The End: The Defiance and Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1944–1945

Beyond the OKW, the Army General Staff, under Guderian, could no longer incubate any source of disaffection. Nothing but ultra-loyalty could be expected of the Luftwaffe, under Göring’s command. And the navy was headed by the radically pro-Nazi Grand-Admiral Dönitz. With the Replacement Army under Himmler’s tight control and the General Staff purged and brought into line, any new moves to resist the self-destructive course of the Nazi leadership from the two areas most closely associated with the assassination attempt were ruled out for the duration. And no insurrection could be expected from top generals, the frontline commanders-in-chief or their subordinate officers.

The chief waverer among Army Group commanders, Field-Marshal von Kluge, Commander-in-Chief West, had blown hot and cold on the resistance movement, eventually turning his back on the conspirators, but falling nonetheless under deep suspicion in Hitler’s headquarters. He was to kill himself, still protesting his loyalty to the Führer, some weeks later. Dissident officers in Paris, Vienna and Prague had fallen victim to the purge that followed the quashed uprising.¹⁰³

The other Army Group commanders and leading generals, whatever their disagreements with Hitler’s orders, were outright loyalists, and remained so. Field-Marshal von Rundstedt and Colonel-General Guderian served—the latter, he subsequently claimed, with great reluctance—on the ‘Court of Honour’ which dismissed from the army officers implicated in the bomb plot, throwing them onto the tender mercies of the ‘People’s Court’ and its notorious presiding judge, Roland Freisler.

Field-Marshal Walter Model, Commander-in-Chief at different times of three Army Groups in the east, an excellent tactician, good organizer and stern disciplinarian who had stood up to Hitler on a number of occasions but remained high in the Dictator’s favour, saw himself as purely a military professional, standing aside from politics. But whatever the self-image of the unpolitical soldier—a delusion he shared with other generals—he of course acted politically in a system that made it impossible to do otherwise. He refused to believe the plotters’ claim on 20 July that Hitler was dead, he was the first military leader to send a declaration of loyalty to the Dictator on hearing of his survival, and he never wavered in his support.¹⁰⁴

At the end of July, he sought through a combination of renewed trust in Hitler and straightforward fear to restore wavering morale and discipline in the devastated Army Group Centre, which had lost 350,000 men killed or captured. ‘The enemy stands at East Prussia’s borders,’ his proclamation to his troops ran. But his own men still held a position enabling them ‘to defend the holy soil of the Fatherland’ and repel the danger of ‘murder, fire and plundering of German villages and towns’, as the Führer, people and comrades fighting on other fronts expected. ‘Cowards have no place in our ranks,’ he went on. ‘Any waverer has forfeited his life. It’s about our homeland, our wives and children.’ Intense concentration of all forces could combat the temporary superiority of the enemy in numbers and matériel

. The new responsibilities given to Himmler and Goebbels had provided all the necessary prerequisites for this. ‘No soldier in the world is better than we soldiers of our Führer, Adolf Hitler! Heil to our beloved Führer!’ he ended.¹⁰⁵