certain that not even Anglo-Saxons could rise against such tremendous semi-military and police forces as Hitler had built up to continue himself and his crowd in power...
...They realize that the game is nearly up...
...Hitler They came very near to it, just as near as in 1914, when, but for blunders at the Marne, they would have won the war in the West in four months' time...
...The old cry of a "stab in the back" cannot be revived...
...At least they thoroughly thrashed the Russians in 1914 and they felt certain that, with their Army modernized, young men in charge, and many of the long outmoded customs of the service inherited directly from Frederick the Great done away with, they could win an overwhelming victory this time...
...I look, therefore, to see the military moves against Hitler continue—even though the first conspirators to take action against him have been "liquidated...
...the industrialists took orders from him and were compelled to endure numerous socialist moves which they hated...
...They always disliked his having been a corporal four years and never rising beyond that grade although his company was several times reconstituted...
...Indeed, to borrow the military expression, it was quite "according to plan," especially after the complete defeat in Russia...
...Then he had some extraordinary military "hunches" which resulted in great successes, like the taking of the Rhineland, Austria, Czechoslovakia—and the military thought, until the end of the first year of the war with Russia, that they had in him a military genius...
...But with his tremendous popular following he became the master...
...German armies are in retreat before those whom the Prussian military supermen have considered semi-barbarians— Russians and Americans...
...Disaster Ahead So the Army has been the only possible source of danger to Hitler...
...The home front has endured indescribable tortures and given hundreds of thousands of lives like the soldiers at the front...
...Then such "treasonable utterances" would have been impossible...
...Generals vs...
...It was no surprise to anyone who has followed events in the Reich...
...I still meet intelligent people who think the anti-Nazi Germans should be rising against Hitler...
...Now German disaster is visible on every front, the Allied air bombardments daily take a fearful toll, and there is nothing left but a last stand fight with their backs to the shrinking walls of the Reich...
...From no other source save the Army could come the first revolt against Hitler...
...They excused their failure then because they were let down by the collapse of the home front because of civilian incapacity, and because Hin-denburg and Ludendorff were unnecessarily panic-stricken when their...
...No one can understand how great the humiliation this is who has not known German officers, their pride and egotism, their caste rules, their hitherto unshakable belief in their invincibility...
...that if they lose this time their profession will be totally wiped out—unless Stalin rescues them—and that Germany will be reduced to long servitude...
...He did show courage and determination...
...1918 offensive collapsed...
...So the military, carried away by his power and the great enthusiasm for him of the controlling minority, let him lead them and the Reich...
...Even the defeat of 1918 did not shake their faith in themselves, or their class, or their philosophy, or their military prowess...
...Old Morale Gone It is true that many of the soundest military men opposed the move against Russia, and all of them^were blinded by the astounding blunders of their military intelligence service in underestimating the Russian Army by no less, than 100 divisions—1,500,000 men...
...With more than one million ruthless SS men under Himmler controlling Germany, to say nothing of the secret police, the Gestapo, a civilian uprising was and is absolutely impossible, at least until Army and government collapse as in 1918...
...Americans seem to find it hard to understand this...
...When one considers the recent attack upon Hitler by Lieut...
...Now the German officers are plainly desperate...
...But since they have lost again they ar,e once more looking for a scapegoat...
...he correctly sized up the weaknesses and the stupidities of Chamberlain, Neville Henderson, and the other English leaders, and also the French...
...They thought that they would annex him and use him for their purposes...
...Edmund Hoffmeister after his capture by the Russians, in which he said the older generals had lost faith in Hitler's leadership and strategy, and the previous utterances by German generals in Russian captivity, it is obvious that the old German military morale of pre-Hitler days no longer exists...
...This he sought to head off by making every officer when sworn in take not only the oath to uphold the country, but an oath of personal allegiance to himself as the Fuehrer...
...Then the military made the same fatal blunder that marked the policy of the great industrialists toward Hitler...
...Plainly the only possible man the Army could turn on was Hitler...
...They hated his humble origin and at first looked with suspicion upon his obvious demagogy...
...But oaths can be broken and always will be by men in uniform or not, when they become desperate enough, just as no nation on earth respects the sanctity of any treaty which it has signed if it thinks it to its interest to violate the pact...
...It is especially significant that Count Von Stauffen-berg, who threw the bomb that missed, was an officer of Hitler's immediate entourage, that it was a "palace revolution" originating among those closest to him whom he should have been able to trust...
...And no hjimSn beings anywhere were aware of the extraordinary industrial and manufacturing resources or the Russian ability to come back after the most terrible destruction of property and life ever endured by any country...
...They cannot lay the blame this -time on the Jews or the liberals and radicals, for there are none left...
...Anglo-Saxons would be," is their argument...
Vol. 8 • August 1944 • No. 32
